Tekamah, the county seat of Burt County, was laid out on October 7, 1854, by a group of settlers led by Benjamin R. Folsom, who chose the site for its abundant water, timber, stone, and the rich soil of the Missouri River Valley. The place was first named Tehama after a California locality where one of the party had found gold, and the spelling later changed to Tekama and finally Tekamah. Permanent settlers arrived in the spring of 1855, a year of drought and an unusually severe winter. Growth slowed during the nationwide financial panic of 1857, when the Bank of Tekamah was among several wildcat banks in Nebraska Territory that failed after issuing large quantities of unsecured paper currency. Tekamah's future prosperity rested on agricultural development. Before white settlement, the area was the domain of the Omaha and Ponca Indians. Lewis and Clark passed here in 1804, and Burt County, one of the original eight counties created by the territorial legislature in 1855, was named for Francis Burt, who died two days after taking office as Nebraska's first territorial governor.