Historic Omaha

The Village of Omaha was two years old
when Edward Creighton arrived with his
brothers John and Joseph and cousin James,
in 1856. They found a town of about six
hundred citizens, an unimpressive collection
of structures and streets either choked with
dust or oozing with mud. But something in
the town appealed to them and they decided
to stay. It’s lucky for Omaha and Douglas
County that they did.
Edward soon landed a job helping to
construct the telegraph line linking Omaha
with St. Joseph, Missouri. In October 1861
he completed his half of a telegraph line that
linked the country from coast to coast.
The greatest of Creighton’s legacies is the
University that bears his name. Acting on
an oft-stated wish of her deceased husband,
Mary Lucretia Creighton provided in her
will for the institution the Jesuits and their
lay faculty and staff would turn into one of
the Midwest’s premier educational
establishments. After her death, John
Creighton, who had married Sarah Emily
Wareham, Mary Lucretia’s sister, continued
as a patron of the University.
Founded in 1878, the University’s outreach
embraces students, male and female, from
across the country and has always had an
especially strong impact on Omaha and
Douglas County.
Creighton is the elder sister of most of
Omaha’s major institutions. It was ten years old
in 1888 when Fort Crook, now Offutt Air
Force Base, was established. That same year, St.
John’s Church was completed on the Creighton
Campus. When the Union Stockyards were
founded in 1893, Creighton University was
already a rambunctious fifteen-year-old with a
medical school and hospital. St. Joseph’s
Hospital, founded in 1870, predates the
University. As the University’s main teaching
hospital, it remains an integral part of the
Creighton University Medical Center. The
University was approaching forty and had
added schools of law, dentistry, and pharmacy
when Father Edward J. Flanagan founded Boys
Town, now Girls and Boys Town. By the time
Joslyn Art Museum was founded in 1931,
Creighton had passed its fiftieth year and
included a business school, a graduate school,
and a nursing program. Creighton celebrates
its 125th anniversary in 2003.
Since 1891, when its first degree was
conferred, nearly sixty thousand students
have graduated from Creighton.
The University has a major service impact on
Omaha and the region. In 2001, Creighton
faculty, staff and students provided nearly 80
institutionally supported programs of education
and service to 77 agencies in Metro Omaha.
Through its clinics, Creighton faculty, staff and
students served patients in Metro Omaha and
rural Nebraska and Iowa. There were more than
360,000 patient visits to Creighton University
Medical Center. Thousands more visited
Creighton dental, physical therapy, and
occupational therapy clinics.
The Creighton and Wareham families had
no way of knowing the long-term effects of
their decision to settle in Omaha. But, if they
had decided not to, it would be a very
different city today.
CREIGHTON
UNIVERSITY
✧
Above: Creighton University began in
1878 in this building, which exists
today as the core structure of the
Administration Building.
Below: Creighton University has a farreaching
service impact on Omaha and the
region. This photo shows the School of
Dentistry’s 2001 Bright Smiles-Bright
Futures outreach project, a partnership with
Colgate-Palmolive. Michelle Klabunde, left,
a student in Creighton’s cooperative dental
hygiene program with Iowa Western
Community College, works with a young
patient, Marlene Garcia. The Bright-
Smiles-Bright Futures program brings
dental care to children in need.
QUALITY OF LIFE
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