May 8th

Pat and I were discussing in the car that if a group of historians voted for the 10 most important events in American history, the Lewis and Clark expedition and the transcontinental railroad would likely be on that list. Today we got more proof of that.

Under rainy but gradually drier skies, we visited the Lewis and Clark Visitor Center at the Havins Point Dam. This is one of 6 dams built on the Missouri River between South Dakota and Montana to control flooding and provide power and water for irrigation. There was a film about the entire expedition and we’re still amazed at how they carried all of their boats, horses and equipment over mountain passes and how they found their way through the complete unknown.

Remember the “Paper Clips” Holocaust project by the middle school in Whitwell, Tennessee. Today we saw an installation in a park done by the Columbus Nebraska High School honoring a Columbus native Andrew Jackson Higgins, who designed and produced all the amphibian boats used by the allies in WWII at the landings in North Africa, Sicily and D Day in Normandy. In addition to a model of a boat and statues of Higgins and military men, there was a steel fragment from Ground Zero and (best of all) actual sand from all of the beaches of the world where Higgins boats landed.

I dropped off Pat at the Ohama airport for her return flight. My GPS was playing tricks on us – we were on some obscure back roads with no clue we were anywhere near a major airport until all of a sudden it was there.

I visited the Durham Museum in the former Art Deco Union train station. The entrance is the huge waiting room/ticket office and I felt like I had had stepped into Grand Central Station and was still working. There were trains and trollies to board and an exhibit about the Transcontinental Railroad, as well as a lot about the history of Omaha, the eastern terminus of that railroad.

My two late stops were a “tribute'” to Rosenblatt Stadium, the home of the College Baseball World Series from 1950 to 2010 until it moved to a shiny new ballpark downtown – and a walk across the curving Bob Kerrey pedestrian bridge over the Missouri.

A highway bridge and a railroad bridge over the Missouri River
The Senator Bob Kerrey pedestrian bridge
Two buildings at the Onaha Zoo – that pole in front of the domed building is the original right field foul pole at Rosenblatt Stadium
All that’s left of the 60 year home of the College Baseball World Series
A Union Pacific Locomotive
A model of the 1898 World Exposition on Omaha
Two “passengers” waiting for their train in the former Union Station
The amphibian boat produced by Andrew Jackson Higgins
Sculptures of two soldiers and a 9/11 steel fragment with an eagle on top
Havins Point Dam on the Missouri River
The high-level summary of the Lewis and Clark expedition