Gateway to the West.
“Omaha
Oh somewhere in middle America
Get right to the heart of matters
Oh it’s the heart that matters more
I think you’d better turn your ticket in
And get your money back at the door
Omaha!
Say Omaha on a Sunday morning
I’m coming home today”
(From “Omaha”, Counting Crows – 1993)
Omaha was a very pleasant surprise. There was much to like.
The Everly Brothers sang about the city, too. So have Waylon Jennings, Bob Seger and many others.
It’s called the “Gateway to the West”. The Omaha Stockyards were once the largest in the world. The first Transcontinental Railroad started out in Omaha/Council Bluffs connecting Omaha with the Pacific coast at the Oakland Long Wharf on the San Francisco Bay. It was President Abraham Lincoln who signed the Pacific Railway Act of 1862 and brought the Transcontinental Railroad to life.
Warren Buffett lives there (the “Oracle of Omaha”), and Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is based there. Every year Berkshire Hathaway shareholders gather in Omaha for the annual meeting, the “Woodstock for Capitalists.” I did not make it to Gorat’s Steakhouse, one of Buffett’s favorite steakhouses. I don’t drink Cherry Coke either (as he does), but I do like See’s Candy, a Berkshire Hathaway company.
The largest railroad operator in the US, Union Pacific Corporation, is also based in Omaha. So is the huge insurer, Mutual of Omaha. (Who remembers Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom TV show in the 60s – hosted by the one and only Marlin Perkins? I think I am dating myself. “Just as the mother lion protects her cubs, you can protect your children with an insurance policy from Mutual of Omaha…”)
I stayed a couple of nights. There’s a surprising amount to see and do in the city.
I overnighted in the Old Market Historic District – recommended! It’s a bigger version of what I saw in Lincoln by the old Lincoln Station; Old Market is a great area with lots of historic warehouses, restaurants, covered sidewalks and cobblestoned streets. Loved it! In this set, meet the team at Brickway Brewery & Distillery in the Old Market District. I did a tour and tasting. Great fun. Ryan, a former Marine, showed us around.
The downtown is a little pockmarked like so many other Midwestern cities but does have some fine surviving historic buildings, including the Mutual of Omaha building and some impressive deco. Check out in this set the Rose Theater in the downtown in a 1927 vaudeville palace.
To the west of the downtown are some gorgeous historic districts. It is said that Omaha is a city of neighborhoods. The Dundee–Happy Hollow Historic District (where Warren Buffett lives), the Gold Coast Historic District (which includes the mansion “Joslyn Castle” where the two interior stained glass windows are), Bemis Park and many more. In this set one sees only a glimpse of the historic homes in Omaha. Very impressive – block after block after block.
These are the good bits of Omaha in this set, however; in the central area there are also some blighted and seemingly forgotten older neighborhoods. The center city is definitely a mixed bag. North Omaha is very challenged.
The Malcolm X House Site is located in North Omaha – this is where he first lived with his family. His father was a Christian minister and active in the local community
In this set also:
– on the way to Omaha from Lincoln, a surviving three-mile-long (!) section of the original red brick Lincoln Highway just outside of Elkhorn (from the 1920s). That’s a long stretch – my little car 12-year old sports car rattled like something else, and I welcomed the asphalt when it reappeared.
-on the outskirts of the city a number of pictures I took at Boys Town – there are about ten photos from my stop there. Yes, the one in the 1938 movie with Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney. It’s boys and girls now. I arrived on a Sunday afternoon, and it was quiet. There’s a great welcome center and museum. It is a huge campus.
(Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney in a scene from the film.)
– the excellent Joslyn Art Museum (we’ll see more in the upcoming deco post)
– a beauty of an old school diner in the Old Market area
– the Cathedral of Saint Cecilia with its beautiful stained glass windows. There are over 50 of them. This is a good link if you are interested.
– the General George Crook House Museum at the former Fort Omaha – like so many other places like this I was the only visitor. People don’t seem to go to places like that so much these days. It was excellent.
-restored Omaha Union Station, said to be one of the finest examples of deco architecture in the Midwest, now the Durham Museum (see next post as to this one, too).
-finally, just a few of the many bridges across the Missouri to Iowa: the Mormon Bridge (which is actually two cantilever bridges) connecting I-680 from Florence in the north end of Omaha with Pottawattamie County, IA, 1952; the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge, a footbridge between Omaha and Council Bluffs, IA, opened in 2008; and north of Omaha, the Blair Bridge a/k/a Abraham Lincoln Memorial Bridge carrying the Lincoln Highway (U.S. Route 30) over the river near Blair, NE, originally built 1928-29, and replaced 1991, with the Union Pacific’s Blair Rail Bridge parallel to it in the foreground, 1924. Blair was my last stop in Nebraska before heading over to Iowa and continuing eastward.
There was only so much I could squeeze in during the couple of days I was there. There were a surprising number of things to do and see. Great food (and drink), too. Omaha! Who knew?
