The village of Gordon was officially organized on November 19, 1885, on a site just a few blocks west of the Lone Willow, a landmark of the Old Kearney Trail. Although free homestead land was the lure that brought settlers to this part of Nebraska in the mid 1880s, the community took shape and prospered largely due to the railroad.

In any frontier community, a breed of men and women tend to develop who might be called "Renaissance people," because their interests and abilities spread effectively in many directions. Many Renaissance people were Gordon's early settlers, but they were only the first of the industrious, creative, spirited citizens who typify the Gordon community. Some have made contributions to society far beyond local boundaries, like Dwight Griswold, Governor of Nebraska, Ambassador to Greece and United States Senator during the 1940s and early 1950s and Val Fitch, a 1940 Gordon High School graduate who received the Noble Prize for Physics in 1980.