Omaha Mining Co, Omaha

About Omaha Mining Co

Omaha's oldest gay bar, set in a Leavenworth Street building that dates to 1889 and has poured drinks since 1946. It became a refuge for the local gay community in the late 1960s, back when a locked basement door meant a quick escape during the era's police raids. Today it reads as a working-class neighborhood dive: cheap drinks, free pool on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and Wednesday karaoke, with a crowd that has kept it going for more than half a century. The basement runs as The Mineshaft, a private back-room space for bears, leather, and kink that opens for scheduled programming rather than every night, including Gear Night on second Saturdays and Bear Bar on fourth Saturdays. Upstairs stays loose and unpretentious; the Omaha World-Herald summed up the main floor as having "a fun, inclusive, working-class, dive bar feel." If you want the city's longest-running queer history in a single room, this is the stop.