Omaha

Farm Crop Processing Corporation's alcohol plant, Fourth & Jones streets, Omaha. NSHS RG1963-14

Even before Nebraska had the Husker football team, it had Omaha “foot ball” clubs that played what we now call soccer. The game’s growth in Omaha was similar to its growth in the rest of the United States: introduced by immigrants and spread by word of mouth. In the Spring issue of Nebraska History, author Bruce Gerhardt explores the earliest appearances of this old game in a young state.

Here's an oddball story for your day. In 1934, a thirty-year-old farmer from South Dakota named John Sourbier wrote the mayor of Omaha with a unique request. "Maybe you can help me out," the farmer wrote. "I can make some nice girl a good husband and home, [but] the girls around here are not the kind like. So let me hear from you, and hoping you can help me."

Did you ever wish you could step into a time machine and return to 1914, just over one hundred years ago, to join the celebration of Thanksgiving?

More than 600 Mormon pioneers died in their Nebraska encampment during the winters of 1846-47 and 1847-48. The camp, called Winter Quarters, is the site of a monument in the Florence neighborhood of Omaha, commemorating their deaths through the sculpture of Avard T. Fairbanks. In the Fall 2014 issue of Nebraska History, you can read about the unfortunate camp and the efforts to remember what happened there. Nebraska was only one stop along the way for the travelers.

During the winters of 1846-47 and 1847-48, more than six hundred members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints died in their encampment, called Winter Quarters, on the banks of the Missouri River near Omaha’s present-day Florence neighborhood. These men, women, and children were among the large group of church members immigrating westward to the valley of the Great Salt Lake under the leadership of Brigham Young.