Papers Of Abraham Lincoln

Council Bluffs, Iowa

City: Council Bluffs

County: Pottawattamie

State: Iowa

Council Bluffs, Iowa, is a city in and county seat of Pottawattamie County, Iowa. Located in southwestern Iowa on the Missouri River opposite Omaha, Nebraska, Council Bluffs was home to the Otoes, Missouris, and other Native American nations before the arrival of Euro-Americans. The area around Council Bluffs was the site of a conference between members of the Lewis and Clark expedition and Native Americans in 1804. Although Council Bluffs was not the exact site of the meeting, the name of the settlement derived its name from a description of the site of the conference coming from a member of the expedition. The site became a reservation for the Potawatomi and other Native American nations in the 1830s. In 1846, the U.S. government forced the Potawatomi to leave the area and move to another reservation in the Kansas Territory. That same year, an influx of Mormons arrived in the area. In June 1846, settlers established a town, naming it Miller's Hollow. Mormon settlers later renamed it Kanesville in honor of Thomas Kane, a U.S. Army officer sympathetic to them. Kanesville became an important outfitting and supply point for emigrants travelling to California during the gold rush in 1849 and 1850. When the Mormons departed in 1852, the remaining citizens renamed the town Council Bluffs. The Iowa General Assembly incorporated Council Bluffs as a city in January 1853. Abraham Lincoln visited Council Bluffs in August 1859. In 1863, President Lincoln selected it to be the eastern terminus of the Union Pacific Railroad.

Webster's New Geographical Dictionary (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 1988), 296; Courtlandt Canby, The Encyclopedia of Historic Places (New York: Facts on File, 1984), 1:208; Tom Savage, A Dictionary of Iowa Place-Names (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2007), 63-64; "An Act to Incorporate the City of Council Bluffs," 24 January 1853, Acts, Resolutions and Memorials of Iowa (1853), 108-16; The Lincoln Log: A Daily Chronology of the Life of Abraham Lincoln, 13 August 1859, https://www.thelincolnlog.org/Results.aspx?type=CalendarDay&day=1859-08-13.