History
As recently as 1876, Levi Carter Park was the west bank of the Missouri River. The next year flooding caused the river to jump its banks and shorten the main stream, with the long meander becoming an oxbow lake. Residents on both sides of the river now found themselves on the west bank, attached to Nebraska. Because of this their lake was originally called "Cut-Off Lake."
The name was first changed in the late 1900s to Lake Nicoma for the fabled Omaha wife of early Nebraska settler Peter A. Sarpy. Around that time the lake was a popular resort area. The surrounding park was home to sailing events, Bungalow City, the Omaha Gun Club, and a YMCA Camp as late as the 1930s. The area around the lake included "a boathouse at the foot of Locust street, hotels and club houses were numerous and the lake was the scene of many a pleasant rowing and fishing party."
In the early 1890s the city of Omaha renamed the lake in honor of Levi Carter after his widow donated $1,000,000 to the City of Omaha for upgrades to the area around the lake, which the city named Levi Carter Park.
In 1896 the United States Supreme Court ruled that the neighboring town of Carter Lake belonged to the State of Iowa.
Levi Carter Park was the home of radio station Z-92's now defunct annual Z-bash from 1997 to 2005.
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—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“One classic American landscape haunts all of American literature. It is a picture of Eden, perceived at the instant of history when corruption has just begun to set in. The serpent has shown his scaly head in the undergrowth. The apple gleams on the tree. The old drama of the Fall is ready to start all over again.”
—Jonathan Raban (b. 1942)
“In history an additional result is commonly produced by human actions beyond that which they aim at and obtain—that which they immediately recognize and desire. They gratify their own interest; but something further is thereby accomplished, latent in the actions in question, though not present to their consciousness, and not included in their design.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)