Council bluffs

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Council bluffs
The historic Haymarket district
The historic Haymarket district
Location in Iowa
Pottawattamie County Iowa Incorporated and Unincorporated areas Council Bluffs Highlighted.svg
Basic data
Foundation : 1838
State : United States
State : Iowa
County : Pottawattamie County
Coordinates : 41 ° 15 ′  N , 95 ° 52 ′  W Coordinates: 41 ° 15 ′  N , 95 ° 52 ′  W
Time zone : Central ( UTC − 6 / −5 )
Inhabitants :
Metropolitan Area :
62,524 (as of 2016)
915,184 (as of 2015)
Population density : 645.9 inhabitants per km 2
Area : 102.7 km 2  (approx. 40 mi 2 ) of
which 96.8 km 2  (approx. 37 mi 2 ) is land
Postcodes : 51501-51503
Area code : +1 712
FIPS : 19-16860
GNIS ID : 0455672
Website : www.councilbluffs-ia.gov
Mayor : Matt Walsh

Council Bluffs is a town (with the status " City ") and the administrative seat of Pottawattamie County in the US -amerikanischen State Iowa . According to census of 2010 had Council Bluffs 62,230 inhabitants, the number of which by 2016 is little changed (estimate 2016 US Census Bureau ).

With the neighboring city of Omaha, Council Bluffs forms a metropolitan area that had a population of 915,184 in 2015. Council Bluffs is a few decades older than the now larger neighboring city, which was founded under the Kansas-Nebraska Act 1854 by a businessman from Council Bluffs.

Geography and traffic

The South Omaha Veterans Memorial Bridge connects Omaha , Nebraska, with Council Bluffs, Iowa

Council Bluffs is east of the Great Plains on the east bank of the Missouri across from Omaha , Nebraska . In the vicinity of the city, the prairie landscapes of the Loess Hills and the humid woodlands along the Missouri meet.

The geographical coordinates of Council Bluffs are 41 ° 15'13 "north latitude and 95 ° 51'45" west longitude. The urban area extends over an area of ​​102.7 km², which is spread over 96.8 km² of land and 5.9 km² of water. The urban area of ​​Council Bluffs spans the Lewis , Kane and Garner Townships .

In Council Bluffs, the Missouri River is one of the most important waterways and meets Interstate 29, which runs north to south, Interstate 80 , which runs west to east , US Highways 6 and 275, and Iowa Highway 92 .

Iowa's capital, Des Moines, is 207 km east of Council Bluffs, Sioux City 152 km north, and Lincoln , the capital of Nebraska, is 60 miles away via Omaha. Kansas City is 291 km to the south.

history

The name of the city recalls a meeting of the Lewis and Clark Expedition with representatives of the Oto Indian tribe that took place in 1804.

The present town of Council Bluffs was permanently settled in 1838 by a group of the Potawatomi tribe under chief Sauganash after they had been driven from the area around present-day Chicago . Sauganash , the son of an Indian mother and an Irish father, was called Billy Caldwell , which is why the settlement was originally called Caldwell's Camp . From 1838 to 1839 the US Army dragoons built a fort. The Catholic missionary Pierre-Jean De Smet built a mission station to proselytize the Potawatomi. De Smet supported the efforts of Joseph Nicolas Nicollet to map the area of ​​the upper Midwest and created a map of the Missouri area above the Platte River to the Big Sioux River , which contained a detailed overview of the area of ​​the current city of Council Bluffs.

Pierre-Jean De Smets map of the area around today's Council Bluffs from 1839. The area was called "Caldwell's Camp".

As more and more Indians of other tribes came to the area, conflicts between the different tribes intensified, which was fueled by the illegal whiskey trade. Fort Croghan was built in 1842 to control the increasing conflicts. In 1844, settlers from the Stephens-Townsend-Murphy Party came to the area. In 1848 their town was named after the army officer Thomas L. Kane Kanesville . Kanesville, which was 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 in the United States, began their march into California during the Mexican-American War in Kanesville. The polygamy of the Mormons practiced in Kanesville first open, Orson Hyde of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles brought his newspaper The Frontier Guardian out and Brigham Young was the second leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints .

The city changed with the California gold rush of 1848 and the migration of most Mormons to Utah. The city was renamed Council Bluffs again in 1853 and became one of the most important departure points for emigrants to the west. The Colorado Gold Rush of 1858 also contributed to brisk trade between steamers on the Missouri and treks west.

