ALFRED D. JONES.
As an adjunct to the ferry, the company staked out a claim adjacent to its west landing directly opposite Council Bluffs, and employed Alfred D. Jones, a young civil engineer, to lay out a town site which on pretentious paper was invested, without particular thought or design, with the name Omaha, from the tribe of Indians that was wont to camp upon the creek brushing its north boundary. The survey was conducted in June and July of 1854, and the adoption of the name was doubtless suggested by the fact that a month or more before the representative in Congress for the State of Iowa had prevailed upon the Post-Office Department to issue a commission to Mr. Jones as postmaster at Omaha City, which at that time must have existed solely in his prolific imagination. Postmaster Jones carrying the post-office around with him in his hat is a reminiscence founded on actual fact and not in fancy.
That the ideas of these early pioneers were of the expansible variety is readily gathered from the character of the plat prepared to mark the coming town site as the seat of a great and mighty city. On the broad plateau overlooking the river, building lots were staked out 66 by 132 feet, divided by streets 100 feet wide and alleys of 20 feet. There were 320 blocks in all, each comprising eight lots forming squares of 264 feet. Two squares were reserved, one in the business centre 264 by 280 feet, and the other on the top of the most conspicuous hill 600 feet square, the latter designated as Capitol Square and the hill as Capitol Hill, and a broad avenue 120 feet wide leading to it as Capitol Avenue—all in foreordained honor of the magnificent structure to be erected when the newly born city should have achieved the distinction of the capital of Nebraska Territory. Omaha City was not organized as an incorporated municipality until 1857.
Looking closer into the history and geography of the spot where now run the busy streets of Nebraska's metropolis, lined with substantial business blocks and attractive residences, precisely as platted in that lonely summer of 1854, the conclusion is forced that it was not mere fortuitous chance that built a wonder city upon an empty ferry landing. The location was by nature destined to be a turning point on the great central transcontinental highway bridging the divide between the Atlantic and the Pacific.
WILLIAM. P. SNOWDEN, OMAHA'S FIRST WHITE SETTLER.
Lewis and Clark, who worked their way to Oregon up the Missouri Valley, were the first white men to leave a record of their visit. From their journal is taken the following extract noting their arrival and detention at the mouth of the Platte in July, 1804, whence they continued northward and passed over the ground now included in the city:
"July 27.—Having completed the object of our stay, we set sail with a pleasant breeze for the northwest. The two horses swam over to the southern [western] shore, along which we went, passing by an island, at three and a half miles, formed by a pond, fed by springs; three miles further is a large sand island in the middle of the river, the land on the south [west] being high and covered with timber; that on the north [east] a prairie. At ten and a half miles from our encampment, we saw and examined a curious collection of graves or mounds, on the south [west] side of the river. Not far from a low piece of land and a pond, is a tract of about two hundred acres in extent, which is covered with mounds of different heights, shapes and sizes; some of sand, and some of both earth and sand; the largest being near the river. These mounds indicate the position of the ancient village of the Ottoes, before they retired to the protection of the Pawnees. After making fifteen miles, we camped on the south [east] on the bank of a high, handsome prairie, with lofty cottonwood in groves, near the river."[14]
That the mounds referred to constituted the ancient Indian burial ground, remnants of which long remained in the lower part of the town as objects of curiosity to inquisitive observers, has been established to the satisfaction of historical critics, as also that the council held by Lewis and Clark with the Indians, from