I spent the weekend in Omaha, Nebraska for a family event this weekend. I’ve made the trip through this wide flat part of the Missouri River valley countless times in the last 25 years from my home in North Dakota. 

Sargeant Floyd Bluff near Sioux City, IA is a famous spot along Lewis and Clark’s expedition of 1804-06, as it is where the only death of a member of the party took place. Today as we leave Omaha, I’m looking out at Council Bluffs, IA. This was the junction of the first meeting with the Otoe by Lewis and Clark very early in their journey. 

About 50 years after this historic “council”, Council Bluffs, then a city known as “Kanesville”, was the traditional starting point for the Mormon Trail, paralleling along the Platte River westward to the Oregon Trail, near-joining near present-day Grand Island, NE. As a youth, we’d “tube” the Platte near Kearney, NE and would occasionally find small sections of both trails, connecting us to the often difficult travels of those early pioneers. 

 I’m watching the Bluffs go by as our travel is much less arduous, as we can be all the way home in several hours- a trip that took weeks or months for those just a few generations ago- connected this weekend by the 80th birthdays of my mother and my uncle, hearing their stories of 19th century ancestors they knew firsthand.