Chappell's past includes Buffalo as Chappell School's mascot until 2005; UNL Husker Volleyball player Kim Behrends, who played from 1997 to 2000; Chappell's beginnings as a railroad stop and its original railroad depot; the former town motto, "Where Wheat is King," represented by heads of wheat; the original Farmers Elevator, founded in 1914; the site southeast of Chappell where a World War II B-24J bomber crashed on June 7, 1944; and Thomas D. Buckley, born in December 1897 and died in June 1979, whose trust began in June 1981 and donated the plaza murals.