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Please add profiles of those who were born, lived or died in Lincoln, Lancaster County, Nebraska.
It is not to be confused with Lincoln County.
Lincoln is the county seat of Lancaster County and is the state capital.
Official Website
History
Prior to the expansion westward of settlers, the prairie was covered with buffalo grass. Plains Indians, descendants of indigenous peoples who occupied the area for thousands of years, lived in and hunted along Salt Creek. The Pawnee, which included four tribes, lived in villages along the Platte River. The Great Sioux Nation, including the Ihanktowan-Ihanktowana and the Lakota, located to the north and west, used Nebraska as a hunting and skirmish ground, although they did not have any long-term settlements in the state. An occasional buffalo could still be seen in the plat of Lincoln in the 1860s.
Lincoln was founded in 1856 as the village of Lancaster and became the county seat of the newly created Lancaster County in 1859. The village was sited on the east bank of Salt Creek. The first settlers were attracted to the area due to the abundance of salt. Once J. Sterling Morton developed his salt mines in Kansas, salt in the village was no longer a viable commodity. A caucus was formed and the committee selected the village of Lancaster to be the county seat. The county was named Lancaster. After the passage of the 1862 Homestead Act, homesteaders began to inhabit the area. The first plat was dated August 6, 1864.
Nebraska was granted statehood on March 1, 1867. The capital of the Nebraska Territory had been Omaha since the creation of the territory in 1854; however, most of the territory's population lived south of the Platte River. After much of the territory south of the Platte River considered annexation to Kansas, the territorial legislature voted to locate the capital city south of the river and as far west as possible. Prior to the vote to remove the capital city from Omaha, a last ditch effort by Omaha Senator J. N. H. Patrick attempted to derail the move by having the future capital city named after recently assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. Many of the people south of the Platte River had been sympathetic to the Confederate cause in the recently concluded Civil War. It was assumed that senators south of the river would not vote to pass the measure if the future capital was named after the former president. In the end, the motion to name the future capital city Lincoln was ineffective in blocking the measure and the vote to change the capital's location south of the Platte River was successful with the passage of the Removal Act in 1867.
The Removal Act called for the formation of a Capital Commission to locate a site for the capital on state-owned land. The Commission, composed of Governor David Butler, Secretary of State Thomas Kennard and Auditor John Gillespie, began to tour sites on July 18, 1867, for the new capital city. The village of Lancaster was chosen, in part due to the salt flats and marshes. Lancaster had approximately 30 residents. Disregarding the original plat of the village of Lancaster, Thomas Kennard platted Lincoln on a broader scale. The plat of the village of Lancaster was not dissolved nor abandoned; Lancaster became Lincoln when the Lincoln plat files were finished September 6, 1867. To raise money for the construction of a capital city, a successful auction of lots was held. Newcomers began to arrive and Lincoln's population grew. The Nebraska State Capitol was completed on December 1, 1868; a two-story building constructed with native limestone with a central cupola. The Kennard house, built in 1869, is the oldest remaining building in the original plat of Lincoln.
In 1888 a new capitol building was constructed on the site of the first capitol. The new building replaced the former structurally unsound capitol. The second capitol building was a classical design, designed by architect William H. Willcox. Construction began on a third capitol building in 1922. Bertram G. Goodhue was selected in a national competition as its architect. By 1924, the first phase of construction was completed and state offices moved into the new building. In 1925, the Willcox-designed capitol building was razed. The Goodhue-designed capitol was constructed in four phases, with the completion of the fourth phase in 1932. The capitol is the second tallest capitol building in the United States. The completion of the original Goodhue design will be finally realized with the completion of the capitol fountains within the four interior courtyards of the capitol building in 2017.
The Burlington and Missouri River Railroad's first train arrived in Lincoln on June 26, 1870, soon to be followed by the Midland Pacific in 1871 and the Atchison and Nebraska in 1872. The Union Pacific began service in 1877. The Chicago and North Western and Missouri Pacific began service in 1886. The Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific extended service to Lincoln in 1892. Lincoln became a rail center hub.
The Omaha-Denver Trans-Continental Route Association in 1911 established the Omaha-Lincoln-Denver Highway (O-L-D) through Lincoln. The goal was having the most efficient highway to travel on throughout Nebraska, from Omaha to Denver. In 1920, the Omaha-Denver Association merged with the Detroit-Lincoln-Denver Highway Association. As a result, the O-L-D was renamed the Detroit-Lincoln-Denver Highway (D-L-D). The auto route was a tourist magnet and traffic was heavy. Businesses were built and facilities were established in towns along the route in order to keep up with traveler demand.
In the early years of air travel, Lincoln had three airports and one airfield. Union Airport, was established northeast of Lincoln in 1920. The Lincoln Flying School was founded by E.J. Sias in a building he built at 2145 O Street. Charles Lindbergh was a student at the flying school in 1922. The flying school closed in 1947. Some remnants of the Union Airport can still be seen in-between N. 56th and N. 70th Streets, north of Fletcher Avenue; mangled within a slowly developing industrial zone. Arrow Airport was established around 1925 as a manufacturing and test facility for Arrow Aircraft and Motors Corporation, primarily the Arrow Sport. Arrow Aircraft and Motors declared bankruptcy in 1939 and Arrow Airport closed roughly several decades later. An existing Arrow Sport can be seen on permanent display, hanging in the Lincoln Airport's main passenger terminal.
The city's small municipal airfield in 1930 was dedicated to Charles Lindbergh and named Lindbergh Field for a short period of time. The air field was a stop for United Airlines in 1927 and a mail stop in 1928. In 1942 the Lincoln Army Airfield was established at the site. During World War II, over 25,000 aviation mechanics were trained with over 40,000 troopers being processed for combat. The Army closed the base in 1945. The Air Force reactivated the base during the Korean War in 1952. In 1966, the base was closed and Lincoln annexed the airfield, including the base's old housing units to the west. The base became the Lincoln Municipal Airport. The airport was later renamed the Lincoln Airport. The two main airlines serving the airport were United Airlines and Frontier Airlines. The authority shared facilities with the Nebraska National Guard, who continued ownership over some portions of the old Air Force base. In 1966, Lincoln annexed the township of West Lincoln, incorporated in 1887. West Lincoln voters rejected annexation by Lincoln until the state legislature passed a bill in 1965 allowing cities to annex surrounding areas without a vote.
The First National Bank Building and the National Bank of Commerce Building were designed by I.M. Pei.
Lincoln's first woman mayor, Helen Boosalis, was elected in 1975.
Vietnamese refugees, from the fall of Saigon in 1975, established a significant ethnic community with businesses along the 27th Street corridor. Lincoln was designated as a "Refugee Friendly" city by the U.S. Department of State in the 1970s. As of 2011, Lincoln had the largest Karen (Burmese ethnic minority) population in the United States, behind Omaha. As of the same year, Nebraska was one of the largest resettlement sites for the people of Sudan, mostly in Lincoln and Omaha. In 2014, some social service organizations estimated that up to 10,000 Iraqi refugees had resettled in Lincoln. In recent years, Lincoln had the largest Yazidi (Iraqi ethnic minority) population in the U.S. with over 2,000–3,000 having settled within the city (as of late 2017). In a three-year period, the immigrant and refugee student population at Lincoln Public Schools increased 52% - from 1,606 students in 2014, to 2,445 in 2017.
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