Omaha to Lincoln: The Capital That Moved to Spite a City

The capital of Nebraska is not where you might expect it to be. The reason it ended up in Lincoln is one of the more entertaining pieces of political spite in the state's early history.

When Nebraska was organized as a territory in eighteen fifty-four, Omaha became the territorial capital by designation. It made logical sense. Omaha sat at the Missouri River crossing, at the eastern gateway into the territory, and it already had something resembling a functioning town: hotels, a land office, a few thousand people, and considerable ambitions. By the time statehood arrived in eighteen sixty-seven, Omaha's boosters assumed the capital would stay where it was.

The rest of Nebraska had other ideas. Farmers and settlers to the south and west resented Omaha's grip on territorial politics. Eastern Nebraska more broadly was seen as too close to the Missouri River interests, too cozy with the railroads, and too dominated by Democratic and business factions that did not represent the farming interior.

When the new state legislature met to select a permanent capital, the coalition that formed to defeat Omaha was unusually candid about its motives. One contemporary account describes legislators laughing as they voted. They selected a tiny settlement in Lancaster County called Lancaster, so small that some members claimed to have never heard of it, and renamed it Lincoln, for the recently assassinated president. A senator proposed the name Lincoln hoping to sink the bill, but it passed anyway.

Omaha did not take the insult quietly. There were serious challenges and competing claims for years. Lincoln, meanwhile, was essentially a village of about thirty people when it was chosen as the state capital in eighteen sixty-seven. It had to build a capitol building largely on speculation that the town would grow enough to justify one.

It did. Lincoln is now the second-largest city in Nebraska. But the siting of the capital was never about geography. It was about who got to run the state.