On a bluff above the Missouri Valley, Richard and Laurine Kimmel built more than an orchard. They built a tradition. From their two-bedroom farmhouse outside Nebraska City, they wat-ched rows of apple trees march across the hillsides and generations of families make the same walk up the lane, baskets in hand.

The Kimmels planted their first trees in 1925. Apples soon piled high at a roadside stand where travelers along the dusty highway stopped for fruit and conversation. What began as a modest family venture has since grown into a working orchard of about 90 acres, pressing as much as 40,000 gallons of cider in a good year – a landmark that still carries their name.

Visitors still make that walk today. They drift toward the Apple Barn where freshly pressed cider steams, its aroma mingling with warm spiced apple doughnuts. Each gallon requires about 36 apples and a careful blend of varieties for the right balance of sweet and tart. Rows of Jonathan, Gala, Honeycrisp, Ginger Gold and Winesap apples ripen in turn, carrying the season from summer to frost.

Richard and Laurine Kimmel both grew up in Nebraska City, shaped by families with deep local roots and German heritage. Richard, born in 1897, studied business at Cornell College in Iowa and returned to work at Otoe County National Bank. Laurine, born three years later, attended the University of Nebraska and taught school before their marriage in 1926. He brought a banker’s steadiness, she an artist’s eye and a teacher’s warmth. Together they built a home on a bluff and planted not just rows of apple trees, but the roots of a legacy that would last a century.

Nebraska City itself had fruit-growing roots more than half a century before the Kimmels. In the late 1800s, J. Sterling Morton, founder of Arbor Day, established Arbor Lodge with orchards and experimental plantings that made the town synonymous with trees and fruit. The Kimmels carried that heritage forward, but their orchard soon faced trials of its own.

The first great test came on Armistice Day, Nov. 11, 1940. That morning dawned unseasonably warm; by evening, blizzard winds tore across the Midwest. Temperatures plunged into single digits. Orchards froze solid. By the next day, Kimmel’s crop was gone.

Richard leaned on the same steady judgment that had carried him from banking to farming. He replanted apple trees but also struck a deal with a Nebraska City cannery to raise tomatoes. That pivot carried the family through lean years until the orchard could bear again.

Laurine, who painted with a careful hand and a sharp eye for the overlooked, carried that vision into farm life. She saw possibility where others saw loss, encouraging neighbors and friends with her belief that the orchard could be remade. Years later, her American Architecture watercolor series – unassuming depictions of rural outhouses – earned national recognition for finding dignity and beauty in ordinary things. She had practiced that same vision in 1940, looking at rows of ruined trees and imagining what they might yet become.

Another trial came with war. In 1943, Nebraska housed thousands of German prisoners of war. Among them was 22-year-old William “Bill” Oberdieck, captured in North Africa. He was sent first to Atlanta, near present-day Holdrege, and later to Weeping Water, where officials farmed him out with other POWs to work at Kimmel Orchard. Paid about $24 a day for their crew, the men filled the agricultural labor gap left by local workers serving overseas.

“Most German soldiers were happy to work,” recalled Dan Giittinger, Oberdieck’s son-in-law. “They didn’t want to sit idle in camp all day.”

Oberdieck became more than labor. After the war, the Kimmels sponsored his return to America. With his new bride and infant daughter, he came back to the orchard. Richard made him orchard manager, and in 1967, when the Kimmels retired, they sold him the farm.

For decades the families remained entwined. Their houses stood only a few hundred yards apart; holidays were shared across tables filled with apples and pies. “The Kimmels basically became like family,” Giittinger said. “We saw each other nearly every day.”

When Oberdieck retired in 1995, his daughter Rickie and her husband Dan took over. They later sold the property to the Kimmel Foundation, ensuring its future.

Richard and Laurine lived long enough to see their orchard thrive again. She died in 1993 at 92; he followed three years later at 98. Before his death, Richard told his advisor one thing: “Don’t let anything happen to the orchard.”

That promise continued when the Kimmel Charitable Foundation bought the orchard from the Giittingers and ran it until 2012. Since then, the Kimmel Orchard and Vineyard Educational Foundation has carried on its role as a community treasure. Dan Giittinger still drives the tractor for hayrack rides, famillies waving from the same rows their grandparents once picked decades ago.

The orchard has also become a hub for education. In 2005, the foundation partnered with the University of Nebraska-Lincoln to open the Kimmel Education and Research Center, which houses classrooms, labs and food processing space. Programs range from sustainable agriculture and pollinator science to agritourism and precision farming. Faculty and students use the orchard as a living laboratory, while youth programs introduce high schoolers to agricultural careers.

In the early 2000s, the orchard expanded into viticulture, planting hardy grapes like Edelweiss and Frontenac alongside the apples. The harvest supports juice and small-batch wines, including both grape vintages and fruit blends such as apple and cherry. Visitors can sample these in the Apple Barn’s tasting room, but apples remain the orchard’s centerpiece crop. The vineyard adds variety for guests and supports UNL’s research on specialty crops.

Kimmel has also become a leader in pollinator research. In partnership with UNL’s Bee Lab, the orchard maintains apiaries, native plantings and pollinator gardens that support endangered bumblebees and monarch butterflies. Honey harvested on site helps fund research and education programs, while visitors learn through workshops and a family-friendly Pollinator Playground.

Even as it embraces research and new crops, the orchard has kept its character. “We really try to keep it more traditional and historic,” said Len Weyeneth, Kimmel Orchard & Vineyard Educational Foundation president. “The Kimmels were private, hardworking folks passionate about agriculture. Anything too fancy just wouldn’t be in keeping with their spirit.”

This year’s centennial celebrates both tradition and renewal. Events culminate in December with a German Christmas Market – a nod to the Kimmels’ heritage and to the POWs who once worked these rows.

Today visitors stroll through rows of peaches, pears, berries, grapes and apples. Children lick cider from their lips. Couples share pie warm from the oven. On autumn weekends, hayrack rides circle nonstop.

From the old sun porch on the farmhouse bluff, the Kimmels once looked down on the bustle of harvest. Laurine filled those walls with her paintings, ordinary scenes transformed by her eye. Richard watched with a banker’s pragmatism, measuring the yield. Together they tended the orchard as they had their marriage – one part practical, one part artistic, both rooted in Nebraska soil. Weyeneth often thinks of them still. “I imagine them watching the orchard full of families,” he said. “I can’t help but believe they would be thrilled.”