The region of present-day Red Cloud was intermittently occupied and used as hunting grounds by the Pawnees until 1833.

In that year, a treaty was signed in which the Pawnees surrendered their lands south of the Platte River.

According to George Hyde, it is likely that the Pawnees did not realize that they were thereby giving up their lands, and that they were led to believe that they were only granting the Delawares and other relocated tribes permission to hunt in the area.

In that year, Silas Garber and other settlers filed claims along Crooked Creek, just east of the present-day city.

[6][7] The author Willa Cather lived in Red Cloud with her family for seven years, starting in 1883 at age nine, and later visited often.

[8] She used the town as inspiration for several in her novels, including Black Hawk in My Ántonia.

[9] Early articles by Cather were published in the city's first newspaper, The Red Cloud Chief.

[9] According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 1.02 square miles (2.64 km2), all land.

[15] The city owns and operates a swimming pool in its park,[16] and it maintains a nine-hole golf course that is claimed to be the third-best such course in the state.