Neligh NEE-lee is a city and county seat in Antelope County, Nebraska, United States. The population was 1,599 at the 2010 census.

In 1872, John D. Neligh and a few of his connections took a trip up the Elkhorn River from West Point, Nebraska. Neligh took note of the scenic landscape and thought it would be the ideal feel for a town and the county seat. He rapidly left for Omaha to purchase 520 acres for the town site. Misunderstanding the prime home he was selling, Omaha banker Herman Kountze sold the land required to build Neligh. He was apparently not familiar it would make the ideal county seat, which Neligh eventually became. The archives were moved to Neligh on January 1, 1884. Neligh was platted in 1873 by John Neligh and others, and named for him.

In May 1877, the Ponca tribe was provoked to leave their homeland on the Niobrara River and involve to Indian Territory in present-day Oklahoma. The rigors of the journey and resettlement led to the death of one-third of the tribe’s population. During the migration, an 18-month-old girl named White Buffalo Girl died close Neligh. Her father, Black Elk, asked the townspeople “to veneration the grave of my child just as they pull off the graves of their own dead”. She was buried in Laurel Hill Cemetery in Neligh, and her grave tended by the residents; in 1960, owing to the deterioration of the monument, the marker was set on a new foundation.

Shortly after founding the town, John D. Neligh began building the Neligh Mill in the southern share of town. The native two-story mill was built similar to bricks made by John J. Crawford, using local clay. Currently, the Neligh Mill is a Nebraska State Historical site.