Accidentally Historic

The Iowa West Foundation recently launched a program to celebrate some of the athletes from Council Bluffs and Pottawattamie County who have achieved national recognition in various sports.  Twenty-four athletes were recognized as inaugural members of the new Council Bluffs Professional Sports Roster.  Each honoree is recognized with a banner that will be permanently displayed at the Iowa West Fie...

The sixth and final episode of our “Invisible Excellence” podcast series sees Council Bluffs Unit K’s remarkable wartime experience finally reaching its end.  Titled “The WWI Armistice Signed, Unit K/Mobile One Returns Home,” this installment follows the nurses, officers, and enlisted personnel as they  first ever battlefield hospital to move along the front lines undertake the protracted journey...

This episode looks at some Council Bluffs mysteries that have lingered through the years, yet remain unexplained.  Included are the 1977 UFO Crash at Big Lake Park, the gruesome 1926 Keeline murders at the site of today's St. Paul's Lutheran Church, the 1970 Cadillac S&S Medic Mark 1 ambulance in which 495 people died, the librarians' perpetual sitings of Julia Officer at the Carnegie Building and...

Seasonal haunted houses appeared on the local scene about fifty years ago, initially fund raisers for a variety of groups and causes.  Youth For Christ, Campus Life, March of Dimes, the Jaycees, and the Historical Society were early participants.  From church basements and abandoned buildings to semi truck trailers in parking lots, haunted houses proliferated by the 1980s.  Generally staffed by yo...

This installment finds Unit K/Mobile One being stationed ever closer to the perilous European front, with its attendant danger and devastation.   For example, during this episode, in two different postings, Mobile One narrowly avoided being shelled.  In a third, the hospital was situated so close to a gas-shell dump that an attack would have required personnel to don their gas masks in just second...

Is the American West a physical place or the concept of interacting with the wilderness and taming the land?  Better represented by John Wayne winning the West and settling down living happily ever after, or the later Clint Eastwood version of the West as a place of drunkards and violence?  Or perhaps it was as captured by Blazing Saddles and City Slickers as a wildly bigoted and backwards place t...

This is episode Four of the Invisible Excellence podcast series.  It takes the listener right into the operating tents of the Army’s first ever battlefield hospital that actually moved long the front lines with the action– Council Bluffs’ Unit K/Mobile #1. The group’s leader, surgeon and former Council Bluffs mayor Donald Macrae, Jr., set the tone in his notes: “The shelling was begun about midnig...

The tale of the Army’s first functional MASH unit, Council Bluffs’ Mobile 1 (aka Unit K) continues in this episode as writer/researcher Brian Mainwaring delves into the details of how the camps were set up, how they moved from battle to battle near the front lines, and some of the day-to-day challenges they endured including shortages of equipment, manpower, fuel, and safe drinking water. If you h...

Amelia Bloomer was born in New York but spent most of her adult life in Council Bluffs.  Her name is associated with a garment worn by women and women’s rights, but there’s a lot more to the story than that.  Amelia Bloomer dedicated her life to righting social wrongs, and when she arrived in Council Bluffs in 1855 she found a town that could very definitely benefit from her services.  In this epi...

This episode continues the story of Mobile Hospital No, 1, also known as Unit K or the Council Bluffs Unit in World War I. In this episode writer/researcher Brian Mainwaring recounts events such as an early attempt to break up Unit K, its training and observation period with the British military, the full integration of Unit K’s roster into Mobile No. 1, preparation of the hospital’s personnel and...

It was one of the deadliest conflicts of all time-- new weaponry resulted in a scale and severity of injuries that was unprecedented.  And the trauma of transporting these severely wounded to base hospitals became the weak link in the treatment chain.  Relief came in the form of a medical unit from over 4,500 miles away; Mobile Hospital #1, aka Unit K, the Council Bluffs Unit, commanded by a forme...

In this episode podcast host Richard Warner looks at the distribution of Council Bluffs' squirrel population, why they are black, how rare they are, some of the local traditions and laws regarding them, and how the Pottawattamie County jail ended up with that name.  Comments and questions are welcome!  You can reach us via email at Information@TheHistoricalSociety.org.

