Gophertown was a

shanty town A shanty town, squatter area, squatter settlement, or squatter camp is a settlement of improvised buildings known as shanties or shacks, typically made of materials such as mud and wood, or from cheap building materials such as corrugated iron s ...

neighborhood in

Omaha, Nebraska Omaha ( ) is the List of cities in Nebraska, most populous city in the U.S. state of Nebraska. It is located in the Midwestern United States along the Missouri River, about north of the mouth of the Platte River. The nation's List of United S ...

on the north side. It was believed to be the first

Irish American Irish Americans () are Irish ethnics who live within in the United States, whether immigrants from Ireland or Americans with full or partial Irish ancestry. Irish immigration to the United States From the 17th century to the mid-19th c ...

neighborhood in Omaha. Although the neighborhood's exact boundaries are unknown and there are no historical markers denoting it, historians believe it was situated roughly where the present-day

Miller Park American Family Field is a retractable roof stadium in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Located southwest of the intersection of Interstate 94 in Wisconsin, Interstate 94 and Brewers Boulevard, it is the ballpark of Major League Baseball's Milwaukee Brewe ...

neighborhood stands.

History

Gophertown was founded in 1857 by Irish immigrant Dennis Dee alongside his two relatives Michael and Maurice, a group that was a part of 38 Irish men who immigrated to the Omaha area. The group of three men created a

dugout Dugout may refer to: * Dugout (shelter), an underground shelter * Dugout (boat), a logboat * Dugout (smoking), a marijuana container Sports * In bat-and-ball sports, a dugout is one of two areas where players of the home or opposing teams sit whe ...

home to live in amidst hard times. It is disputed whether Dee dug a new shelter or reused a pre-existing ridge. Soon, a small shanty town began to form. The area became home to several Irish families with the men taking up local jobs in farming, roadwork, and ditch-digging. The neighborhood stood near

Florence Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence ...

. The Florence Claim Club, a de facto

claim club Claim clubs, also called actual settlers' associations or squatters' clubs, were a nineteenth-century phenomenon in the American West. Usually operating within a confined local jurisdiction, these pseudo-governmental entities sought to regulate lan ...

formed by Florence residents, became aware of the settlement and took exception as Dee had not consulted the club before establishing a neighborhood nearby. James C. Mitchell, the leader of the group and founder of Florence, purportedly formed a mob to confront the Gophertown settlers, with the only written source on the incident being a now-defunct newspaper called the Omaha Nebraskian. According to the report from October 8, 1857, Mitchell and other Claim Club members stormed the Gophertown settlement to confront the men, but only found women and children as the men were away at work. When the Gophertown men received word about the incident, they returned to the settlement with firearms and shillelaghs, causing the Claim Club members to retreat. According to the Nebraskian report, the Claim Club returned later that night with firearms of their own but ultimately retreated once again. It is unknown when Gophertown formally ceased to exist, but the area was used for the

neighborhood, founded in 1896.

References

{{North Omaha Neighborhoods in Omaha, Nebraska History of North Omaha, Nebraska Irish-American history