Welcome to Wilber, Nebraska, the Czech Capital of the U.S.

Wilber, Nebraska, is unlike any other Midwest rural town. 

In a city with just 2,000 people, it has a meat market that bakes fresh kolaches — sweet Czech pastry — year-round, a beer garden featuring Czech Pilsner Urquell and a museum preserving artifacts of Czech culture.

In 1987, Wilber was officially recognized as the Czech Capital of the U.S. The city has since brought together 30,000 to 50,000 visitors on the first weekend of every August to celebrate the annual Czech festival, also known as the Czech Days. 

“It’s Czech Day every day at Wilber,” Sheryl Kastanek, a resident of Saline County, where Wilber sits, and a former officer of the Nebraska Czechs of Wilber, said.

Czech Immigration to Nebraska 

Wilber began as one of many new towns that developed along Nebraska’s first railroad built in the 1860s, Rick Zajicek, a volunteer at the Wilber Czech Museum, said. 

The Great Plains’ fertile land, combined with several Homestead Acts, attracted a wave of new residents to Nebraska during the late 1800s and early 1900s.

Most Czech immigrants who moved to Nebraska were rural farmers from the state of Bohemia and Moravia under the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Crop failures and agricultural depressions compounded with political conflict and religious oppression drove many European farmers to the Midwest. 

“The state of Nebraska was giving free land allotments to new settlers, basically from the 1840s to 1900,” Zajicek said. “A lot of people left the Czech lands in the mid to late 1800s due to a lot of political unrest and overpopulation. A lot of them who farmed were having increased issues and trouble acquiring new farmland.” 

Before the federal Homestead Act, which went into effect in 1863, the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 opened the Nebraska territory for new settlements, allowing a settler to buy 160 acres of land from the federal government for $1.25 per acre after living there for six months. 

Advertisements for free land and Czech-language newspapers, as well as personal letters to relatives at home, encouraged more immigration to Nebraska, Zajick said.

Over 50,000 Czechs moved into Nebraska between 1856 and World War I, when Nebraska had the highest per-capita Czech immigration, according to Nebraska Studies. 

In the early twentieth century, neither the depopulation of rural counties — spurred by the Great Depression, better agricultural technology and dry weather — nor immigration quota laws diminished the Czech enclaves from the 1870s. According to the Czech Heritage Project by the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, several counties of eastern Nebraska still recorded a high share of residents claiming Czech ancestry in 1990. 

One of the ways the community preserved its culture was through revitalizing the Czech language. Vladimír Kučera, a political refugee and former newspaper editor from Brno, Czechoslovakia, worked at Nebraska’s State Historical Society after he arrived in the state and began teaching Czech language classes at the University of Nebraska in 1958, said Saline County resident Lois Shimerda Rood, who shares Czech heritage on her father’s side.

Kučera soon taught lessons all across small towns in Nebraska to spread the Czech language. 

“You cannot underestimate what Vladimír Kučera did to revitalizing the Czech identity in our state,” Rood said.

For a relatively small ethnic group in America to share almost half of a county’s population, after a century from when they first moved in, is rare.

“I think the Czechs are hard-working people,” Kastanek said. “They just want to make America better, make Nebraska and Wilber better.” 

Wilber Today

While Wilber at one point had the highest percentage of Czech immigrants in the country, other Midwestern cities also hosted significant Czech communities. By the turn of the twentieth century, Chicago had the third largest Czech community in the world.

Yet Wilber won the title of “Czech capital of the U.S.,” which Rood said is thanks to the Nebraska Czechs Inc. The group was formed in 1962 by four residents and local political leaders of Wilber with the hopes of preserving and promoting Czech culture in Nebraska, according to a history of the group. 

The official celebration of Czech Days started later that year, successfully attracting 20,000 people to the city of Wilber. At its peak, 60,000 people attended the festival. 

Different chapters of Nebraska Czechs Inc. opened throughout the state of Nebraska and have helped preserve Czech culture, holding their own events and festivals throughout the year. 

“Czechs are small when you look at all the ethnicities in the United States, but they’re very, very connected,” Rood said. 

In 1987, President Ronald Reagan declared Wilber the Czech capital of the U.S. In the same year, the National Czech Slovak Queen contest started during the festival, Zijack said. Held on the first weekend of August, the 2026 year marks the festival’s 65th anniversary. 

In recent years, around 30,000 people have visited Wilber during the two-and-a-half days of Czech celebration each year, Zijack said. 

The festival features a grand parade, as well as a costume contest and a duck-and-dumpling run marathon. Along with Czech music and dancing, a variety of vendors serve traditional Czech cuisine like dumplings, roast duck and Kolach. 

Around 50 volunteer festival committees come together to organize the event, Kastanek said. 

One of the main attractions, the Miss Czech-Slovak US Pageant, features young women with Czech heritage from different U.S. states. During “kroj modeling,” each participant wears a kroj, a traditional Czech costume that is reflective of the Czech and Slovak region they are representing. 

Kastanek described the festival as a “homecoming,” where people come to Wilber to honor their Czech heritage.

“Just go walk down to the Czech festivals and have a total immersion to what it’s like to be a Czech, ” Kastanek said. “Vítáme Vás, we welcome you to Wilber, Nebraska. ” 

^{This story was updated on August 3, 2026, to accurately reflect the spelling of Vladimír Kučera’s name.}