Questions and comments are always welcome.  Here’s link: https://www.thehistoricalsociety.org/contact-us.html  

Things out of history aren’t always what they appear. Historic figures that seem good or bad were actually every bit as complicated as we are. Even statues and monuments may have been designed to send messages other than what seems apparent. Historic General Dodge House director Tom Emmett tackles these complicated issues head on by using an incident from the Civil War that seemingly plagued Gener...

This episode was recorded March 5, 2023 at Prairie Crossing Winery https://www.prairiecrossingwine.com.  The winery is located near Treynor, Iowa, just south of state highway 92. In the episode Mr. Gray makes reference to the Grape Growers Association and its role in making southwest Iowa a strong force in in the grape industry.  You can find some photos of Prairie Crossing Winery and a brief hist...

Comments and questions are always welcome.  Contact the Historical Society at information@TheHistoricalSociety.org.  If you are interested in Council Bluffs history be sure to check our our local history videos.  Search for Council Bluffs Revealed in the YouTube search bar.  The Society also hosts a Facebook page called Council Bluffs Revealed.

Kat Slaughter is Museums Director for the Historical Society of Pottawattamie County.  She studied at the University of Wyoming, graduating in 2016 with a Bachelor's degree of History and Anthropology with an emphasis in museum studies.   Troy Stolp holds a BA from Iowa State University in Anthropology and Religious Studies, a BA from Buena Vista University in History, and an MA from UNO in Histor...

The book "Lost Restaurants of Omaha" is available at The Bookworm at 2501 S. 90th in Omaha as well as Barnes & Noble at Oak View. Stay up-to-date on restaurants and things to do in the area by following Kim Reiner: Founder and owner of Oh My! Omaha - Exploring Omaha & Beyond  and Let's Go Iowa Follow me on Facebook ,  Twitter  and see the pretty pictures on Instagram Let's pin stuff we'll never do...

Kanesville Kollectibles is located at 530 South 4th Street in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Website: kanesvillekollectibles.com

If getting there is good, getting there faster is even better, right? That seems to be the conventional wisdom, as machines are pushed to and nudged beyond their limits. It takes some brave people to test those machines, and at least on a couple of occasions Council Bluffs men were ready to accept the challenge. This podcast tells the tale of O.J. Mitchell and James Bernard Verdin, two locals that...

Patrick Toscano grew up in Council Bluffs and made law enforcement his career.  In this podcast he explains how things have changed during his decades of police work and shares some of the interesting incidents he encountered.  The podcast title is taken from the open of the old "Adam 12" television show in which the dispatcher informs the officers there is a 2-11 in progress, "handle code 3."  Th...

In this episode Kelli Bello, production manager of Council Bluffs' Firehouse Letterpress, explains how Omaha became the center of movie marketing and distribution, how film advertising and the technology used to create it changed over time, and how a good amount of the printing and cinematic archival material found its way to Council Bluffs.  Firehouse Letterpress owner Larry Richling describes th...

John G. Woodward wasn't the first to use little people in advertising, but may well have contributed to what became a popular trend for the next couple of decades.  Buster Brown shoes had adopted a comic strip character as their advertising image a few years earlier and hired little people to play Buster in tours around the country.  This came at the time when the trend was to introduce novelty in...

This episode was shared from the On First podcast series, which details the plans and progress of the FIRST AVE project by talking with planners, historians, and civic leaders.  Other episodes include information about the Great American Rail Trail and how the corridor will once again be part of a transcontinental route, the railroad history of First Avenue, the planning processes involved, what t...

Those living near the Missouri River are accustomed to periodic devastating floods, but neighbors to the normally docile Nishnabotna River were caught unawares in 1958.  One woman was swept away in her front yard, but was able to grab onto a tree trunk being swept down with her. She passed to two more trees, and ended up nearly forty miles away from her home. Another group was known as the Lucky 1...