Paper towns are merely a few pages in Omaha’s history books

By Stu Pospisil

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    OMAHA, Nebraska (Omaha World-Herald) — Dryden, Orient, Chicago, Iron Bluffs, Bridgeport and Santillo.

And Petropaulowski, too.

They were the paper towns of Douglas County. Most never got past the platting stage and almost all went into the shredder known as the financial panic of 1857.

Petropaulowski was nearest to the newly incorporated city of Omaha. Its center would have been at 42nd and Hamilton Streets, where a public square was proposed. The 189 blocks in the plat, on a present-day map, would have comprised the area from about 30th to 52nd Streets, Cass to Lake Streets.

There would have been squares, or parks, named Manhattan, Jefferson, Webster and Seymour. Saddle Creek would have flowed through the western end. The territory became the Orchard Hill, Walnut Hill and Bemis Park neighborhoods, among others, and the eastern half of Dundee.

No names are on the plat that’s in the History Nebraska collections. But the guess is that it was speculators with ties to New York, and of Russian background, since the name derives from the Bering Sea port that was in the news during the Crimean War of the mid-1850s.

Orient, sometimes cited as Oriental City, was planned for today’s 126th to 144th Streets, Fort to Ida Streets, with an arm extending north to include a large bend in the Big Papillion Creek for a water supply.

“Orient is the name of a new town just started on the Big Papillion, at a distance about 10 miles directly west of this city on the line of our Military Road, and at a point where there is now a magnificent bridge in course of construction by Government, to be completed an early date this spring,” the Florence Courier opined in 1857. “Orient is situated in the midst of as fine an agricultural country as is to be found on God’s footstool. There is an excellent stone quarry on the town site, and the Papillion affords water privileges abundantly sufficient to run all kinds of mills and machinery.

“It is unquestionably a first-rate point for a respectable size inland town, and that it will go ahead and prosper, scarcely admits of a doubt. We are well acquainted with the gentlemen engaged in this enterprise and we know them to be men of energy, perseverance and liberality, such as will insure the growth and prosperity of their place, especially as Orient is one of the towns that happens to be in the right place.”

Those speculators would need a boat today. Much of their land is covered by Standing Bear Lake.

Father Flanagan could have needed a different farm to start Boys Town had Dryden gotten its footing. Dryden would have been on the 320 acres on the north side of Pacific Street between 132nd and 144th Streets — the south end of Boys Town. Flanagan’s first purchase, incidentally, was the west half of Section 24.

From ads in the Omaha Nebraskian in late 1858 and 1859, it’s known that Dryden had a governmental body, a board of trustees. W.H. Stark, who owned a shoe store in Omaha, was its chairman. His father-in-law, Alonso F. Salisbury, had obtained the deed for the land from the Douglas County commissioners in May 1857.

The site was attractive because it was on the junction of the emigrant trails from Omaha and Bellevue that led to Elkhorn City (Elk City).

Eighty years later, George Rohwer erected a Dryden City sign on the section’s southeast corner on the Po160 acres of the 320 that had been in his family since the 1870s. Rohwer told The World-Herald that a blacksmith’s shop was erected at the junction so emigrants could have their oxen shod. As a boy, he found the tiny shoes used for the oxen, several broken ox bows and buffalo skulls.

Chicago would have been north of Pacific Street between 210th and 222nd Streets. A Chicago post office was first established in 1858 with James Ferry, one of Omaha’s earliest residents, appointed postmaster. The post office several times was discontinued, only to be reopened. It 1872 the post office was renamed Douglas. It’s said the name change was because mail was being missent to the Chicago post office in Illinois. Douglas then was merged with the Elkhorn post office in 1884.

Iron Bluffs was about 2 miles south-southwest of Chicago. It covered 400 acres, originally claimed by John B. Bennett and A.J. Poppleton, between today’s 222nd and the Elkhorn River and north of F Street. The Nebraskian in July 1856 touted the area’s natural advantages.

“The town is situated on a beautiful table, almost surrounded by groves, near the edge of the bluffs, which slope gently towards the river. Belonging to the town company are several hundred acres of timberland composed of oak, walnut, cedar, mulberry, cottonwood, hickory, etc., and is emphatically the finest timber for many miles around.

“Associated with the timber are heavy stratas of building stone, which crop out along the bluffs. Limestone is also abundant, but the principal features of this vicinity are its heavy deposits of iron ore, which, under the examination of men of experience, is pronounced to yield about 50%. If the company (is) not disappointed in their expectations of finding coal under the layer of sandstone, Iron Bluffs will soon present the activity and bustle of an iron manufacturing town.”

Iron Bluffs never met its promise. It went out of existence when the Union Pacific was built to the north.

Bridgeport was on the Elkhorn River below Elkhorn City in the northern part of the county. It had been a long-established crossing point for the Mormons’ western migration. An old flat-boat ferry, established by Peter Sarpy, was moored there and a trading post opened nearby.

The military built a bridge across the Elkhorn in 1857. Bridgeport made it through that transition. From a Colorado gold-rush era guidebook: “Those wishing to camp here for the night, can find good accommodations for themselves and excellent stabling for their stock, at the McNeal House, the last house before crossing Elkhorn bridge.”

Farther west on the Mormon road was the proposed site of Santillo, in the northwest corner of the county. The site later was known as Mercer, which was a flag stop for cattle yards on the Union Pacific.

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