Omaha daily bee., 1909-06-27

vopd Bancroft. finds a direct outlet into vinton about half way
between Eighteenth and Nineteenth. The first street south OF ELM
Oak. opens into Twentieth nearly a block north of Vinton. Spring
street enters Vinton at Twentieth, just a block north of the corner
at which the crooked route takes a straight course west to the city's
edge.
A poet sang in sardonic vein of how one crooked street came
into existence. A wobbylegged calf, lost from its dam, wandered
through the woods in search of it's dinner, and left a trail that wig
oled like a angleworm. Next day q sheep followed the trail of the
calf and then a man wandered over the same route. Soon another
passed. and one day some lettering horseman rode along the devious
way. Thus it became a footpath, and later a lane, and when a city
staggered became its principal thoroughfare' ms Is ".
show the vagarious origin of some city streets. 1t Is aid that In
Boston some streets remain whose way is so tortuous that 1t Is posi-
BILE to go out and come back on the same street without turning
about. Such streets must have been in the minds of the engineers
who laid out the city Of Omaha in its beginning. These we're e
of broad mind. in the sweep of whose imagination a pitWe Oh
straight as could be laid by compass. 1t was not a aimout ASK
The virgin sheet of paper on which the city was plated would per
nit OF straight lines as we'll al OF crooked n 8 M CITY Tree
were marked as the Shortest course between W points, ntersecV-
tng eac other at angles as true IS ever student fixed for experiment
tai purposes. 1t mattered not to these me. that the way u the thor
oughfares thus proposed lay over huge hills, some towering like
mountains. apparently inaccessible, save to mountain goats, n n
others found their course intercepted by muddy creeks. that slug
Rshly trickled between the banks of deep ravines or roared In tor
rental fury when swollen by heavy rains. This airy indifference to
the natural contour of the land has cost the survivors Il those pho
neers not a little worry and contr1ving. not to speak OF several mill
lions in money that have been spent in grading n ming IL m
man who made the town site OF Omaha In Inc mrs place come
bock and ace It now he would not recognize it for the same place.
Hills have vanished, hollows have disappeared creeks have been
Swallowed IN and left no trace and the dream of the engineers has
been patiently wrought out in broad and straight streets that pro-
coed in due order, square with the world" and crossing each other
with mathematical accuracy. The tree-crowned bluns that reared
their heads above the Missourt's banks when the pioneers pitched
their first camp here half a century ago have followed the pioneer
and in place of the Jack oak, the pig nut and the cottonwood the
box elder and the scrub elm, now stand great piles OF brick and NOR
4 tar. stone and steel. while the lines marked on that virgin sheet OF
naner are now broadways of commerce, surfaced with asphaltum or
brick and traversed daily by many thousands of busy people. 1t Is
a dream realized as its dreamers never could have hoped.
WHY Yinton street is crooked has never been satisfactorily ex-
plained. although the reason given at the city engineers office is a
plausible one. There the blame for the crooked way is placed on the