Connections to the Chicago and North Western Railway in 1867, the completion of the Union Pacific Railroad's first transcontinental railroad link in 1869, and the opening of the Union Pacific Missouri River Bridge in 1872 made Council Bluffs a major railroad hub. Other railroad companies 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 operate routes through Council Bluffs, making the city the fifth largest railroad hub in the United States in the 1930s .

The railroad made Council Bluffs a center of the grain trade and a large number of grain silos still define the image of the city. A number of industrial companies settled in the following years.

In 1926, an area belonging to Council Bluffs west of the Missouri was separated from the city and the Carter Lake community was formed.

In the 1940s , well-known criminal Meyer Lansky ran a dog racing track in Council Bluffs for money laundering .

The 1869-built house of Grenville M. Dodge , which on the national list of historic sites is

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 US.

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 building a server farm in the city .

Culture and attractions

Council Bluffs and
Omaha satellite photo

Council Bluffs is the former county prison, which was in operation from 1885 to 1969 and Squirrel Cage ( squirrel cage ) was called. The building is one of three Rotary Jails still in existence today , one known as a prison architecture because of the circular arrangement of the cells. In these types of prisons, in order to gain access to a particular cell, the guard had to turn a crank to make the entire cell wing rotate until the desired cell was reached. The building was included on the National List of Historic Places . Although the mechanism had stopped working since 1960, the prison continued to operate for another nine years. Two other buildings of this type still exist today in Crawfordsville , Indiana and Gallatin , Missouri .

The city's close ties to the railroad are shown through 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 .

The Iowa West Foundation , a nonprofit that runs casino operators , launched an initiative in 2004 to plan public art in Council Bluffs.

A park in the city center was redesigned in 2007. A new fountain and first installations of the Iowa West Foundation's art initiative were built.

The black squirrel , a black colored subspecies of the gray squirrel , is the town's mascot. Already in 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 is Hamilton College , now part of Kaplan University .

Population development
Census Residents ± in%
1860 2011 -
1870 10,020 398.3%
1880 18,063 80.3%
1890 21,474 18.9%
1900 25,802 20.2%
1910 29,292 13.5%
1920 36,162 23.5%
1930 42,048 16.3%
1940 41,439 -1.4%
1950 45,429 9.6%
1960 55,641 22.5%
1970 60,348 8.5%
1980 56,449 -6.5%
1990 54,315 -3.8%
2000 58,268 7.3%
2010 62,230 6.8%
2016 estimate 62,524 0.5%
1880-2000 2010-2016

population

According to the 2010 census , Council Bluffs had 62,230 people in 24,793 households. The population density was 642.9 inhabitants per square kilometer. Statistically, 2.43 people lived in the 24,793 households.

The racial the population was composed of 90.9 percent white, 1.9 percent African American, 0.6 percent Native American, 0.7 percent Asian and 3.6 percent from other ethnic groups; 2.4 percent were descended from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race was 8.5 percent of the population.

24.1 percent of the population were 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 that was average annual income for a household was 55,322  USD . The per capita income was $ 29,829. 15.1 percent of the population lived below the poverty line.

sons and daughters of the town

Individual evidence

  1. US Postal Service - ZIP Codes
  2. City of Council Bluffs - Mayor's Office.Retrieved November 7, 2015
  3. ^ Find a County
  4. Omaha.com - For the Omaha metro area, population milestone of 1 million is in sight.Retrieved November 7, 2015
  5. Google Maps
  6. ^ A b Whittaker (2008): Pierre-Jean De Smet's Remarkable Map of the Missouri River Valley, 1839: What Did He See in Iowa? Journal of the Iowa Archeological Society 55: 1-13.
  7. ^ Mullen, Frank (1925) Father De Smet and the Pottawattamie Indian Mission. Iowa Journal of History and Politics 23: 192-216.
  8. John D. Unruh, Jr .: The Plains Across. The Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840-60 . University of Illinois Press, 1993 (first printed in 1979), p. 115
  9. IWPA (Iowa West Public Art)
  10. IWPA
  11. State Data Center of Iowa (PDF; 86 kB) Retrieved November 7, 2015
  12. Annual Estimates of the Resident Population: April 1, 2010 to July 1, 2016 , American Fact Finder, United States Census Bureau
  13. Selected Economic Characteristics 2012-2016 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates , American Fact Finder, United States Census Bureau

literature

  • Richard Warner, Ryan Roenfeld: Council Bluffs: Broadway . Arcadia Publishing. 2007.
  • Kristine Gerber, Ryan Roenfeld: Council Bluffs: 365 Days, 150 Years . Nonpareil Publishing. 2007.

Web links