Council Bluffs, Iowa
Pottawattamie County
19-16860
Council Bluffs is a city and county seat of Pottawattamie County in the southwest of the U.S. state of Iowa on the east bank of the Missouri River from Omaha, Nebraska. In 2000, Council Bluffs had 58 268 inhabitants.
With the neighboring city of Omaha Council Bluffs forms a metropolitan region, which had a population of 767 041 in 2000. Council Bluffs is several decades older than the larger neighboring town today, after the Kansas-Nebraska Act was founded in 1854 by a businessman from Council Bluffs.
Geography and transport
Council Bluffs is located at 41 ° 15'13 " north latitude and 95 ° 51'45 " west longitude. The city extends distribute ² water surface over an area of 102.7 km ², which is 96.8 km ² on land and 5.9 km.
Council Bluff lies east of the Great Plains and around the city come together the prairie landscapes of the Loess Hills and the wet woodland along the Missouri River.
In Council Bluffs of the Missouri River meet one of the main water arteries with the running from north to south Interstate 29 and the leading West to East Interstate 80, the U.S. Highways 6 and 275 and the Iowa Highway 92 together.
Iowa's capital Des Moines is located 207 km east of Council Bluffs, Sioux City 152 km north, Lincoln, capital of Nebraska, is located about 97 km Omaha. Kansas City is located 291 km to the south.
History
The city's name is reminiscent of a 1804 instead found meeting of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with representatives of the Indian tribe of Oto.
The present city of Council Bluffs was permanently settled in 1838 by a group of the tribe of Potawatomi chief Sauganash below, after they had been expelled from the area around present-day Chicago. Sauganash, the son of an Indian mother and an Irish father, was called with an English name Billy Caldwell, why the settlement was originally called Caldwell 's Camp. 1838-1839 built the Dragoons of the U.S. Army a fort Catholic missionary Pierre -Jean De Smet established a mission to evangelize the Potawatomi. De Smet supported the efforts of Joseph Nicolas Nicollet, to map the area of the upper Midwest and made a map of the Missourigebietes above the Platte River to the Big Sioux River, which contained a detailed overview of the area of the present town of Council Bluffs.
As more and more Indians from other tribes entered the area, conflicts intensified among the various tribes, which was fueled by the illegal whiskey trade. 1842 Fort Croghan was built to dominate the increasing conflicts. 1844 settlers came to the Stephens - Townsend - Murphy Party in the area. 1848 named their city after the army officer Thomas L. Kane Kanesville. Kanesville, which lay next to Caldwell 's Camp, became the main base for the exodus of the Mormons to Utah. The Mormon Battalion, the only religious army unit of the United States, started their march to California during the Mexican- American War in Kanesville. The Mormon polygamy was first openly practiced in Kanesville, Orson Hyde of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles brought out his newspaper, The Frontier Guardian and Brigham Young was 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 of the Mormons to Utah. The city was again renamed in 1853 in Council Bluffs and one of the main starting points of emigrants to the west. Also, the Colorado Gold Rush of 1858 contributed to a lively trade between the steamboats on the Missouri and the treks to the West.
By connecting to the Chicago and North Western Railway in 1867, the completion of the first transcontinental rail link of the Union Pacific Railroad in 1869 and the opening of the Union Pacific Missouri River Bridge 1872 Council Bluffs made an important railway junction. Other railway companies such as Chicago, rock Iceland 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 by Council Bluffs, so that the city in the 1930s, the fifth largest railway junction of the USA was.
By the railroad Council Bluffs became a center of trade in cereals and a variety of grain silos, still define the city's image. A number of industrial enterprises settled in the following years.
1926 Council Bluffs area forming west of the Missouri was separated from the city and the municipality Carter Lake formed.
In the 1940s, the well-known criminals Meyer Lansky maintained in Council Bluffs for money laundering a dog track.
In the late 20th century put an economic stagnation and the population declined. At the same time the city center was renewed. The liberalization of gambling in Iowa followed in 1986 by the opening of The Bluffs Run Greyhound Park. 2005 Council Bluffs was number 19 of the gambling centers in the United States.
Tyson Foods, ConAgra Foods, Grundorf, American Games, Omaha Standard, Barton Solvents, Katelman Foundry, Red Giant Oil, and Griffin Pipe chatted factories in Council Bluffs. 2007, Google began in the city to build a server farm.
Culture and attractions
In Council Bluffs is the former County Jail, the 1885 to 1969 was in operation and Squirrel Cage ( squirrel cage) was called. The building is one of three still existing Rotary Jails, a circular arrangement of the cells because of their so-called prison architecture. In this type of prisons had the overseer to get access to a specific cell, turning on a crank, so that the entire cell block to rotate until the desired cell was achieved. The building was included in the National List of Historic Places. Although the mechanism had not stopped working since 1960, the prison still another nine years remained in operation. Two other buildings of this type still exist in Crawfordsville, Indiana and Gallatin, Missouri today.
The tight links the city with the railway system are shown by three local railway museums: the Union Pacific Museum in the former library building, the house of the railway pioneer Grenville M. Dodge and the Rail West Railroad Museum in Old Chicago train station, rock Iceland and Pacific Railroad.
The Iowa West Foundation, a charitable foundation of the operators of casinos launched in 2004 an initiative for the planning of public art in Council Bluffs.
A park in the city center was redeveloped in 2007. A new fountain and first installations of the art initiative of the Iowa West Foundation were built.
The Black Squirrel, a black-colored subspecies of the gray squirrel, is the mascot of the city. Even John James Audubon reported 1843 La Forest on a frequent incidence of these animals in the area around the present town.
Council Bluffs is home to the Chanticleer Community Theater, as well as the Hamilton College, which is now a part of the Kaplan University.
Demographic data
In the census of 2000 a population of 58 268 was determined. These distributed to 22,889 households in 15 083 families. The population density was 601.9 / km ². There were 24,340 buildings, which corresponds to a site density of 251.4 / km ².
The population consisted in 2000 of 94.8 % White, 1.1% Black or African American, 0.5% Native Americans, 0.6 % Asian and 1.8 % other. 1.2 % said to be descended from at least two of these groups. 4.5% of the population were Hispanics who belonged to the various of the aforementioned groups.
26.0% were under 18, 10.3 % from 18 to 24, 29.7% 25-44, 20.8% from 45 to 64 and 13.2 % 65 and older. The median age was 35 years. For every 100 females were statistically 93.7 men in the over 18 -year-old 90.7.
The average income per household was $ 36,221, the average family income is $ 42,715. Men's income averaged $ 30,828, and for women about $ 23,476. The per capita income amounted to $ 18,143. Around 8.2% of families and 10.3 % of the total population were below the poverty line income.
Sons and daughters of the town
- Don Chandler - American football player
- Lee De Forest - inventor, "Grandfather of Television "
- Art Farmer - Jazz Musicians
- Harry Langdon - silent film star
- Coleen Seng - politician
- John Sidney McCain Jr. - Admiral, father of John S. McCain III
- William Pfaff - Journalist