Omaha

/oh"meuh haw', -hah'/, n., pl. Omahas, (esp. collectively) Omaha for 2.

1. a city in E Nebraska, on the Missouri River. 311,681.

2. a member of a North American Indian people of northeastern Nebraska.

3. the Siouan language of the Omaha, mutually intelligible with Ponca.

4. Mil. the World War II Allied code name for one of the five D-Day invasion beaches on France's Normandy coast, attacked by American troops.

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City (pop., 2000: 390,007), eastern Nebraska, U.S., on the Missouri River, north of its junction with the Platte River.

The city's name, meaning "upstream people," referred to the Omaha Indians. Omaha was founded in 1854 and incorporated as a city in 1857. In 1863 it became the starting point for the Union Pacific Railroad Co.'s first transcontinental railroad and soon grew into a centre of trade and industry. The largest city in the state, it is a major livestock and grain market, as well as a railroad, meat-packing, and insurance centre. It is home to the University of Nebraska and the Joslyn Art Museum.

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▪ city, Nebraska, United States

Introduction

 city, seat (1855) of Douglas county, eastern Nebraska, U.S. It is situated on the west bank of the Missouri River opposite Council Bluffs, Iowa. Omaha is Nebraska's biggest city and a regional manufacturing, transportation, trade, and service hub. From the 1890s through the mid-20th century Omaha emerged as one of the top livestock markets in the world and a leader in the meat-processing industry. Founded in 1854, it soon became known as a “gateway to the West.” Omaha's location near the juncture of the Platte (Platte River) and Missouri rivers provides access to the wide, flat valley of the Platte, which has become a vital transportation artery. The city derives its name from the Omaha Indian word meaning “upstream people.” Inc. town, 1854; city, 1857. Area city, 115 square miles (298 square km). Pop. (2000) city, 390,007; Omaha–Council Bluffs MSA, 767,041; (2006 est.) city, 419,545; (2007 est.) Omaha–Council Bluffs MSA, 829,890.

History

      Omaha was founded in 1854 in an area that had been visited by Meriwether Lewis (Lewis, Meriwether) and William Clark (Clark, William) in 1804 on their exploratory journey (Lewis and Clark Expedition) to the Pacific coast and where the pioneer fur trader Manuel Lisa (Lisa, Manuel) established a trading post during the War of 1812 (1812, War of). Westward-bound Mormons spent the winter of 1846–47 there at an encampment that they named Winter Quarters, later called Florence, which was subsequently annexed by Omaha. From 1847 to 1848 Winter Quarters witnessed the beginning of the Mormon migration to what became the state of Utah, but because the west side of the Missouri River was closed to permanent “white” settlement, the Mormons moved the point for subsequent departures to the nearby community of Kanesville, Iowa (renamed Council Bluffs in 1853).

      By the time the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854 opened the area to settlement, Kanesville had become the largely non-Mormon community of Council Bluffs, where a group of entrepreneurs created a company for developing Omaha City, Nebraska Territory. The promoters wanted the capital of the newly created territory to be located directly across the Missouri River, in part at least to influence the builders of the then-projected transcontinental railroad to lay their tracks through or near the new city. Omaha's backers won the territorial capital for their town, despite the aspirations of Bellevue, a long-established trading post, mission, and Native American agency just south of Omaha.

      St. Louis-based steamboats carrying passengers and cargo up the Missouri River linked Omaha to the East. By the 1860s stage lines extended in various directions from the city. Freight wagon trains to Denver and other western points contributed to Omaha's emerging stature as a transportation and supply centre. In 1863 Pres. Abraham Lincoln (Lincoln, Abraham) essentially designated Omaha–Council Bluffs the eastern terminus of the first transcontinental railroad, which, when completed in 1869, placed Omaha at the eastern end of the country's first rail link to the West and enhanced its stature as an emerging urban centre. Incorporated as a city in 1857, Omaha had 1,883 residents by the eve of the American Civil War. By 1870 the frontier community had a population of 16,083, a figure that nearly doubled a decade later.

      Although Omaha lost its capital status to Lincoln after Nebraska entered the union in 1867, during the next two decades more railroads were built through the city. The bridging of the Missouri River in 1872 helped integrate Omaha–Council Bluffs into a national rail network. Smelting, wholesaling, and other enterprises diversified the economy. The establishment of the Union Stock Yards in 1884 soon brought major meat packers to the suburban community of South Omaha, linking the urban area to a vast rural hinterland. In 1888 a traffic bridge linked Omaha and Council Bluffs, and by 1889 electric streetcar service had been established in and between both cities, further integrating the metropolitan area that was developing on both sides of the Missouri River.

