Let us go back a few months earlier. On March 16, 1877, an ice gorge choked the entrance to what was then known as Saratoga Bend. So the current started to cut a new channel at right angles to the bend. Around May Day, the Omaha Daily Herald interviewed Capt. Max Boehmer of the U.S. Corps of Engineers about the situation. He predicted that the new channel would be cut through before the summer was over, and that it would present a terrible danger to the Smelter and the Union Pacific shops. The local wiseacres all laughed at him. Everybody knew it'd take two or three years for the river to cut its new channel.

But the June rise accelerated the gouging. Then came an unprecedented July rise, which on Sunday, July 9, finished eating its way across the bend. Circulation stopped in the old channel, which started silting up at the elbows. Everybody was happy, though. Steamboats would save a half day of travel around the horseshoe. Real estate promoters saw the new lake as the premier recreation center of the West. A Herald writer named it Lake Teahon.

The current had its own ideas. Instead of sliding past the Smelter and U.P. shops from the north to south, it now slammed into them from the northeast. By Aug. 1 it threatened to wash the whole shebang down the river. It took another day of stalling to decide who'd pay how much for the hundreds of men, teams, and tons of rock and brush needed to riprap the banks and save the buildings. It took until Aug. 10 to finish the job, under the direction of U.P. assistant superintendent S. H. H. Clark. It was his stepping stone to the presidency of Union Pacific and Missouri Pacific Railroads.

Everybody called the new lake Cut-Off lake. Tragedy befell, April 30, 1905. Five young men were out in a rowboat, when it capsized. George Tietz, 22, Carl Lindquest, 21, and Wilfred Johnson, 17, decided to swim to shore. All succumbed to the cold waves, and drowned. Rollin Alsman, 20, and Willie Johnson, 15, clung to the overturned boat and were saved. They were treated by police surgeon Dr. H. A. Wigton, later renowned psychiatrist.

In the Sunday World-Herald of July 15, 1906, was a half page about Cut-Off lake, with 10 pictures. Dr. George L. Miller suggested it should have a new name, more melodious and meaningful. He recommended Lake Nicoma (for the fabled Omaha Indian wife of Peter A. Sarpy), a name also borne by the Blair DAR chapter, and similar to the Nikomis of Longfellow's poem "Hiawatha".

The idea was endorsed by D. J. O'Brien, president of the Omaha Rod and Gun Club, new Omaha mayor James C. Dahlman, and Judge Salbaugh, who foresaw no legal problems. So for the next two years it was known as Lake Nakomis, or a variant thereof.

In a sequel perhaps July 21 we'll tell how the lake got still another new name, and how the city got Carter Lake Park. Read about the beautiful romance between Omaha Park Commissioner Edward J. Cornish and Mrs. Selena Carter, widow of the white lead magnate, Levi Carter. - Author: H. W. Becker, July, 1977.