Omaha: An Office profile;

              OMAHA
An All-American City
In 1867, the year that Nebraska was
admitted to the Union, the state legis­lature
designed a state seal depicting a
blacksmith, fields of grain, a steam­boat
and a train. More than a century
later these representations of industry,
agriculture and transportation are still
appropriate symbols for the state and
for its largest city, Omaha, which is lo­cated
in eastern Nebraska on the west
bank of the Missouri River.
Eastern Nebraska can trace its ag­ricultural
heritage back to the
eighteenth century when tribes of
Plains Indians — the Otoe, Omaha,
Ponca and Pawnee — settled in vil­lages
and cultivated crops along the
Platte and Missouri Rivers. In the
1840s Mormons in search of religious
freedom and prospectors in search of
gold traveled the trails near Omaha in
their westward journeys to Utah and
California. The Missouri River was
fast becoming an important shipping
artery.
The Kansas-Nebraska Act opened
lands west of the Missouri, previously
reserved for Indians, to settlement in
1854. Pioneers were further encour­aged
to establish their homes in east­ern
Nebraska by the passage of the
Homestead Act in 1863, which al­lowed
them to claim 160 acres of free
land in the territory. In 1865, the
Union Pacific Railroad began con­struction
that would eventually link
the Atlantic to the Pacific by rail.
Omaha was the jumping-off place for
the railroad, which stretched across
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Raising livestock is a key factor in the
Nebraska economy. Observing the different
breeds of cattle on a farm managed by
Farmers National Company are (r. to I.)
H&S partner Clay Chandler, farm manager
Don Furasek, FNC president Wes Furrer,
H&S partner Ernie Kenyon and farmer
Gordon Lutz-
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