      In the 1880s Omaha's population tripled, but a blizzard in 1888, followed by a succession of drought years and a national depression, halted population growth. Hopes lifted, though, when Omaha was selected as the site to host the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition of 1898, an event that was meant to revive the region's economy and alleviate the financial panic of the 1890s. The exposition attracted more than two million people to the city from June to September. Moreover, in August 1898 an Indian congress—uniting hundreds of Native Americans from more than 30 tribes—was also held in Omaha. In the late 1890s, prosperity had returned to Omaha, and by the turn of the century Omaha had a population of about 100,000, while South Omaha had about 26,000 residents. During 1915–17 several suburban communities, including South Omaha, were annexed.

      Greater Omaha's broad-based economy attracted settlers from older parts of the United States as well as numerous immigrants from Europe, notably from Bohemia, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Poland, and Scandinavia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many African Americans from the South also had migrated to the Omaha area. This new diversity caused occasional conflicts. An African American man was lynched (lynching) in 1891, and a riot in 1909 drove South Omaha's small Greek community from the city. Between 1910 and 1920 the African American population in Omaha doubled. Ethnic tensions, mainly between blacks and whites, escalated in Omaha, as they did throughout the country, especially in the early peacetime years after World War I. This conflict resulted in the lynching of another African American, William Brown, by white rioters in 1919 in front of the Douglas County Courthouse.

      The Great Depression of the 1930s brought hardship to Omaha. Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt (Roosevelt, Franklin D.)'s New Deal provided relief to the city and funded key public projects. For years a local business group had worked to thwart labour unions, and violence accompanied a streetcar strike in 1935. Although the strike failed, the Wagner Act (National Labour Relations Act) of that year heralded federal support for collective bargaining.

      The approach of World War II brought the construction of the Glenn L. Martin Company aircraft assembly plant at Fort Crook (now Offutt Air Force Base), adjacent to the small town of Bellevue, on Omaha's southern outskirts. Aside from boosting the local economy, the plant brought rapid growth to Bellevue. The plant closed in 1945, but in 1948 the advent of the Cold War led to the designation of the plant site as the Strategic Air Command (now U.S. Strategic Command) headquarters. The military presence at the base enhanced the economy of the Omaha area and boosted residential growth in the suburban Sarpy county communities of Gretna, La Vista, and Papillion, all of which lie southwest of Omaha.

      Like many U.S. cities, Omaha in the 1950s and '60s witnessed a strong civil rights movement as African American citizens sought to end discrimination in housing and employment. Poverty and growing militancy among young people, as well as strained police-community relations, contributed to outbreaks of violence. Overt tensions eased in the wake of job programs, civil rights laws, and growing sensitivity among white residents. A federal court ruling that de facto racial segregation prevailed in the Omaha Public Schools led to the busing of students away from neighbourhood schools beginning in 1976 as a means of achieving integration. Mandatory school busing officially ended in 1999 with no consensus as to its value. The Omaha Public School District continued its efforts to improve inner-city education.

      By the 1950s Omaha had long been a major food-processing centre. In fact, Omaha surpassed Chicago as the world's top livestock market in 1955. From the 1960s to the early '70s, plant obsolescence, labour costs, and pollution problems caused an exodus of major packers from the city. The stockyards closed in 1999, but meatpacking remained a significant part of the local economy; the steak survived as an Omaha icon, and the city remained a food-processing innovator. In the meantime, diversity in the local economy, notably the development of information technology enterprises, established the basis for strong economic growth in the 1990s and early 21st century.

      By the late 20th century the city's Hispanic population had begun to grow rapidly. People of European ancestry comprised about four-fifths of Omaha's population. African Americans made up more than one-tenth of the population, and the remainder were mostly Hispanics and, to a lesser extent, Asians and Pacific Islanders, as well as immigrants from Africa and the Middle East.

The contemporary city

      By the early 21st century, more than half of all the jobs in Omaha were in the service sector. Many large corporations, including the major American insurer Mutual of Omaha Companies, are headquartered in the city. The city is also the home of investor and philanthropist Warren Buffett (Buffett, Warren Edward), the “Oracle of Omaha,” whose firm, Berkshire Hathaway Inc., is a Fortune 500 company. Despite a sharp decline in the local meatpacking industry, food processing remains an important source of employment, and other agriculture-related activities are important to the economy of the metropolitan area. Among the other industries in Greater Omaha are metal fabricating, steel casting, and the manufacture of pipes, farm machinery, truck bodies, and motion-picture projection equipment.

