Nebraska

The Union Station, at 801 South 10th Street in Omaha, Nebraska, known also as Union Passenger Terminal, is "one of the finest examples of Art Deco... architecture in the Midwest." Designated an Omaha Landmark in 1978, it was listed as "Union Passenger Terminal" on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971. The Union Station is also a contributing property to the Omaha Rail and Commerce Historic District. It was the Union Pacific's first Art Deco railroad station, and the completion of the terminal "firmly established Omaha as an important railroad terminus in the Midwest." Between 1866 and 1971, Omaha was served by a succession of different station buildings reflecting Omaha's growing importance as the nation's fourth-largest railroad center. The 801 South Tenth Street site hosted two different buildings before the currently existing station. The first station was a "cowshed" station that was dismantled in 1890. Financial concerns kept a new station from being constructed for the next eight years and a temporary depot was used on the site.
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The Moses Merrill Mission, also known as the Oto Mission, was located about eight miles west of Bellevue, Nebraska. It was built and occupied by... Moses and Eliza Wilcox Merrill, the first missionaries resident in Nebraska. The first building was part of facilities built in 1835 when the United States Government removed the Otoe about eight miles southwest of Bellevue. Merrill's goal was to convert the local Otoe tribe to Christianity; he had learned the language and translated the Bible and some hymns into Otoe. The first log cabin had to be replaced after it burned, but by 1835 they had a built a combined school/church building. After Merrill died in 1840 from tuberculosis, the Otoe left the mission and moved their village. His wife Eliza Merrill returned to the East with their son. Settlers used the cabin into the 1860s. As of 2005, the only remainders of the second and larger mission building are its original chimney and the cottonwood trees planted by Eliza Merrill. The site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1972. The state has placed a highway historical marker near the former site of the Oto Mission.
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Buffalo Bill Ranch State Historical Park, also known as Scout's Rest Ranch, is a living history park located west of North Platte, Nebraska. The... property includes a home owned by Buffalo Bill, as well as many other historical exhibits. The park can be found along U.S. Route 30 two miles west of North Platte. It includes a Second Empire architecture building built in 1886. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. During flooding on the Platte River in the summer of 2011 it was closed, the exhibits moved and berms were built around the buildings. The flooding came close to the compound but was not as severe as expected.
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Fort Kearny was a historic outpost of the United States Army founded in 1848 in the western U.S. during the middle and late 19th century. The outpost... was located along the Oregon Trail near present-day Kearney, Nebraska, which took its name from the fort . The fort was built in response to the growth of overland emigration to Oregon after 1842. The first post, Fort Kearny, was established in the spring of 1848 "near the head of the Grand Island" along the Platte River by Lieutenant Daniel P. Woodbury. It was first called Fort Childs, but in 1848 the post was renamed Fort Kearny in honor of General Stephen Watts Kearny. Despite its lack of fortifications, Fort Kearny served as way station, sentinel post, supply depot, and message center for 49'ers bound for California and homeseekers traveling to California, Oregon and the Pacific Northwest. The earliest surviving photograph of the post, taken in 1858 by Samuel C. Mills, shows the post as a collection of adobe buildings without any wall or fortifications. By the 1860s the fort had become a significant state and freighting station and home station of the Pony Express.
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Howard Harold Hanson was an American composer, conductor, educator, music theorist, and champion of American classical music. As director for 40 years of the Eastman School of Music, he built a high-quality school and provided opportunities for commissioning and performing American music. He won a... Pulitzer Prize for one of his works and received numerous other awards. Hanson was born in Wahoo, Nebraska, to Swedish immigrant parents, Hans and Hilma Hanson. In his youth he studied music with his mother. Later, he studied at Luther College in Wahoo, receiving a diploma in 1911, then at the Institute of Musical Art, the forerunner of the Juilliard School, in New York City, where he studied with the composer and music theorist Percy Goetschius in 1914. Afterward he attended Northwestern University, where he studied composition with church music expert Peter Lutkin and Arne Oldberg in Chicago. Throughout his education, Hanson studied piano, cello and trombone. Hanson earned his BA degree in music from Northwestern in 1916, where he began his teaching career as a teacher's assistant.
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Charles Timothy "Chuck" Hagel is a former United States Senator from Nebraska. A member of the Republican Party, he was first elected in 1996 and was reelected in 2002. In 2009, he was elected as Chairman of the Atlantic Council. Born in North Platte, Nebraska, to Betty Dunn Hagel and Charles Dean... Hagel, who had German and Polish ancestry, he graduated from St. Bonaventure High School in Columbus, Nebraska, the Brown Institute for Radio and Television in 1966 and the University of Nebraska at Omaha in 1971. Hagel is a Vietnam War veteran, having served in the United States Army infantry, attaining the rank of Sergeant from 1967 – 1968. He served as an infantry squad leader in the 9th Infantry Division. While serving during the Vietnam War, Hagel received the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry, two Purple Hearts, Army Commendation Medal, and the Combat Infantryman Badge. After returning from Vietnam, he worked as a bartender and radio newscaster while finishing college. Hagel married Lilibet Ziller in April 1985. The couple live with their daughter, Allyn, and son, Ziller, in McLean, Virginia.
