April/May 2024 NEBRASKA CATTLEMAN 25 The Union Stockyards of Omaha Changed the Beef Business Forever ERIC GRANT | CONTRIBUTING WRITER ing, built in 1926 during the yard’s halcyon days and still looming over Omaha’s south side, and Johnny’s Café, the dining mainstay for thousands of workers, buyers and sellers, pretty much everything that once was is now gone. The pens were destroyed in the late 1990s. Most of the major packers – Armour, Cudahy, Swift and Wilson – consolidated into new names and moved into the country, far from urban pressures and the scrutinizing eyes of a public that no longer wants to have meat packing in its presence. Why Omaha? Geography was the main reason for the stockyard’s 1883 beginning. Omaha rested on the cusp between the western range, the fertile farmland of eastern Nebraska and Iowa, and the growing urban centers of the East. Two decades earlier, at the end of the Civil War, the city had served as the starting point for the transcontinental railroad, its track eventually stretching across America to California. The railway immediately made pioneer trails like the Oregon, California and Mormon obsolete, and heralded a new age for ranchers and homesteaders who found they had efficient connections with markets not only in the United States but around the world. The Missouri River, which skirts the eastern edge of Omaha, also provided key advantages. Unlike in Chicago, where removal of manure and unusable animal parts had always been a challenge for the stockyards, the Missouri River provided fresh water for processing and a swift-moving current for removing waste downstream. There was plenty of land with which to expand, and, at one time, the sprawling complex encompassed 250 acres. “Looking back, the stockyards were just unsustainable from an environmental standpoint,” says Bob Hough, Ph.D., a writer and historian. “They actually conCONTINUED ON PAGE 26 By the mid-1900s, livestock arrived at the Omaha Stockyards by truck as well as trains. After unloading, trucks parked in the shadow of the Livestock Exchange Building. From its humble beginnings in the late 19th century to its status as the world’s largest livestock market, the Omaha Stockyards played a vital role in the nation’s agricultural and economic landscape.
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