Council Bluffs

We crossed into Council Bluffs from Omaha at dusk, the Missouri River catching the last light beneath the old bridges, and Lia remarked that it felt like arriving at the edge of something rather than the middle of it — which, historically, is exactly what this place was. Named for an 1804 council between Lewis and Clark’s expedition and local tribes, Council Bluffs became the great staging ground of American westward migration a few decades later: Mormon pioneers wintered here before pushing on to Utah, and tens of thousands of Oregon and California Trail emigrants outfitted their wagons in its streets before striking out across the plains.

Rails, gold, and the Golden Spike

The town’s second act came with the railroad. Abraham Lincoln designated Council Bluffs the eastern terminus of the transcontinental railroad in 1863, and the Union Pacific’s tracks fanned out from its yards here for the next century. At the Golden Spike Monument on a bluff above town, we stood at the spot marking that decision, the rail yards still visible sprawling below, freight trains threading through in long unhurried lines. The nearby Union Pacific Railroad Museum filled in details neither of us knew — including how the Lincoln connection also tied Council Bluffs, briefly and strangely, to the California Gold Rush era’s speculative railroad surveys.

Lake Manawa and the bluffs

For something quieter, we drove out to Lake Manawa State Park, an oxbow lake left behind by a shifting bend of the Missouri, now ringed by trails and a public beach that fills with paddleboarders on warm afternoons. We rented kayaks and paddled the shoreline slowly, watching herons stalk the shallows, before climbing back into town for the view from Fairmount Park, one of the loess bluffs that give the city its name — steep, wind-deposited hills unique to this stretch of the Missouri Valley. From the overlook there, the whole confluence of city, river, and prairie horizon laid itself out at once.

Getting There

Council Bluffs sits directly across the Missouri River from Omaha, Nebraska, and shares Eppley Airfield as its nearest airport, just a ten-minute drive over the river. Interstate 80 and I-29 both run through the city, making it an easy stop for anyone driving cross-country, and Amtrak’s California Zephyr also calls at a station here on its Chicago-to-San Francisco route. Once in town, a car is the most practical way to move between the historic bluff-top sites, the rail yards, and Lake Manawa, though downtown itself is compact enough to explore on foot.