Scavenger Hunt in Omaha: The Missouri River City That Keeps Surprising Visitors
Omaha is the city that Midwesterners who live elsewhere recommend with genuine enthusiasm when asked where to visit, and that everyone outside the region consistently underestimates. The city has a walkable, historic downtown with excellent architecture, one of the finest zoos in the world (the Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium is consistently ranked among the top three in the United States), the Old Market district with its cobblestone streets and independent restaurants, and a food scene anchored by the steakhouse tradition that the city's position as a meatpacking center created and that the contemporary restaurant scene has built on.
A city scavenger hunt in Omaha is a genuine revelation for most visitors, a compact, walkable historic district with more depth than most people expect from a city this size.
Best Neighborhoods for an Omaha Scavenger Hunt
The Old Market, the warehouse and produce market district that was saved from demolition in the 1970s and converted into Omaha's entertainment and arts district, has cobblestone streets, Romanesque Revival brick warehouse buildings, and an independent restaurant and gallery scene on Howard and Harney Streets that makes it the most walkable and most visually interesting neighborhood in the city. The gene Leahy Mall pedestrian corridor connects the Old Market to the Missouri River waterfront.
Downtown, the commercial core has the Joslyn Art Museum (an excellent encyclopedic art collection in an Art Deco building, free on Saturdays), the Durham Museum in the former Union Station (one of the finest surviving Art Deco rail terminals in the country, now a history museum with the original lunch counter intact), and the Orpheum Theatre.
Dundee-Happy Hollow, the historic residential neighborhood west of midtown, where Warren Buffett's house is (a modest five-bedroom that he bought in 1958 for $31,500 and has lived in ever since), has the tree-lined streets and Craftsman and Colonial Revival houses of early 20th-century Omaha's upper-middle-class neighborhood.
What an Omaha Scavenger Hunt Reveals
The Questo city quest in Omaha covers the city's history as the eastern terminus of the transcontinental railroad (the Union Pacific Railroad's headquarters were and remain in Omaha), the meatpacking industry that made Omaha one of the most important food processing cities in the world, and the Native American history of the Missouri River region (Omaha sits on traditional Omaha and Ponca lands).
The Lewis and Clark expedition passed through the Omaha area in 1804 and 1806, and the landscape of the Missouri River bluffs visible from the Old Market has changed less than most of the expedition's route.
Omaha Scavenger Hunt Tips
Omaha's steakhouse culture is the city's most famous food tradition, the meatpacking industry created a city where excellent beef is available at prices below comparable cities, and places like Mahogany Prime Steakhouse, Gorat's (Warren Buffett's preferred steakhouse), and the Drover are the serious options. The Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium is open year-round and is worth a half-day alongside any Old Market scavenger hunt, the indoor rainforest, the desert dome, and the aquarium tunnels are genuinely world-class. Jailhouse Pizza and the Crescent Moon Alehouse in the Old Market are the post-quest casual dining anchors.