The Omaha District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was founded in 1934 as a civil works district, primarily to support local flood control activities and to make the Missouri River safe for navigation.

With the onset of World War II, the district took on a military engineering mission which it has performed with distinction ever since.

The district added a third mission in the 1980s:  restoration of the environment by helping clean up contaminated waste sites throughout America.

Encompassed within the district's civil and military works boundaries is the largest land area of any district in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers--more than 700,000 square miles, or nearly one-fourth of the territory of the contiguous 48 states.  The environmental restoration mission includes hazardous waste remediation sites from Alaska to the Atlantic Ocean.

The vast basin of the upper Missouri River defines the Omaha District's civil works boundaries.  Eight states from the Rocky Mountains to the Great Lakes form the area in which the district provides military engineering services to the Army and Air Force.  The district furnishes federal real estate services throughout both areas, and the environmental mission reaches well beyond these boundaries.