Council Bluffs, Iowa - History

History

The city was named for an 1804 meeting of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with the Otoe tribe, which took place near present-day Fort Calhoun, Nebraska. The Council Bluffs became the generic name for the land on both sides of the Missouri River north of the mouth of the Platte River and northwestern corner of Mills County, Iowa was then specifically called Council Bluffs.

The present city of Council Bluffs was first settled by Sauganash and his Potawatomi band in 1838. He won the respect of Americans in the War of 1812, but was later persuaded to remove from what became Chicago. Sauganash, the mixed-race son of Irish immigrant William Caldwell and a Mohawk mother, was also called Billy Caldwell. The Potawatomi main settlement, which numbered about 2,000 people, became called Caldwell's Camp. The U.S. Dragoons built a small fort nearby.

In 1838-39, the missionary Pierre-Jean De Smet founded St. Joseph's Mission to minister to the Potawatomi. De Smet was appalled by the violence and brutality caused by the whiskey trade, and tried to protect the tribe from unscrupulous traders. He had little success in persuading tribal members to convert to Christianity, and resorted to secret baptisms of Indian children.

During this time, De Smet contributed to Joseph Nicollet’s work in mapping the Upper Midwest. He produced the first detailed map of the Missouri River valley system, from below the Platte River to the Big Sioux River. De Smet's map included the first European-recorded details of the Council Bluffs area.

De Smet wrote an early description of the Potawatomi settlement, which captures his bias:

"Imagine a great number of cabins and tents, made of the bark of trees, buffalo skins, coarse cloth, rushes and sods, all of a mournful and funeral aspect, of all sizes and shapes, some supported by one pole, others having six, and with the covering stretched in all the different styles imaginable, and all scattered here and there in the greatest confusion, and you will have an Indian village."

As more Indian tribes were pushed into the Council Bluffs area by pressure of European-American settlement to the east, inter-tribal conflict increased, fueled by the illegal whiskey trade. The US Army built Fort Croghan in 1842 to keep order and try to control liquor traffic on the Missouri River.

In 1844 the Stephens-Townsend-Murphy Party crossed the Missouri River here on their way to blaze a new path into California across the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Beginning in 1846 there was a large influz of Latter-day Saints into the area, although in the winter of 1847-1848 most Latter-day Saints crossed to the Nebraska side of the Missouri River. Initially the area was called Miller's Hollow after Henry W. Miller who would be the first member of the Iowa State Legislature from the area. Miller also was the foreman for the construction of the Kanesville Tabernacle.

By 1848 the town had become known as Kanesville, named for benefactor Thomas L. Kane, who had helped negotiate in Washington DC federal permission for the Mormons to use Indian land along the Missouri for their winter encampment of 1846-47. Built at or next to Caldwell's Camp, Kanesville became the main outfitting point for the Mormon Exodus to Utah, and is the recognized head end of the Mormon Trail. Edwin Carter, who would become a noted naturalist in Colorado, worked here from 1848-1859 in a dry goods store. He helped supply Mormon wagon trains.

The Mormon Battalion began their march from Kanesville to California during the Mexican–American War. This was where their practice of plural marriage was first openly practiced. Orson Hyde began publishing The Frontier Guardian newspaper, and Brigham Young was sustained as the second president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS church). The community was transformed by the California Gold Rush and the majority of Mormons left for Utah by 1852.

The town was renamed Council Bluffs. It continued as a major outfitting point on the Missouri for the Emigrant Trail and Pike's Peak Gold Rush, and entertained a lively steamboat trade. With the completion of the Chicago and North Western Railway into Council Bluffs in 1867, the transcontinental railroad in 1869, and the opening of the Union Pacific Missouri River Bridge in 1872, Council Bluffs became a major railroad center. Other railroads operating in the city came to include the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad, Chicago Great Western Railway, Wabash Railroad, Illinois Central Railroad, Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad and the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad. In 1926 the portion of Council Bluffs west of the Missouri River seceded to form Carter Lake, Iowa, but this did not affect the main growth.

By the 1930s, Council Bluffs had grown into the country's fifth largest rail center. The railroads helped the city become a center for grain storage. Massive grain elevators continue to mark the city's skyline. Other industries in the city included Giant Manufacturing, Reliance Batteries, Monarch, Mona Motor Oil, Woodward's Candy, Kimball Elevators, World Radio, Dwarfies Cereal, Georgie Porgie Cereal, Blue Star Foods, and Frito-Lay. During the 1940s, Meyer Lansky operated a greyhound racing track in Council Bluffs. The late 20th century brought economic stagnation, a declining population, and downtown urban renewal.