Its manufactures are constantly increasing. The Union Pacific Machine Shops alone employ about seven hundred men. Omaha has a linseed oil mill which turns out yearly millions of oil cakes and thousands of gallons of oil. One of the city's distilleries is so extensive that it pays the United States Government a tax of $300,000 per year.
The educational advantages of this metropolis are unsurpassed by any city of its size in the West. It has eleven fine ward school buildings and one high school. The latter occupies the former site of the old territorial capitol. It is a fine, large building, erected in 1872, at a cost of $250,000. Its spire is three hundred and ninety feet above the Missouri River, and its cupola commands a view embracing many miles of river scenery.
Creighton College is a Jesuit institution, endowed by Mrs. Edward Creighton to the amount of about $155,000. It will accommodate four hundred and eighty pupils and opens its hospitable doors to all students, irrespective of creed or race.
A four-story stone Post Office stands on the corner of Dodge and Fifteenth streets. That building, together with the furniture which it contains, is alleged to have cost $450,000; and Omaha people claim that it is one of the handsomest government buildings in all the land.
By the way, self-respect, humble pride, an appreciation, a love and admiration of every good thing the "Gate City" contains, is a characteristic of all honest, true-hearted Omaha men—God bless them! They are even proud of their jail, which is universally conceded to be the handsomest and strongest penal institution in the West.
Omaha is headquarters for a military division known as the Department of the Platte. A great part of the financial supremacy of the city is due to the heavy purchase and distribution of military supplies. The General Government, some time since, acquired eighty-two and a half acres of land, two miles north of Omaha, christened it Fort Omaha, and spent over $1,000,000 in erecting military buildings upon it.
Statistics change rapidly in this Gate to progress and improvement. In the year 1877, improvements were added to the city amounting to about $800,000; in 1878, amounting to $1,000,000, and in 1879, to about $1,222,000.
Such was the Omaha which I rode into. How thought-compelling a place it was! How typical of the push, vigor, enterprise and pluck which have proved so masterful in the development of our once "Wild West." It is with pleasure that the mind runs over its history.
The first knowledge we have of the region in which Omaha is situated, comes to us, like many another crumb of information, from Father Marquette. He visited that tract in 1673, explored it and mapped out the principal streams. At that time the region was claimed by Spain, and formed a part of the great Province of Louisiana. It finally became a French possession, and was sold by that nation to the United States in the year 1800, for $1,500,000.
On the twenty-seventh of July, 1804, Messrs. Lewis and Clark came up the Missouri, and camped on the Omaha plateau, where the waters of the river then covered what is now the foot of Farnam street, and that part of the city where the Union Pacific Machine Shops are now located, also the smelting works, warehouses, distillery, extensive coal and lumber yards, and where numerous railroad tracks form a suggestive network.