Welcome to Hastings, Nebraska

Hastings, Nebraska is a rural community rooted in home town values and civic pride that maintains quality of life, through special places, cultural offerings and a stable economy.  Hastings has a population of 24,907, is centrally located, easily accessible and recognized for its sprawling parks, cultural activities, historic architecture and first class education, medical and sporting facilities.

Here you'll find Hastings College, one of the nation's leading liberal arts colleges; the Hastings Museum of Natural and Cultural History and Theatre - showing films daily on a screen that is five stories tall and 70 feet wide; a 5-acre water park; a bustling downtown district and much more.

Hastings welcomes birders from around the world who wish to take in the spectacular annual migration of cranes and waterfowl as they stopover along the Platte River and in the Rainwater Basin each March, is home of the Nebraska Amateur Softball Associations's SmithSoftball Complex and the site of a premier 2.1 mile road racing course called Motorsports Park Hastings.

Hastings was born in 1872 when the St. Joseph and Denver City Railroads crossed near the small homestead of determined English settler Walter Micklen.  Historical markers for both the Oregon Trail and the Pony Express can be found nearby.  Hastings is recognized as the "Official Birthplace of Kool-Aid," as it was invented here in 1927 by Edwin Perkins.