April/May 2024 NEBRASKA CATTLEMAN 27 We build low-touch technology to optimize forage availability, improve biodiversity and maximize soil carbon. www.enriched.ag sales@enriched.ag 406-318-9631 Forage & grazing management Image-based analysis for ag Real-time ranch analytics Bridges of Change Omaha has always served as a transportation hub, a launch point for the California, Oregon and Mormon trails. In the 1860s, it became the eastern terminus for the transcontinental railroad, the first of its kind in the world. Without the railroad, there would be no stockyards and no modern cattle industry. Two infrastructural changes in Omaha also heralded the beginning of another technological advancement that would also change American transportation forever: the rise of paved roads and the construction of two iconic bridges – the Q Street Bridge and the South Omaha Bridge. Both of these bridges made it possible for local farmers and ranchers to haul livestock into the stockyards with trucks, not trains, and unknowingly, the increasing use of trucks and the subsequent construction of the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s. Both factors would end the use of cattle trains and drive the demise of the terminal markets themselves. The South Omaha Bridge (known later as the South Omaha Veterans Memorial Bridge), which spanned the Missouri River and provided Iowa farmers with access to the market, helped drive sweeping changes in the way cattle were raised and marketed. It was opened in 1936 and stretched nearly 4,400 feet over the river. Because of access to plentiful feed grains, Iowa and eastern Nebraska served as the cradle for the cattle feeding sector. And for this reason, Omaha became the leading market for finished cattle – rather than grass-fed, range cattle – and the template for the feeding and packing industries known today. The driver for this change was access, and the South Omaha Bridge, which was demolished in 2010, remains a symbol for the stockyard’s heydays and of American ingenuity and change. The Q Street Bridge, which was also destroyed, made it easy for farmers to drive their cattle through the city and into the stockyards. It once hung a sign above its entrance that proudly stated: “Welcome to Omaha. World’s Largest Meat Packing Center.”
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