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 The county town of Tyrone , Omagh comes form the Irish word An Ómaigh meaning The Sacred Plain.
The small market town of Omagh was established in 1610 and replaced Dungannon as the key town of the county by 1768. In more recent times Omagh fell victim to the Troubles , when on 15 August 1998 dissident republicans detonated a bomb in the centre of the town killing 31 people.
The town has since been visited by numerous heads of state including U.S President Bill Clinton, Irish President Mary McAleese and Queen Elizabeth II.
Just outside the town of Omagh is the Ulster-American Folk Park , one of the best open-air museums of its kind. The Folk Park grew up around the restored boyhood home of Judge Thomas Mellon (founder of the Pittsburgh banking dynasty). The Park's permanent exhibition, called "Emigrants", examines why two million people left Ulster for America during the 18th and 19th centuries. It also shows what became of them, following stories of both those who did well and those who did not make it, including the grim lives of indentured servants and the 15,000 Irish vagrants and convicts transported to North America in the mid 18th century.
The park has more than 30 historic buildings, some of them original, some replicas. There are settler homesteads, including that of John Joseph Hughes, the first Catholic Archbishop of New York, churches, a schoolhouse and a forge, some with craft displays, all with costumed interpretative guides.
There's also an Ulster streetscape, a reconstructed emigrant ship and a Pennsylvania farmstead, complete with log barn, corn crib and smokehouse. The six-roomed farmhouse is based on the one built by Thomas Mellon and his father in the early years of their new life in America.
A fully stocked library and database allow visitors to trace their family roots . Popular American festivals such as Independence Day and Hallowe'en are celebrated at the park and there is an Appalachian-Bluegrass music festival in early September.
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