Railroads in Pottawattamie County
From The Daily Nonpareil's "Celebration 150," written by Marcia A. Hastings
America's railroads and Council Bluffs are inextricably woven together. The city was the eastern terminus for the first transcontinental railroad. All rail travel heading west in the late 1800s had to connect with the Union Pacific Railroad in Council Bluffs.
By the 1890s, the city was served by fifteen rail lines operating ninety trains per day. By 1940, the city, with six passenger depots, was the nation's fifth largest rail center. As many as sixty-one freight and sixty-three passenger trains stopped in Council Bluffs each day.
The Rock Island Depot, located at the intersection of South Main Street and 16th Avenue, is the only one of the six remaining in Council Bluffs. The former depot, built in 1899 at a cost of approximately $30,000, is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and is now the home of the RailsWest Railroad Museum and HO Model Railroad.
The significance of the Rock Island Depot lies in it representation of the railroad industry in Council Bluffs and the role the industry played in the development of the city.
Railroads spurred the development of Council Bluffs. It was the race to build the first rail lines across the country that brought Grenville M. Dodge and later Abraham Lincoln to Council Bluffs. This race led to the city's most significant period of growth.
Over the years, thousands of Council Bluffs residents have served the railroad industry in some capacity. America's race to lay the rails west and Council Bluffs' role as a major rail center, unifying the nation, is what the RailsWest Railroad Museum and HO Model Railroad seek to commemorate. Some notable historic dates include:
In 1852, Kanesville citizens authorized issuance of $300,000 in bonds for the Mississippi and Missouri Railroad, which later became the Rock Island Railroad, for the grading of four miles of roadbed east of town.
In 1853, public sentiment was obviously in favor of capitalizing on a legislative act ordering the terminus of the M&M Railroad to be in "Council Bluffs," at that time an area on both sides of the Missouri River between present-day Ft. Atkinson to just south of Bellevue, Nebraska. As a result, the name of Kanesville was abandoned in favor of Council Bluffs by special charter of the Iowa Legislature on January 19, 1853. Incorporation was authorized on January 24, 1853.
In 1855, the first rail was laid in Iowa by the Mississippi and Missouri Railroad.
In 1856, the first railroad bridge was constructed over the Mississippi River by the Rock Island Railroad. The bridge was legally and physically threatened by steamboat interests, and a subsequent lawsuit was won for the railroad by Abraham Lincoln, then an Illinois lawyer.
In 1859, Abraham Lincoln and Grenville Dodge viewed the Council Bluffs region as the potential western terminus of the Iowa rail network. Lincoln suggested Council Bluffs would serve as the interconnection for the transcontinental rail system.
In 1860, the Rock Island Railroad bought the Mississippi and Missouri Railroad and continued track construction from Iowa City toward Council Bluffs.
In 1862, Abraham Lincoln, now president of the United States, issued a vague proclamation designating Council Bluffs as the eastern terminus of the transcontinental railroad, adding to the growing rivalry between the cities of Council Bluffs and Omaha. the controversy wasn't settled until the U.S. Circuit Court ruled in favor of Council Bluffs thirteen years later.
In 1867, the Rock Island Railroad placed the first sleeping car to be used in the United States in operation.
In 1869, the driving of the Golden Spike occurred on May 10 at Promontory Summit, Utah. The first train arrived in Council Bluffs over the Rock Island track linking Council Bluffs with the Great Lakes and Chicago on May 12. The Rock Island's original depot was located near Pearl Street and Broadway. The same day the first train arrived, the cornerstone was laid for the Ogden House, so the city held a substantial celebration with Mayor Bloomer leading a lengthy parade from the Ogden House to the depot where the C.R.I. & P. Silver Horse was joined by four other engines.
On July 21, 1873, Frank and Jesse James, along with the Younger brothers, conducted their first moving train robbery near Adair, Iowa. The Rock Island train engine was derailed when members of the James gang, using a rope, pulled a previously loosened rail out of alignment as the train rounded a curve. The engineer was killed when the engine toppled over.
In 1877, the first dining rail car was put in service by the Rock Island Railroad on the Council Bluffs to Chicago run.
In 1899, the first returning military troops to use the present Rock Island Depot arrived in November from the Spanish-American War.
On May 17, 1902, thirty-five veterans of the 23rd Iowa Regiment, which had found in the Civil War, detrained at the Rock Island Depot and marched north to Bayliss Park then on to Fairview Cemetery for the burial of Col. William H. Kinsman, who had been killed and was originally buried on the battlefield near Vicksburg, Mississippi, on May 17, 1863.
On May 17, 1919, an estimated 20,000 Council Bluffs and area residents gathered to welcome home Company K and Company L from World War I.
On October 10, 1922, the 70th anniversary of the Rock Island Railroad, a tree was planted and a stone marker dedicated to Grenville M. Dodge, the former assistant engineer for the Rock Island Railroad.
The railroad era, which spanned more than 120 years after the Rock Island train arrived in Council Bluffs, continues at a different pace.
The last Rock Island passenger train pulled out of the 1899 Council Bluffs depot at 11 a.m. on May 31, 1970, carrying thirty-two passengers bound for Des Moines, Davenport and Chicago. The last day of operations for the Rock Island Railroad was March 31, 1980.
Railroading has ad a profound impact on the development of Council Bluffs. Nothing else influenced the city's history so dramatically for so long - not the Indians, not the Mormons, not the wars and not modern technology.
For more railroad information, please visit the Central Pacific Railroad Photographic History Museum. They have stereoviews, engravings, maps and documents illustrating the history of the first transcontinental railroad.
My Job
- It's not my place to run the train
- The whistle I can't blow
- It's not my place to say how far
- The train's allowed to go
- It's not my place to shoot off steam
- Nor even clang the bell
- But let the damn thing
- Jump the track
- AND SEE WHO CATCHES HELL!
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