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Boys Town is a village in Douglas County, Nebraska, the home of one of the country's best-known youth care organizations. Father Edward J. Flanagan founded Father Flanagan's Boys' Home in December 1917 to care for and educate at-risk youth, moved it out to Overlook Farm on Omaha's western edge in 1921, and the community that grew up around that campus was incorporated as a Nebraska village in 1936. It functions today as both a municipality and the organizational headquarters of Boys Town. Its historic campus is a National Historic Landmark and listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and the village contains Boys Town's middle, high, and day schools, youth homes, a church, the Hall of History museum, a post office, a fire station, and a visitor center. Functioning as an enclave and suburb of Omaha, Boys Town covers just under one square mile. The 2020 census counted 410 residents. More recent estimates vary widely, from roughly 600 to just over 800, because almost all of the population is resident young people and staff; around 400 boys and girls live in the village at any one time.
Father Edward J. Flanagan founded Father Flanagan's Boys' Home in December 1917 and moved it to its present campus in 1921; the village around it was incorporated in 1936. Its historic campus is a National Historic Landmark. An enclave and suburb of Omaha, the village counted 410 residents at the 2020 census.
Adjacent Counties & Nearby Towns
Boys Town is unusual among Nebraska villages: it is an enclave, an incorporated municipality entirely surrounded by the City of Omaha, about ten miles west of downtown. It has its own village government, police and fire departments, post office and ZIP code (68010), but no open country around it and no neighbouring village in the ordinary sense. Its boundaries run roughly between West Dodge Road and Pacific Street, and between 132nd and 144th Streets.
Douglas County borders Washington County to the north, Sarpy County to the south, Dodge County to the north-west and Saunders County to the west. Pottawattamie County, Iowa lies east across the Missouri River.
Nearby communities. Omaha surrounds the village on every side. Elsewhere in Douglas County are Ralston, Elkhorn, Bennington, Valley and Waterloo. Immediately south in Sarpy County are La Vista and Papillion.
Points of Interest & Events
The campus is open to the public. Father Flanagan held that no fence should keep youths in or keep visitors out, and the village still works that way — vehicle entrances are off West Dodge Road, 132nd Street, 144th Street and Pacific Street.
A National Historic Landmark. The campus is listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Father Flanagan’s Boys’ Home, reference 85002439, designated a National Historic Landmark and listed on 4 February 1985. The nomination identifies 1921 — the year the home moved out to Overlook Farm — as its most significant year.
Visitors Center, 13628 Flanagan Boulevard, open Monday to Friday, 8:00 am to 4:30 pm. Self-guided tours are free; guided tours are $5.00 per person. Nebraska State Historical Society marker no. 226 stands out front.
Hall of History, 14057 Flanagan Boulevard, open Monday to Saturday 9:00 am to 5:00 pm and Sunday 11:00 am to 4:00 pm. It tells the organisation’s story and holds Spencer Tracy’s Academy Award for playing Flanagan in the 1938 MGM film Boys Town.
Father Flanagan’s House, 14153 Grodinsky Circle, is separately listed on the National Register (reference 79001439, listed 1979). Completed in March 1927 to a Georgian Revival design by Jacob M. Nachtigall, it is the oldest surviving building on the campus and has been a museum since its 1974 restoration, presented as it looked in 1929. His desk, made by residents from inlaid wood, is still there. The adjacent garden uses 1930s-era plantings.
Dowd Memorial Chapel of the Immaculate Conception, 13943 Dowd Drive, was dedicated on 5 January 1941 and holds Father Flanagan’s tomb. Mass is at 11:40 am on weekdays and at 8:00, 9:30 and 11:00 am on Sundays. Chambers Protestant Chapel, 410 Bucher Drive, holds worship at 9:30 am on Sundays. The three-acre Garden of the Bible, designed by Boys Town youth, lies between the two.
The World’s Largest Ball of Stamps sits in the Leon Myers Stamp Center at the Visitors Center. The Stamp Collecting Club started it around a golf ball in 1953 and stopped in 1955 after Ripley’s Believe It or Not took an interest. It is about 32 inches across, weighs some 600 pounds, and is made of a reported 4,655,000 cancelled stamps. Free to see.
Events. No recurring public festival or parade could be independently corroborated for Boys Town, so none is claimed here. The village’s Christmas celebration is a tradition, but it reads as an occasion for the residential community rather than a public event. Father Flanagan’s Historic Home does host an Irish Christmas display through the holiday season, which is open to visitors.
Education & Health
Schools. Boys Town runs its own schools from the Education Center at 13803 Flanagan Boulevard — private, non-sectarian and state-accredited, serving young people who live in the village. The high school carries roughly 275 to 310 students depending on which grades are counted, and the teams are the Cowboys. The organisation also operates day schools for students struggling in mainstream classrooms, including Wegner Day School in Omaha.
Families living in the surrounding neighbourhoods are served by Millard Public Schools; Millard North High School sits just south of the village on 144th Street. Westside Community Schools lies to the east.
Health care. Boys Town National Research Hospital was founded in 1977 and is known internationally for its work on childhood deafness, hearing loss and communication disorders. Its inpatient campus is here in the village at 14000 Boys Town Hospital Road, with paediatrics, a paediatric intensive care unit, surgery, diagnostic imaging, a paediatric epilepsy monitoring unit and a sleep disorders centre. The original 1977 site — and the research laboratories — remain downtown at 555 North 30th Street in Omaha. A Residential Treatment Center opened on the village campus in 2013 and a Psychiatric Inpatient Center in 2019.
Highway Access
West Dodge Road, carrying US Highway 6, runs along the northern edge of the village and is the main approach from either direction. The West Dodge freeway has an exit signed 137th Street – Boys Town.
Interstate 680 meets West Dodge Road just east of the village; its Exit 3 is signed for Boys Town. Interstate 80 runs several miles to the south and is reached either by I-680 or by following 144th Street or Pacific Street.
Within the village, 132nd and 144th Streets carry north–south traffic and Pacific Street forms the southern boundary. Vehicle entrances to the campus are off West Dodge Road, 132nd Street, 144th Street and Pacific Street. Downtown Omaha is about ten miles east; Eppley Airfield is roughly a half-hour drive.
Navigate & Explore Boys Town
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Road Conditions: Nebraska 511 — 511.nebraska.gov
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