About the town » Antioch, Sheridan County, Nebraska, United States

Antioch is a ghost town in Sheridan County, Nebraska, United States. Located approximately 15 miles east of Alliance on Nebraska Highway 2, the town was once nicknamed "the potash capitol of Nebraska. " The location of the town near several major alkali lakes among the Sand Hills of Western Nebraska made Antioch the logical home of five potash reduction factories: the American, Nebraska, Alliance, National, and Western potash companies. All these companies were major suppliers of potash during World War I. As a late boomtown, Antioch sprang out of the war-driven needs. According to one historian, the year before the United States became involved in WWI, the town only had one schoolhouse, a church, and a store. With the advent of a method to distill potash from western Nebraska's alkali lakes by University of Nebraska scientists, by 1917 Antioch was "a small city. " Antioch quickly had five large-scale potash plants, and within months the town had more than 5,000 residents. Following the war the population left again. When Germany resumed trade with the United States in 1921, the potash trade was decimated. The factory immediately closed, and within years the town was virtually dead. Today the town has fewer than 25 residents.