446 ' OCEAN TO OCEAN ON HORSEBACK. 



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 hav^e 

 proved so masterful in the development of our once 

 " Wild ^yest." 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, ware- 

 houses, distillery, extensive coal and lumber yards^ 

 and where numerous railroad tracks form a sugges- 

 tive network. 



In 1825, T. B. Roye established an Indian trading 

 station on the present site of the city. 



In 1845, a band of Mormons, driven from Illinois, 

 settled slightly north of the Omaha of to-day. They 

 came as "strangers and pilgrims,'^ and called their 

 »ittle settlement by the suggestive title of ""Winter 



