1. Omaha 1880s The Growing City “Streets and Sewers”

2. Getting around in Omaha  Streets were of mud and dirt, during rainy & snow season horses could not pull streetcars up the hills  The streets had to be paved. First wood was tried, but people would steal the wood and burn it in the winter, bricks were the replacement  Curbs were made from a solid slab of granite  Horse drawn street cars changed to Electric Street cars came to be in the early 1900s

3. The hills are dug down St. Mary Magdalene

4. Paving Stones go to Macadam  In the 1920’s Macadam covers the paving stones  Macadam is a mixture of crushed rock and oil/tar solution

5. Streets in Old Omaha

7. Why so wide the streets?

8. Streets in Old Omaha

9. Omaha and it’s Sewers  Andrew Rosewater is the sewer pioneer of Omaha  He designs a system that pumps clean water in and dirty water out  Walnut Hill Reservoir held 10 million gallons pumped in via pumping stations from north of the City near Florence  Water gravity fed through town and deposited back into the River south of the city.  1890 to 1915

10. Fire Fighting in Old Omaha  1878 Omaha went from volunteer to professional firemen after several were killed.  Fire crews had to pump water from the river to put out fires via hand pumps and long hoses  Cisterns were dug and brick-lined throughout the city to provide water for firefighting  Usually located at street corners, cisterns were easily accessed by firefighters  A city worker’s job was to go around and keep these full The lid for the cistern

11. Cisterns discovered in Omaha  The cisterns were covered up when the city paved  In the 1980’s when Omaha was redoing its’ streets, a backhoe tractor fell into a cistern and the workers did not what it was.  They researched the Platt maps of the city and found that it was a cistern  Eventually, workers went around the city and marked and sealed each cistern up.

12. Last standing fire house in Omaha  Upstream Brewery on 10th and Jackson streets  Roof burned down in 1904 as the firemen were relaxing on the street level  This is a stop on the downtown walking tour South side East side