{"id":309,"slug":"spring-ranch-cemetery-glenvil-nebraska","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["Spring Ranch Cemetery holds the graves of two of Nebraska's most notorious lynching victims — and the documented record around them is a pioneer chronicle, not a ghost story. The original Spring Ranche stood two miles south of the marker on the north side of the Little Blue River, founded about 1863 by James Bainter, who ran a store and inn for travelers on the Oregon–California Trail. Lakota and allied raiders burned the ranche in 1864 during the attacks along the Little Blue; it was rebuilt."]},{"heading":"Documented history","paragraphs":["The village proper dates to an 1870 post office south of the river, with a sawmill running by 1871; in 1886 the townsite moved across the Little Blue to the grade of the St. Joseph and Grand Island Railroad, and at its height held about a hundred people and several businesses.","On March 15, 1885, Spring Ranch residents Elizabeth Taylor and her brother Thomas Jones — accused of barn burning and murder — were taken by a mob and lynched before they could ever be tried. The marker text is precise about the sequence: accused, then lynched, and the archive keeps the same distance — the charges were allegations, never adjudicated. Taylor is frequently cited in Nebraska histories as the only woman lynched in the state. Both are buried in the cemetery that carries the town's name, along with the settlement's other early dead; few traces of the village itself remain."]}],"name":"Spring Ranch Cemetery","aliases":[],"type":"CEMETERY","type_label":"Cemetery","cats":["DARK_HISTORY"],"groups":["cemeteries","dark-history"],"desc":"Cemetery documented in historical or public cultural sources.","full_desc":"A cemetery in Glenvil, Nebraska, Spring Ranch Cemetery is filed here for what the record attaches to it. Cemetery documented in historical or public cultural sources. The archive files it under dark history. The dossier holds 1 documented fact — a documented spine with no haunting reports attached. Visitor status is unverified; confirm before making the trip.","address":null,"city":"Glenvil","county":"Clay","state":"Nebraska","postal":null,"region":"Midwest","lat":40.502682,"lon":-98.254545,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"UNKNOWN","access":"UNKNOWN","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":null,"research_notes":"Historic violence is documented by state marker text. Charges against victims do not establish guilt. No paranormal claim is inferred.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"MEDIUM","score":55,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0.8,"source_quality":1,"paranormal_claim_provenance":null,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[],"history":[{"description":"Elizabeth Taylor and Thomas Jones, lynched before trial on March 15, 1885, are buried here. Spring Ranch Cemetery's history is documented — the entry belongs to the verified layer beneath the ghost stories. This belongs to the verified spine of the entry, the layer everything else is measured against. 'Marker Monday: Spring Ranche' documents the entry. The detail belongs to the verified spine of the entry.","evidence":"HISTORICALLY_VERIFIED","date_start":null,"date_end":null,"confidence":null,"source":{"name":"Marker Monday: Spring Ranche","url":"https://history.nebraska.gov/marker-monday-spring-ranche/","publisher":"Nebraska State Historical Society","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}}],"legends":[],"entities":[],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Access details are unverified; research before visiting.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Marker Monday: Spring Ranche","url":"https://history.nebraska.gov/marker-monday-spring-ranche/","publisher":"Nebraska State Historical Society","type":"GOVERNMENT","authority":1}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":null,"counts":{"claims":0,"history":1,"legends":0,"entities":0,"sources":1}}