Cherry County, Nebraska

Cherry County, Nebraska
Cherry County Courthouse in Valentine
Location in the U.S. state of Nebraska
Nebraska's location in the U.S.
Founded	1883
Named for	Samuel A. Cherry
Seat	Valentine
Largest city	Valentine
Area
• Total	6,009 sq mi (15,563 km2)
• Land	5,960 sq mi (15,436 km2)
• Water	49 sq mi (127 km2), 0.8%
Population
• (2010)	5,713
• Density	1.0/sq mi (0/km²)
Congressional district	3rd
Time zones	Central: UTC-6/-5 Eastern
	Mountain: UTC-7/-6 Western
Website	www.co.cherry.ne.us

Cherry County is a county in the U.S. state of Nebraska. As of the 2010 census, the population was 5,713. Its county seat is Valentine. The county was named for Lt. Samuel A. Cherry, an Army officer who was stationed at Fort Niobrara and who had been killed in South Dakota in 1881. Cherry County is in the Nebraska Sandhills.

In the Nebraska license plate system, Cherry County is represented by the prefix 66 (it had the 66th-largest number of vehicles registered in the state when the license plate system was established in 1922).

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the county has an area of 6,009 square miles (15,560 km²), of which 5,960 square miles (15,400 km²) is land and 49 square miles (130 km²) (0.8%) is water. It is by far Nebraska's largest county in land area and larger than the state of Connecticut, or the states of Delaware and Rhode Island combined. The county is within Nebraska's Sandhills region; the dunes that give the region its name are a result of the most recent glacial period, known as the Pinedale glaciation. During the Holocene glacial retreat the sand dunes, which had been deposited in their current location by the vast continental glaciers, were exposed and grasses eventually took over.

Cherry County is also the location of the Valentine National Wildlife Refuge, the Fort Niobrara National Wildlife Refuge, the Samuel R. McKelvie National Forest, and the western portion of the Niobrara National Scenic River.