      Omaha continues to be one of the largest railroad centres in the United States; it is home to the Union Pacific Railroad Company, which grew vastly through mergers in the 1980s and '90s. The city is a major trucking destination, and Eppley Airfield has grown rapidly in freight and passenger volume.

      Omaha's educational institutions include the University of Nebraska (Nebraska, University of) at Omaha (1908), Creighton University (Roman Catholic; 1878), the University of Nebraska Medical Center (1881), the all-women's College of St. Mary (1923), Grace University (1943), and Metropolitan Community College (1974).

      The Omaha Community Playhouse, the Omaha Theatre for Young People, and Opera Omaha are major centres for the performing arts, as is Holland Performing Arts Center, where the Omaha Symphony plays. The Joslyn Art Museum (1931) houses a collection of American and European 19th- and 20th-century works, as well as Native American artwork. Dating from the same period, the former Union Station now houses the Durham Western Heritage Museum. The Great Plains Black Museum in Omaha is one of the country's largest centres of African American culture and history. A museum dedicated to Latino history and culture opened in Omaha in 1993. In the early 2000s, based on the success of independent label Saddle Creek Records and its flagship band Bright Eyes (fronted by singer-songwriter Conor Oberst), Omaha emerged as an important centre of alternative rock music. Over the years many Omaha natives have made their mark as performers, including actors Marlon Brando (Brando, Marlon, Jr.), Henry Fonda (Fonda, Henry), and Fred Astaire (Astaire, Fred).

 Notable sites include the historic Old Market, the city's arts and entertainment district; the Gene Leahy Mall, a long, landscaped park in downtown Omaha; the Heartland of America Fountain; and the nationally prominent Henry Doorly Zoo. The Leahy Mall and the fountain were part of a massive modernization project of the downtown and the riverfront that began in the 1970s. Changes in the riverfront landscape since 2002 include the addition of the Qwest Center, a convention hall and arena; a river walk; a sculpture plaza; the U.S. National Parks regional headquarters building; a campus of the Gallup Organization; and new condominiums. For many years civic leaders had sought a symbol for modern Omaha, and the opening in 2008 of the Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge, a serpentine suspension structure linking Omaha to Council Bluffs, may have provided that distinguishing landmark.

      Since 1950 the city has hosted the College World Series, the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Division I baseball championship, which is played in Rosenblatt Stadium, otherwise the home of Omaha's minor league franchise. Recreational areas in the Omaha area include Fontenelle Forest, the largest unbroken native forest in the state, to the south, and De Soto National Wildlife Refuge to the north. Boys Town, a village for homeless children, once on the western outskirts of Omaha, is now surrounded by urban development.

Harl Adams Dalstrom

▪ people

 North American Indian people of the Dhegiha branch of the Siouan (Siouan languages) language stock. It is thought that Dhegiha speakers, which include the Osage, Ponca, Kansa, and Quapaw as well as the Omaha, migrated westward from the Atlantic coast at some point in prehistory and that their early settlements were in the present U.S. states of Virginia and the Carolinas. After a time they moved to the Ozark Plateau and the prairies of what is now western Missouri. There the five tribes separated, with the Omaha and the Ponca moving north to present-day Minnesota, where they lived until the late 17th century. At that time the two tribes were driven farther west by the migrating Dakota Sioux. The Omaha and Ponca separated in present-day South Dakota, with the former moving on to Bow Creek in present-day Nebraska. In 1854, under the pressure of encroaching settlers, the Omaha sold most of their land to the U.S. government. In 1882 the government allotted land in Nebraska that prevented the removal of the tribe to Oklahoma; somewhat later they received U.S. citizenship.

 As with many other Plains Indian tribes, the traditional Omaha economy combined corn (maize) agriculture with hunting and gathering. In spring and autumn the people lived in permanent villages of dome-shaped earth lodges, moving into portable tepees for the hunting seasons. Omaha social organization was elaborate, with a class system of chiefs, priests, physicians, and commoners. Rank was inherited through the male line, although individuals could raise their status by distributing horses and blankets or providing feasts.

      Traditional Omaha kinship was organized into 10 clans (clan) within two larger groups, representing earth and sky. Earth clans had charge of ceremonies concerning war and food supply, while the ceremonies overseen by the sky clans were designed to secure supernatural aid. When the entire tribe camped together during the summer bison hunt or on migrations, tepees were arranged in a large circle symbolizing the tribal organization. The Omaha, like many other Plains peoples, awarded special insignia for such daring war exploits as touching an enemy in battle, touching a dead enemy surrounded by his tribesmen, and removing a trained horse from the enemy's camp. Killing the enemy was considered a lesser exploit.

      Early 21st-century population estimates indicated more than 5,000 individuals of Omaha descent.

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