Council Bluffs is a city and county seat of
Pottawattamie County, Iowa, United States. The US The Census
Bureau recorded a population of 62,799 as of the 2020 census.
With the neighboring city of Omaha, Council Bluffs forms a
metropolitan area that had a population of 915,184 in 2015.
Council Bluffs predates its now larger neighboring city by a few
decades, which was founded under the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854
by a Council Bluffs businessman.
Council Bluffs is located east of the Great Plains on the east bank
of the Missouri River across from Omaha, Nebraska. The prairie
landscapes of the Loess Hills and the humid woodlands along the Missouri
River meet in the outskirts of the city.
The geographic
coordinates of Council Bluffs are 41°15'13" north latitude and 95°51'45"
west longitude. The urban area covers an area of 102.7 km², which is
divided into 96.8 km² of land and 5.9 km² of water. Council Bluffs'
urban area spans Lewis, Kane and Garner townships.
In Council
Bluffs, one of the major waterways of the Missouri River meets the
north-south Interstate 29 and west-east Interstate 80, the U.S. Highways
6 and 275 and Iowa Highway 92 together.
Iowa's capital, Des
Moines, is 135 miles east of Council Bluffs, Sioux City is 90 miles
north, and Lincoln, the capital of Nebraska, is 60 miles away via Omaha.
Kansas City is 180 miles to the south.
The town's name commemorates an 1804 meeting of the Lewis and Clark
Expedition with representatives of the Oto Indian tribe.
The
current town of Council Bluffs was settled permanently in 1838 by a
group of the Potawatomi tribe under Chief Sauganash after they were
driven out of what is now Chicago. The son of a Native American mother
and an Irish father, Sauganash's English name was Billy Caldwell, which
is why the settlement was originally called Caldwell's Camp. In
1838-1839, the U.S. Dragoons built Army a fort. The Catholic missionary
Pierre-Jean De Smet built a mission station to proselytize the
Potawatomi. De Smet assisted in Joseph Nicolas Nicollet's efforts to map
the upper Midwest and produced a map of the Missouri area from the
Platte River to the Big Sioux River that detailed the area of what is
now the town of Council Bluffs.
As more Indians from other tribes
moved into the area, inter-tribal conflicts aggravated, fueled by the
illegal whiskey trade. In 1842, Fort Croghan was built to deal with the
increasing conflict. In 1844 settlers from the Stephens-Townsend-Murphy
Party came to the area. In 1848 they named their city after Army officer
Thomas L. Kane Kanesville. Kanesville, adjacent to Caldwell's Camp,
became the main point of departure for the Mormon exodus to Utah. The
Mormon Battalion, the US's only religious army unit, started their march
into California during the Mexican-American War from Kanesville. Mormon
polygamy was first openly practiced in Kanesville, Orson Hyde of the
Quorum of the Twelve Apostles launched his newspaper, The Frontier
Guardian, and Brigham Young became the second leader of The Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
The city was transformed by
the California Gold Rush of 1848 and the exodus of most Mormons to Utah.
The town was renamed Council Bluffs again in 1853 and became one of the
major departure points for emigrants heading west. The Colorado Gold
Rush of 1858 also contributed to a brisk trade between Missouri
steamboats and westward treks.
The connection to the Chicago and
North Western Railway in 1867, the completion of the Union Pacific
Railroad's first transcontinental rail service in 1869, and the opening
of the Union Pacific Missouri River Bridge in 1872 made Council Bluffs a
major railroad hub. Other railroads such as the Chicago, Rock Island and
Pacific Railroad, the Chicago Great Western Railroad, the Wabash
Railroad, the Illinois Central Railroad, the Chicago, Burlington and
Quincy Railroad, and the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific
Railroad operated routes through the Council Bluffs, making the city the
fifth busiest railroad hub in the United States by the 1930s.
The
railroad made Council Bluffs a center of grain trading, and a multitude
of grain elevators still define the town's image. A number of industrial
companies settled in the following years.
In 1926, an area west
of the Missouri River belonging to Council Bluffs was separated from the
city and the Carter Lake community formed.
In the 1940s,
notorious criminal Meyer Lansky ran a money-laundering dog track in
Council Bluffs.
In the late 20th century, economic stagnation set
in and the population declined. At the same time, the city center was
renewed. The liberalization of gambling in Iowa was followed by the
opening of The Bluffs Run Greyhound Park in 1986. In 2005, Council
Bluffs was the number 19 gambling center in the United States.
Tyson Foods, ConAgra Foods, Grundorf, American Games, Omaha Standard,
Barton Solvents, Katelman Foundry, Red Giant Oil and Griffin Pipe had
manufacturing facilities in Council Bluffs. In 2007, Google began
setting up a server farm in the city.
Council Bluffs is home to the former county jail that operated from
1885 to 1969 and was called the Squirrel Cage. The building is one of
three Rotary Jails still in existence today, a so-called prison
architecture because of the circular arrangement of the cells. In this
type of prison, in order to gain access to a particular cell, the warden
had to turn a crank to turn the entire block of cells until the desired
cell was reached. The building is on the National List of Historic
Places. Although the mechanism had not worked since 1960, the prison
continued to operate for another nine years. Two other buildings of this
type still exist in Crawfordsville, Indiana, and Gallatin, Missouri.
The city's close ties to the railroad are showcased by three local
railroad museums: the Union-Pacific Museum in the former library
building, the home of railroad pioneer Grenville M. Dodge, and the
RailsWest Railroad Museum in the old Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific
Railroad station.
In 2004, the Iowa West Foundation, a nonprofit
dedicated to casino operators, began an initiative to plan public art in
Council Bluffs.
A park in the city center was renovated in 2007.
A new fountain and the first installations of the Iowa West Foundation's
art initiative were constructed.
The Black Squirrel, a black
subspecies of gray squirrel, is the town's mascot. As early as 1843,
John James La Forest Audubon reported an increased occurrence of these
animals in the area around today's city.
Council Bluffs is home
to the Chanticleer Community Theater as well as Hamilton College, now
part of Kaplan University.
As of the 2010 census, Council Bluffs was home to 62,230 people in
24,793 households. The population density was 642.9 people per square
kilometer. Statistically, 2.43 people lived in each of the 24,793
households.
The racial makeup of the population is 90.9 percent
White, 1.9 percent African American, 0.6 percent Native American, 0.7
percent Asian, and 3.6 percent from other races; 2.4 percent descended
from two or more ethnic groups. Regardless of ethnicity, 8.5 percent of
the population was Hispanic or Latino.
24.1 percent of the
population was under 18 years old, 62.4 percent were between 18 and 64
and 13.5 percent were 65 years or older. 51.3 percent of the population
were female.
In 2016, the median annual household income was
$55,322. Per capita income was $29,829. 15.1 percent of the residents
lived below the poverty line.
Don Chandler (1934-2011) - American football player
Lee De Forest
(1873–1961) – inventor, "grandfather of television"
Art Farmer
(1928–1999) – jazz musician
Zoe-Ann Olsen (1931–2017), water jumper
Joan Freeman (born 1942), actress
Harry Langdon (1884-1944) - silent
film star
John Sidney McCain junior (1911–1981) – Admiral, father of
John S. McCain III (1936–2018)
William Pfaff (1928-2015) - Journalist
Coleen Seng (born 1936) – politician
David Yost (born 1969) – actor
Max Duggan (*2001) - American football player