Omaha, NE: 1885-1999 Stockyards

(See satellite image below, only the Livestock Exchange building is left.)

Russel Spawn posted
Omaha, Nebraska STOCKYARDS.

Martin Tjossem: Was just thinking how back in the 1980's I hauled cattle, hogs, and sheep in or out of the St Paul, Sioux Falls, Sioux City, Omaha, St Joe, Kansas City, and St Louis stockyards and they are all gone now.

Satellite

It is the area labeled South Omaha on this map. The Pacific label in the bottom center is part of the Rock Island label. So, going clockwise, the stockyards were close to the Rock Island, CB&Q, C&NW, UP and Missouri Pacific.

1956/68 Omaha North and South Quads @ 24,000

nebraska
By the end of the 1880s decade, " South Omaha was established as a major meat center, and by 1956 Omaha was the largest meat producing city in the world."

Steve Raglin posted four photos with the comment:

The "Newsmakers" theme for January should probably include the Omaha stockyards which ranked as the world's largest livestock market from 1955-1971 (a very large feather in the cap for the city). Several large meat processing plants were part of that mix, including Armour & Co. and Swift. By 1999, all the work had shifted elsewhere and operations in South Omaha had essentially closed.

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nps
"Designed by Omaha architect George Prinz and completed in May 1926, the eleven story H-shaped Livestock Exchange Building towered over the South Omaha stockyards, serving as the center of the industry in Omaha....To house the offices of meatpacking firms, the Union Stockyard Company built the original Livestock Exchange Building in 1885. By 1924, the business had outgrown the building and leaders expressed interest in constructing a new building that would symbolize the continued prosperity of the industry in Omaha. The impressive new building housed not only offices but the Stockyards National Bank, a bakery, cafeteria, kitchen, cigar stand, telephone and telegraph offices, apartments and sleeping rooms, a clothing store, ballrooms, and a convention hall....The livestock industry continued to grow during the 1940s and boasted sites of four national packing houses: Armour, Cudahy, Swift, and Wilson. In 1955 the South Omaha stockyards surpassed Chicago’s as the largest stockyard and meat processing center in the country. Changes in the market during the 1960s led to the decline of the industry and three of the largest packing companies closed. By 1976 the last major packing house closed, signifying the end of the great era of the Omaha stockyards....Despite the decline of the industry, the Livestock Exchange Building still stands in South Omaha, an impressive and unique architectural achievement, combining Romanesque and Italian Renaissance Revival styles. Renovated in 2005 and now houses more than one hundred apartments and two ballrooms that can be reserved for events."

clui
"The stockyards at Omaha closed in 1999, and the labyrinth of collapsing corrals and pens around the old Livestock Exchange buildings are now parking lots. In the 1960's this was the largest livestock center in the world, filled with thousands of animals on trading days, and surrounded by meatpacking plants. It surpassed the more famous Union Stockyard in Chicago as the busiest stockyard in 1955, when nearly 43,000 cattle passed through the yard in a single day. The industry trend of moving the slaughterhouses closer to the cattle feedlots, led by companies like IBP (which was purchased by Tyson in 2001), led to the demise of this and other stockyards, and changed the economy of the meatpacking cities like Omaha, Chicago, and Kansas City. There are, however, a few meatpacking plants still in operation at the stockyards, like the Greater Omaha Packing Company, which processes 750,000 steers annually."