There are only a handful of states where the capital city is also home to the state university. Typically way back when a deal was brokered to split the two prizes among competing towns. Wisconsin, Texas, South Carolina are members of the capital-university club but Lincoln may be the unlikeliest member of that exclusive fraternity.
When it was selected as the capital by a three-man commission in 1867 the village was called Lancaster (for evoking memories of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania among early settlers) and counted a total of 30 inhabitants. Nebraskans did not flock to the newly renamed Lincoln because many doubted it would stay the capital for long. State documents and office furnishings were spirited out of the territorial capital of Omaha in covered wagons in the dead of night to prevent feisty Omahans from stopping the transfer of the government to an unknown outpost in the salt flats and marshes away from the Missouri River.
In that climate of uncertainty the Legislature got down to work. One of the first bills passed established the University of Nebraska in Lincoln and the cornerstone for the first building, University Hall, was laid in the fall of 1869. In a matter of months the town had evolved from a place where settlers struggled to pull a living from the saline wetlands to a city on the come with its course set as a government and education center.
Along the way the economy of Lincoln tilted from an agrarian town to that of a diverse metropolitan city - the population was 50,000 by 1900, 100,000 by 1950 and 225,000 by the year 2000. The streetscape of Lincoln has shifted with the times with new buildings replacing old ones at a regular pace but there remain souvenirs from bygone eras to discover. Before we descend into downtown, however, our walking tour will begin in the shadow of a building that caused the American Institute of Architects to gush that it was the “Fourth Architectural Wonder of the World”...
“Thanks for coming, don’t let the buffalo skins hit you on the behind on your way out. And to remember you, we’ll name the place after you.” It took 26 separate treaties before the United States government was able to displace the Omaha Indians and their fellow tribes from this land. All the while eager settlers across the Missouri River in Council Bluffs were eyeing choice lots - and sometimes prematurely staking illegal claims - in the rolling hills on the west bank. Especially those plagued by the regular flooding of the river.
Finally in 1854 Logan Fontenelle, a chief of the Omaha Tribe, wrapped up the negotiations to cede the land in Indian Territory that would become Nebraska Territory. The town of Omaha was platted immediately and designated the territorial capital. In 1863 Council Bluffs was designated the eastern terminus for the coming Transcontinental River but since the Lone Tree Ferry was still the only way to cross the Missouri River at the time the Union Pacific Railroad began building in Omaha. When the nation was linked by rail in 1869 the town became synonymous with railroading back east. The Union Pacific finally built the first railroad bridge across the river three years later.
The building of the railroads made the loss of the capital to Lincoln with the coming of Nebraska statehood a mere speed bump in the town’s development. A population of 16,000 in 1870 became 140,000 in 1890. The first meat-packing plant opened in the 1870s and in 1883 a feeding station for stock was transformed into the Union Stockyards that attracted four of the country’s five top meat-packers as Omaha became America’s third largest livestock market. Lead from Colorado arrived on the railroads for processing in one of the world’s largest smelters; wheat and corn from the richest farmlands on the planet piled up in the city’s grain elevators and warehouses lined the Missouri River. Nationwide financial turmoil, grasshoppers and drought all tested the town in the 1890s but Omaha was firmly established as the dominant industrial city of the upper Great Plains.
In 1898 Omaha formally announced its emergence from a dusty frontier town by hosting a world’s fair named the Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition. During its four-month run over 2.6 million people, including President William McKinley, arrived in Omaha to marvel at 4,062 exhibits. A century later Omaha had successfully executed the tricky transition from industrial hub to a diversified economy with several Fortune 500 companies headquartered in town.
Omaha has never been shy about swinging the wrecking ball downtown. Buildings from the 19th century are as rare today as the great steam locomotives that once chugged intoincomparable Union Station at the rate of 64 train a day. In 1989 an aggressive urban renewal project demolished all 24 buildings in an old industrial and warehouse area known as the Jobbers Canyon Historic District. It was the biggest loss of a National Register historic district ever executed in the United States. The destruction rallied preservationists and there remain historical frocks in modern Omaha’s architectural closet. To poke around, our walking tour of downtown will begin on Farnam Street, the original main street in Omaha named after Henry Farnam of the Rock Island Railroad. And we will start with at 16th Street where a brick intersection designed in the form of a compass symbolizes the great railroad crossroads of the Great Plains...