🇺🇸 United States · Great Plains
Omaha, the largest city in Nebraska, sits on the banks of the Missouri River, in the heart of the Great Plains. Once the pioneers' gateway to the west and the starting point of the first transcontinental railroad, today it is a prosperous, welcoming city, known above all for its excellent zoo, considered one of the best in the world, and for the lively historic Old Market district, full of restaurants, galleries and life.
For the traveler, Omaha is a surprisingly appealing stop in the middle of the country. The Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium is its great pride, famous for innovative habitats such as the largest indoor rainforest in the world, a desert under a dome and an outstanding aquarium. The Old Market, with its cobbled streets and 19th-century warehouse buildings, has the best food and nightlife. And the city also has good museums and a renovated riverfront along the Missouri.
This guide walks you through the essentials of Omaha with a practical eye: the extraordinary Henry Doorly Zoo, the atmosphere of the Old Market, the museums and the railroad and pioneer heritage, the Missouri riverfront and the link with neighboring Council Bluffs (Iowa), where to eat (Omaha is famous for its steaks) and how to get around a friendly Midwestern city, easy to enjoy in one or two days.
Founded in 1854 on the banks of the Missouri River, Omaha was born as the gateway to the west and prospered when it became the starting point of the Union Pacific, part of the first transcontinental railroad, in the 1860s. The railroad and the enormous stockyards (one of the country's biggest meatpacking centers) drove its growth. Home of the investor Warren Buffett, today it is an important finance, insurance and technology hub, as well as a family destination thanks to its famous zoo. The full story is on our history page.
Read the full history ↓The agricultural heart of the Great Plains: Pawnee, Omaha and Lakota land, a pioneer corridor along the Platte valley, cradle of corn, of cattle and of one of the largest crane migrations on the planet.
Read the history of Nebraska →No exact prices: a scale from $ (budget) to $$$$$ (luxury), with 2-3 options per category.
Origins, formation and what the sources say.
The name says it all: 'Omaha' means, in the language of the nation that carried it first, something like 'those who go against the current'. It is a surprisingly exact definition of the city that would grow centuries later on the banks of the Missouri River: a place that again and again bet against the grain and won. But long before there was a single street, these fertile banks of the Great Plains were already the territory of Native peoples. The Omaha nation —from which the city takes its name— lived here alongside the Pawnee, the Otoe and other peoples: semi-nomadic societies that combined the farming of corn, beans and squash with the seasonal bison hunt, and who organized their lives around the river and the great summer hunts.
In July and August 1804, the Lewis and Clark expedition made its way up the Missouri and camped near the present site of the city, at a spot they named Council Bluff, where they held one of their first formal councils with Otoe and Missouria leaders: it was the expedition's first official meeting with Native peoples, and that is where the name of neighboring Council Bluffs, in Iowa, comes from. Over the following decades, fur traders, missionaries, epidemics and a succession of treaties gradually eroded the territory of the Omaha nation, which in 1854 ceded much of its land to the United States government by treaty, opening the way for the colonization that was about to explode.
Omaha was formally laid out in 1854, the same year the Kansas-Nebraska Act created the Nebraska Territory. Speculators from neighboring Council Bluffs (Iowa) crossed the Missouri and founded the city betting that it would become the territorial capital and a key point in the expansion westward. The bet paid off: Omaha was the capital of the Nebraska Territory between 1855 and 1867.
From its earliest days, the city sold itself as 'the gateway to the west'. Its position on the Missouri made it an embarkation and supply point for the pioneers, miners and settlers heading for the plains, the Rocky Mountains and California. When Nebraska achieved statehood in 1867, the capital moved to Lincoln, but Omaha had already secured a much greater industrial and commercial destiny.
The event that defined Omaha was its selection, in 1863, as the eastern starting point of the Union Pacific Railroad, the eastern half of the first transcontinental railroad in the United States. President Abraham Lincoln fixed the starting point near Omaha, and from there the rails pushed west until they met the Central Pacific at Promontory (Utah) in 1869. Union Pacific's headquarters remain in Omaha to this day.
The railroad turned the city into a hub of transport, industry and processing. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Omaha became one of the country's biggest stockyard and meatpacking centers, rivaling Chicago. The Union Stockyards of South Omaha drew thousands of immigrants —Irish, Germans, Czechs, Poles, Italians and, later, Mexicans— who came to work in the packing plants and gave the city its multicultural, working-class character.
If the railroad was the spark, the stockyards were the engine that made Omaha a great city. In 1883 the Union Stockyards were founded in South Omaha, and within a few decades they had become one of the largest cattle markets and meatpacking centers in the world: for much of the 20th century, Omaha rivaled Chicago for the title of 'meat capital' of the United States, and in 1955 it became the country's biggest meat-processing center. Around the packing plants of giants such as Armour, Swift and Cudahy grew South Omaha, a world apart of smoke, pens and brutally hard work.
That industrial engine drew waves of immigrants who arrived with nothing but the clothes on their backs to work in the plants: Irish, Germans, Czechs and Bohemians, Poles, Italians, Lithuanians, Greeks and, later, Mexicans and Latin Americans. Each community left its mark —churches, mutual aid societies, bakeries, restaurants, whole neighborhoods— and gave Omaha a working-class, Catholic and deeply multicultural character that is still felt in South Omaha, today the heart of the city's vibrant Latino community. The historic Czech colony even left its mark on the food and on neighborhoods such as Little Bohemia.
It was a time of enormous energy but also of brutal tensions: conditions in the packing plants were dangerous, strikes and union organizing set the pulse of South Omaha, and clashes between communities over work erupted into violence more than once. Out of that mixture of sweat, rail and diversity came much of modern Omaha's identity.
The 20th century brought prosperity and tension alike. Omaha lived through hard episodes, such as the race riots of 1919 and the labor struggles in the packing plants. The Great Depression hit hard, but the Second World War revived the economy: B-29 bombers were built near the city and, in 1948, Offutt Air Force Base was established on the outskirts, home of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) during the Cold War, which gave Omaha national military and strategic weight.
In the second half of the century, the decline of the stockyards and the meat industry forced Omaha to reinvent itself. The city diversified its economy toward insurance, finance, telecommunications and technology. It is the headquarters of Berkshire Hathaway, the company of the investor Warren Buffett, 'the Oracle of Omaha', whose presence made the city a household name in the world of global finance.
Contemporary Omaha is a prosperous city in transformation. The old Old Market warehouse district was rescued from decay and is today a vibrant neighborhood of restaurants, galleries and nightlife. The bank of the Missouri River, once industrial and run-down, was regenerated with parks, the renovated Gene Leahy Mall and the iconic Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge, which links Nebraska with Iowa.
Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium, opened in its modern form in the 1960s and famous for its record-breaking habitats, became a world-class attraction. The city also hosts baseball's College World Series every summer, a solid art and music scene (birthplace of the Saddle Creek label and of indie bands), and a growing Latino and immigrant community that renews its tradition of mixing. From pioneers' gateway to financial and cultural center of the Midwest, Omaha keeps looking, like its name, against the current.