Early Omaha: Gateway to the West
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Four small wood frame tenement houses are visible in the foreground of this photograph taken from the roof of the Union Pacific Transfer Depot & Hotel in Council Bluffs, Iowa.

These small homes were made available to Union Pacific employees. Water from the flood covered the low ground between Omaha and Council Bluffs for a width of 5 miles. Many Council Bluffs businesses were destroyed. Lake Manawa was also created during the April 1881 flood. The Omaha Bee paper covered the “Great Flood” nearly every day from April 2-13, 1881.