Interstate Highways
Freeways in Omaha
Today Interstate 80 traverses Nebraska from Omaha in the east to Kimball in the west. Spurs and loops are built off of the major east-west Interstate highway in Lincoln and Omaha. I-80 crosses contemporary Omaha south of its downtown and is served by two Interstate loops: Interstate 680, which runs along what was once Omaha's western periphery, and Interstate 480, an inner-loop connecting I-80 and Iowa’s I-29 to Omaha’s downtown. Interstate 480 runs north from the I-80/480 interchange between 28th and 29th Streets to the Dodge Street interchange. From there it turns east, running between Chicago Street on the south and Cass Street on the north, crosses downtown to the Missouri River and enters Council Bluffs, Iowa. The 1956 Federal-Aid Highway Act’s ninety-ten federal funding ratio made these routes possible by subsidizing Nebraska’s construction expenses. Dependent upon the state matching federal funding, the Act provided Nebraska with $168 million in federal highway subsidies during the first three years of Interstate construction (Koster, 63).
Preliminary plans for Omaha’s inner-city interstate routes were established as early as 1955. In 1955, the Bureau of Public Roads (BPR) confirmed the Interstate urban control points in a published document that came to be known as the Yellow Book. The BPR required Nebraska’s control points to include the cities of North Platte in the west and Lincoln and Omaha in the east. Beyond those qualifications, the federal BPR gave state and local officials the authority to determine the particular route in between those cities.
The Yellow Book also contained potential urban routes in the control point cities. Omaha’s map initially called for an outer-loop circling the city and a spur connecting downtown to Interstate 80. State planners later changed the spur, which ultimately became I-480, to a more circumferential route of downtown Omaha. State planners also located Interstate 80 farther north than suggested in the Yellow Book map (U.S. Bureau of Public Roads, "General Location of National System of Interstate Highways: Including All Additional Routes at Urban Areas Designated in September 1955, 53-54).
Although the interstate largely served capitals and major metropolitan areas, it was also laid out with military defense in mind. Omaha’s designation as a control point was chosen not just because of its proximity to the state capital in Lincoln or for its industry, but also because of the nearby Strategic Air Command at Offutt Air Force Base. State Highway planners later built the South Expressway, now known as the Kennedy Freeway, branching off of the I-80/480 interchange through South Omaha toward the Bellevue base.
Initial Interstate construction began as a 6.4-mile stretch of I-80 outside of Gretna, a Sarpy County town southwest of Omaha. The Gretna segment of I-80 opened in 1959 and the Interstate gradually expanded eastward toward Omaha. Nebraska’s Interstate system would not be complete until 1974 (Koster, 66-67). By November 1959, Interstate 80 reached the far southwestern outskirts of Omaha near the newly built Western Electric plant at 120th and L Street and soon reached into town north of the Union Pacific rail line, moving from the eventual I-680 interchange east toward 42nd Street.
Construction west of 42nd Street had little impact on residential neighborhoods. Much of the land taken for Interstate right-of-ways had largely been farmland or undeveloped. Yet once the route approached 42nd Street it began to enter Omaha’s residential neighborhoods. From there the route continued toward 30th and Grover Streets near the interchange with Interstate 480. The immense interchange consumed land between 25th Street and 32nd Avenue on the east and west, C Street on the south, and Vinton Street on the north. I-480 then cut two miles north from its south interchange between 29th and 30th streets to the interchange at 28th and Dodge Street. This interchange would later shuttle traffic onto the South Expressway toward the South Omaha Union Stockyards and Offutt Air Force Base.
In addition to the South (Kennedy) Expressway, city planners also planned two other cross-town expressways—the North Freeway and the West Expressway—which sparked controversy in their respective neighborhoods. The North Freeway, initially given Interstate status as “I-580” and was built from the mid-1960s until the late 1980s, branched north from I-480 at the 28th & Dodge interchange through North Omaha and cut through Omaha’s most densely populated African American community. Highway officials planned an ultimately cancelled West Expressway, which would have run roughly north of Dodge Street toward I-680 and through middle-class and affluent white communities. Grassroots efforts formed to fight both freeways.
I-480 and its southern interchange went through a large swath of some of Omaha’s oldest neighborhoods just beyond the downtown region. Neighborhoods such as ‘Sheelytown,’ located between 24th and 31st streets on the east and west and Hanscom Park and Frederick Street on the north and south, was an overwhelmingly blue-collar, white-ethnic community comprised of Polish, Irish, and Czech Catholics, many of whom worked in South Omaha’ packing plants and stockyards. The eastern leg of Interstate 80 from 24th Street toward the Missouri River also jeopardized parkland, pitting a fight between preserving parks and preserving homes. These largely blue-collar, white-ethnic neighborhoods became the battleground in Omaha's first anti-expressway revolt.