Geography
Omaha is located at 41°15′38″N 96°0′47″W / 41.26056°N 96.01306°W / 41.26056; -96.01306. According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 118.9 square miles (307.9 km²). 115.7 square miles (299.7 km²) of it is land and 3.2 square miles (8.2 km²) of it is water. The total area is 2.67% water.
Situated in the Midwestern United States on the shore of the Missouri River in eastern Nebraska, the Port of Omaha helped the city grow in significance as a trading city. Much of Omaha is built in the Missouri River Valley. Other significant bodies of water in the Omaha-Council Bluffs metropolitan area include Lake Manawa, Papillion Creek, Carter Lake, Platte River and the Glenn Cunningham Lake.
The city's land has been altered considerably by human intervention, with substantial regrading throughout Downtown Omaha and scattered across the city. Minor land reclamation efforts, along with dams further upstream, have brought dozens of acres along the Missouri into usage. Many of the natural variations in topography have been evened out.
The highest natural point in the city is Belvedere Point in North Omaha.
East Omaha sits on a flood plain west of the Missouri River. The area is the location of Carter Lake, an oxbow lake. The lake was once the site of East Omaha Island. In the crux of Carter Drive is an unnamed sulphur spring, and located south of there is Hardwood Creek. East Omaha was once the location of Florence Lake, which dried up at some point in the 1920s.
Read more about this topic: Geography Of Omaha
Famous quotes containing the word geography:
“Ktaadn, near which we were to pass the next day, is said to mean “Highest Land.” So much geography is there in their names.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Where the heart is, there the muses, there the gods sojourn, and not in any geography of fame. Massachusetts, Connecticut River, and Boston Bay, you think paltry places, and the ear loves names of foreign and classic topography. But here we are; and, if we tarry a little, we may come to learn that here is best. See to it, only, that thyself is here;—and art and nature, hope and fate, friends, angels, and the Supreme Being, shall not absent from the chamber where thou sittest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The totality of our so-called knowledge or beliefs, from the most casual matters of geography and history to the profoundest laws of atomic physics or even of pure mathematics and logic, is a man-made fabric which impinges on experience only along the edges. Or, to change the figure, total science is like a field of force whose boundary conditions are experience.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)