Being a river town helped Council Bluffs grow.  It was the river that brought Lewis and Clark by as well as Abraham Lincoln and Council Bluffs' first steam engine.  The allure of the river faded a bit when folks had to find a way to get to the other side.

 In the earliest years it wasn’t much an issue; there weren’t a great many reasons to want to cross the river.  As settlers started to make their way west and gold was discovered in California a reliable mechanism to get to the other side became more important.  Ferries were one early answer.  Makeshift ferry boats were in operation for some time, but the first license for a commercial ferry operation went to George Smith in 1849.  S.S. Bayliss began the first steam ferry across the river in 1854.  The many railroad lines bringing passengers and freight to Council Bluffs provided plenty of business for several competing ferries; most consolidated in 1869 with the formation of the Union Pacific Transfer Company.  Freight cars didn’t have to be unloaded; special boats were built with tracks on board to connect to the tracks on land allowing rail cars to be rolled right onto the ferry.  When the river froze and ferries couldn’t move tracks were laid directly on the ice.

 Conventional wisdom of the time was that a permanent bridge across such a treacherous river wasn’t possible.  Indeed concerns over the logistics of building such a structure resulted in the initial tracks of the transcontinental railroad being laid from Omaha rather than milepost zero in Council Bluffs.

The obstacles of unforgiving current, finances, and unsafe working conditions were overcome by the Union Pacific with their opening of a single track railroad bridge in 1872.  This was replaced a few years later with the double tracked bridge that remains in extensive use today.

In 1888 a second bridge spanned the Missouri.  It was constructed by the Omaha and Council Bluffs Railway and Bridge Company and connected West Broadway with Douglas Street in Omaha.  Over 30,000 people turned out to celebrate the opening of the first pedestrian and wagon bridge between Council Bluffs and Omaha.

A group interested in improving the value of their real estate holdings in northeast Omaha completed a highly sophisticated turnstile bridge in 1893.  In observing that “few boats of any kind navigate the Missouri” a low bridge was designed that cleared the water by just fifteen feet.  The passage of the occasional steamboat was accommodated by a design that allowed a portion of the bridge to rotate, permitting the vessel to pass.  A western span was added in 1904, making it the largest double drawbridge of its kind in the world.

Demand for a route to move Iowa livestock to the South Omaha stockyards that avoided the traffic jams caused by the numerous trains that crossed Broadway led to the creation of the South Omaha Bridge.  A bond issue failed but financing was obtained from the Public Works Administration and the bridge opened in January, 1936.

The Knights of Ak-Sar-Ben purchased the Douglas Street Bridge in 1938; it became toll free in 1947.  By the 1950s the aging Douglas Street Bridge was woefully inadequate for the traffic volume and in need of repairs.  Plans were considered to build a second downtown bridge to handle interstate traffic leaving the older structure for just local use. 

Ak-Sar-Ben also purchased the South Omaha Bridge in 1936; it too became toll free in 1947.  It was renamed the Veterans Memorial Bridge in 1985 and was razed to make way for a wider bridge in 2010.

The interstate highway system led to the creation of two new automobile bridges in less than ten years.  The Grenville Dodge Memorial Bridge replaced the Ak-Sar-Ben bridge in 1966; the old bridge was demolished in 1968 with the exception of the easternmost pier, which remains today, though the plan to erect a building atop it accessible via a foot bridge from Dodge Park never materialized.  The plan also included a fountain that would shoot a giant plume of water that would appear to be coming “right from the middle of the street as you drive in Omaha toward Council Bluffs.”  Concerns over water potentially blowing onto the bridge and interfering with river traffic, along with costs, kept the project from coming to fruition

The Spring Street I-80 bridge opened in 1972 completing one of the last portions of that transcontinental interstate highway.   A speaker at the dedication ceremony likened its significance to the driving of the golden spike over 100 years earlier.

The most recent structure downtown to span the Missouri isn’t for trains, streetcars or automobiles.  The Bob Kerry Pedestrian Bridge opened in September, 2008.

(Photos courtesy of the Historical Society of Pottawattamie County.  Story by Story by Richard Warner.  Dr. Warner is an officer of the Historical Society of Pottawattamie County and president of Preserve Council Bluffs.).