[3] Starting in the 1930s the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers planned to channelize the Missouri River, and business leaders in Omaha immediately began clamoring for increased barge traffic to the city.

In 1937 the Omaha Chamber of Commerce began lobbying the Nebraska State Legislature to create a dock authority that could take funds from the Public Works Administration to support the development of the Port property.

The Union Pacific Railroad, based in Omaha, supported the move believing it would generate more business for its tracks.

Subsequent bids to the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and the Works Progress Administration failed as well, leaving the city without adequate docking facilities when barge traffic opened in 1940.

[5] As part of its Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository plan, the U.S. Department of Energy proposed using the Port to receive up to 125 barge shipments carrying giant high-level radioactive waste containers up the Missouri River from the Cooper Nuclear Station, which is located at Brownville, Nebraska.