Fort Omaha

Before the balloon school came airships. In 1907 the Army built a large steel hangar at Fort Omaha for dirigible experiments, added a balloon house in 1908 and saw the first balloon flight in 1909, the year the airship program was abandoned. Wartime training spilled onto Florence Field at North 30th and Martin streets, where a Caquot-type observation balloon exploded on May 2, 1918, burning two soldiers to death and badly burning thirteen. A contingent left for Camp John Wise in Texas that year, and the school soon ended. Metropolitan Community College received most of the post in 1974.

What the plaque says

Fort Omaha A military post was first established here in 1868 and named Sherman Barracks after the famous Civil War general, William Tecumseh Sherman. The post's name was soon changed to Omaha Barracks and, in 1878, to Fort Omaha. In 1879, General George Crook, noted Indian fighter and head (1875-1882, 1886-1888) of the Army's Department of the Platte, occupied a new brick home here which is still standing. By the late 1880's, the 80-some acres of Fort Omaha had become insufficient for the Army's needs. A larger post, Fort Crook, was established near Bellevue and Fort Omaha was closed in 1896. In 1905, it reopened as an Army Signal Corps training school. Closed in 1913, the fort again reopened in 1916, this time as a training school for the crews of Army observation balloons. About 16,000 men trained here in preparation for service in World War I. When the Army declared Fort Omaha surplus property in 1947, it became a Naval Reserve Man- power Center. Since then it has served as a recruiting, training, and administrative facility for several branches of the armed forces. Daughters of the American Colonists Historical Land Mark Council

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Malcolm X Birthsite — 1.1 mi
  The North Omaha lot where Malcolm Little was born in May 1925 and his family was driven out by the Klan, saved by Rowena Moore and now planned as a cultural center.
• Winter Quarters and the Mormon Pioneer Cemetery — 2.0 mi
  The Latter-day Saint camp of 1846 to 1848 on Omaha land in what is now Florence, where hundreds died the first winter, and the cemetery and trail center beside it.
• Joslyn Art Museum — 3.3 mi
  Omaha's free art museum, a 1931 Art Deco memorial with two modern pavilions, and the keeper of Karl Bodmer's watercolors from the upper Missouri in 1833 and 1834.
• The Durham Museum (Omaha Union Station) — 4.1 mi
  Omaha's 1931 Union Station, Gilbert Stanley Underwood's Art Deco depot for the Union Pacific, closed to trains in 1971 and kept as a city museum with its waiting room intact.

More markers nearby

• Crook House — 0.3 mi
• Malcolm "X" — 1.2 mi
• Trans-Mississippi and International Exposition of 1898 — 1.3 mi
• Nebraska School for the Deaf — 1.8 mi