Attitudes toward the Church are beginning to mellow in this area where many of the cities have roots intertwined with the Mormon trek west.

That's the appraisal of Pres. Kurtis G. Cornish of the Omaha Nebraska Stake, which includes the area of old Winter Quarters, Neb., and Kanesville, Iowa, where Church headquarters were once established.Pres. Cornish, a heart research specialist at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, estimated that about 8,000 members live in the 50-mile-wide Mormon history imprint area in Middle Missouri Valley.

Attitudes toward the Church have softened considerably in the past decade, said Pres. Cornish. "I think now the image of the Church is fairly good," he observed. Visitors Center missionaries speaking to schools and other groups helped improve public opinion.

Middle Missouri Valley residents of today generally know little of their cities' roots, he said. The one exception are the residents of Florence, a suburb of Omaha, who are well aware of the origin of their city. Modern Florence, built on part of the original plat of Winter Quarters as laid out by Brigham Young, includes streets named after Church leaders. In Florence some 40,000 people visit the Church visitors center at the Pioneer Cemetery each year.

"This has helped increase our positive image," said Pres. Cornish.

Major employers in the Omaha area have attracted members for several decades. These include Union Pacific Railroad, Mutual of Omaha Insurance, and ConAgra, a large food conglomerate.

Other incoming members come as students to the Creighton University Medical Center or the University of Nebraska Medical Center. An institute at the latter university provides classes to some 150 LDS students. And in five years, the number of early morning seminary classes has increased from five to 18.

"We're increasing in the number of home-grown Nebraskans who join the Church and play more and more of a role in the Church," Pres. Cornish said.

According to convert Ruth Margaret Monahan Daugherty, an Iowa native, some threads may still connect members of today with the pioneers of the 1850s. She has traced a small number of LDS immigrants who came to Council Bluffs in the 1850s and didn't go West. Some of these had no Church organization, but stayed faithful.

According to early Omaha Branch Pres. Martin J. Melhus, the first meetings in downtown Omaha were held at a building at 20th and Harney streets about 1887.

By 1900 the Omaha and Lincoln branches had been organized, though meetings were sporadic at best.

In 1909 when Pres. Melhus first met the missionaries, some 22 members attended services in Omaha. In 1915, he became the first local branch president. Others were baptized afterward.

A branch in Council Bluffs also met regularly. President Heber J. Grant dedicated a meetinghouse there in 1921, which attracted nearly 300 people, not all members.

Florence Brust Olmstead, now of Omaha's new Elmwood Ward, was baptized in local Carter Lake in 1919. "There were from four to six missionaries working in Omaha in those years," she recalled. "We had a board in front of the chapel on which the previous week's attendance was shown. We were real pleased once when we had 39 in attendance."

A great deal of favorable publicity came to the Church in 1936 after the Church leased Pioneer Cemetery from the city of Omaha. The evocative sculpture, "A Tragedy at Winter Quarters" by Avard Fairbanks, was placed at the cemetery and dedicated by President Heber J. Grant in September 1936. The dedication ceremony, at which President Grant and his second counselor, President David O. Mckay, spoke, attracted some 2,500 people.

After this, both the Omaha and Council Bluffs branches increased in numbers. The Winter Quarters District was organized by Western States Mission Pres. W.W. Seegmiller on Oct. 22, 1939, with branches in Omaha, South Omaha, Lincoln, Grand Island in Nebraska and Council Bluffs, Iowa. In the area once covered by the expansive Winter Quarters District are now five stakes, with the Omaha stake occupying the heartland of what used to be the district. Papillion and Lincoln Nebraska stakes cover the south end and much of the old west fourth of the "Iowa segment" of the district. The north end of the old district is now included in the Sioux Falls South Dakota Stake, and the west end is part of the Kearney Nebraska Stake.

Historical sites continued to benefit missionary work. On May 31, 1952, about 3,500 people came to a memorial service at the Pioneer Cemetery at which President David O. McKay spoke. The next day 25,000 people flocked to the west bank of the Missouri River as President McKay dedicated "Mormon Bridge," a new public freeway bridge near the site of the old North Mormon Ferry.

Conversions in the 1950s strengthened branches in the area. An extensive building program later in the decade increased ties between members and the community. In 1960, the Winter Quarters Stake, the Church's 318th (now named Omaha Nebraska Stake) was created here.