Hummel Park covers 202 acres of riparian forest in the Ponca Hills at 11808 John J. Pershing Drive in North Omaha, above the Missouri River, on land given to the city in 1930. It is named for Joseph B. Hummel, Omaha's park commissioner for 21 of the 27 years between 1912 and 1939, famous for his honesty, his bluntness, his ability to stretch a dollar and his 16-hour days, seven days a week; he died in January 1942 at 79. Works Progress Administration crews built the picnic shelters in the 1930s, and Civilian Conservation Corps workers put in the stone stairs, pavilions and retaining walls.
The history goes back further. Two markers in the park recall Fort Lisa, the post of the Spanish trader Manuel Lisa, and Cabanne's Trading Post, set up by Jean Pierre Cabanne in the 1820s, important fur-trading places in the years after the Louisiana Purchase. The park has hiking trails including the Omaha Riverfront Trail North, a disc golf course completed in 2011, a Missouri River overlook above the natural cliff called the Devil's Slide, a nature center run by the city's Parks and Recreation Department, and a summer day camp that marked its 60th year in 2009.
Omaha has hung a great many stories on these woods. The arching branches over the entrance are said to droop under the spirits of people lynched here; there is no evidence of any lynching in the park. The WPA shelters have been called satanic altars, on no evidence beyond graffiti. The CCC stairway is the Stairs to Hell, because nobody counts the same number of steps going up as coming down; there are 188, and the irregular shape of some steps explains the miscounts. The best known story is of a family or colony of albino people living in the trees, sometimes hermits and sometimes cannibals, and there has never been any evidence for it. The North Omaha historian Adam Fletcher Sasse traces much of the lore to racism, ignorance and active imaginations.
The legends probably grew from the park's seclusion, its dense woods and its popularity with local teenagers. The bodies of several missing people have been found here, most likely dumped in a well-hidden wood so close to the city. Today thousands of people use the park every year.
Other places on the map within a couple of hours.