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Dr. Thomas William "Tom" Osborne is a former college football head coach and a former member of Congress. He is currently the athletic director at the University of Nebraska. He was the head coach of the Nebraska Cornhuskers football team for 25 years from , succeeding Bob Devaney. After coaching,... Osborne was elected to Congress in 2000 and served six years in the U.S. House as a Republican from Nebraska's 3rd district. Born and raised in Hastings, Tom Osborne was a star athlete at Hastings High School in football and basketball, and won the state discus throw in track. As a senior in 1955, he was awarded the Nebraska High School Athlete of The Year by the Omaha World Herald. He then stayed in town to attend Hastings College, the same college his father and grandfather had attended. During his time at Hastings College, Tom Osborne was a star football quarterback and an excellent basketball player. He graduated with a B.A. in history in 1959, and was awarded the Nebraska College Athlete of the Year. He was the first male Nebraska athlete to win both the high school and college athlete of the year awards by the Omaha World Herald.
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Joseph Robert "Bob" Kerrey was the 35th Governor of Nebraska from 1983 to 1987 and a United States Senator from Nebraska from 1989 to 2001. Having served in the Vietnam War, and being awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions, he moved into politics. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the... Democratic presidential nomination in 1992. From 2001 to 2010, Kerrey served as president of The New School, a university in New York City. In May 2010, he was selected to become the head of the Motion Picture Association of America. But in July 2010, both Kerrey and the MPAA could not reach an agreement and former Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd was selected instead. On February 27, 2012, aides confirmed that Kerrey was filing to seek election to his old Senate seat, to replace the retiring Democratic incumbent Ben Nelson. Kerrey was born in Lincoln, Nebraska where he attended the public schools, graduating from Lincoln Northeast High School. He credits Bob Reese, his chemistry teacher, for inspiring his pursuit of a career in the sciences. He went on to earn a degree in pharmacy from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in 1966.
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Wyoming is a state in the mountain region of the Western United States. Wyoming is the 10th most extensive, but the least populous and the 2nd least... densely populated of the 50 States. The western two thirds of the state is covered mostly with the mountain ranges and rangelands in the foothills of the Eastern Rocky Mountains, while the eastern third of the state is high elevation prairie known as the High Plains. Cheyenne is the capital and the most populous city of Wyoming with a population of nearly 60,000 people within its city proper. As specified in the designating legislation for the Territory of Wyoming, Wyoming's borders are lines of latitude, 41°N and 45°N, and longitude, 104°3'W and 111°3'W , making the shape of the state a latitude-longitude quadrangle. Wyoming is one of only three states to have borders along only straight latitudinal and longitudinal lines, rather than being defined by natural landmarks.
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The State of Colorado is a state in the Rocky Mountain region of the United States of America. Colorado may also be considered to be a part of the... Mountain, Southwestern, Midwestern, and Central regions of the United States. The United States Census Bureau estimates that the state population was 4,753,377 in 2006, a 10.49% increase since U.S. Census 2000. Denver is the capital and the most populous city of Colorado. Citizens of Colorado are known as Coloradans.
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Kansas is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. It is named after the Kansas River which flows through it, which in turn was named... after the Kansa Native American tribe, which inhabited the area. The tribe's name is often said to mean "people of the wind" or "people of the south wind," although this was probably not the term's original meaning. Residents of Kansas are called "Kansans." For thousands of years what is now Kansas was home to numerous and diverse Native American tribes. Tribes in the Eastern part of the state generally lived in villages along the river valleys. Tribes in the Western part of the state were semi-nomadic and hunted large herds of bison. Kansas was first settled by European Americans in the 1830s, but the pace of settlement accelerated in the 1850s, in the midst of political wars over the slavery issue. When officially opened to settlement by the U.S. government in 1854, abolitionist Free-Staters from New England and pro-slavery settlers from neighboring Missouri rushed to the territory to determine if Kansas would become a free state or a slave state.
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Iowa is a state located in the Midwestern United States, an area often referred to as the "American Heartland". It derives its name from the Ioway... people, one of the many American Indian tribes that occupied the state at the time of European exploration. Iowa was a part of the French colony of New France. After the Louisiana Purchase, settlers laid the foundation for an agriculture-based economy in the heart of the Corn Belt. Iowa is often known as the "Food Capital of the World". In the latter half of the 20th century, Iowa's agricultural economy transitioned to a diversified economy of advanced manufacturing, processing, financial services, biotechnology, and green energy production. Iowa is the 26th most extensive and the 30th most populous of the 50 United States. Its capital and largest city is Des Moines. Iowa has been listed as one of the safest states to live in. Iowa is bordered by the Mississippi River on the east; the Missouri River and the Big Sioux River on the west; the northern boundary is a line along 43 degrees, 30 minutes north latitude.
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