I’ve often wondered about the lone pier that sits just south of the I-480 bridge near the Council Bluffs shoreline. I spotted it again during my recent visit to the new Charles E. Lakin Pier near Tom Hanafan River’s Edge Park. That inspired me to finally dig into its history and share its story.

The pier belonged to the Douglas Street Bridge, which opened in 1888 to allow streetcars and pedestrians to cross the Missouri from Omaha to Council Bluffs. It was the first permanent bridge connecting the two communities that wasn’t designed for trains.

Sixteen years earlier, Union Pacific built the very first bridge across the Missouri River connecting the eastern United States to the transcontinental railroad in 1872. The third bridge to cross the Missouri followed in 1893 when the Omaha Bridge and Terminal Railway Company built its own train bridge in East Omaha. It was later used by the Illinois Central Railroad.

Before the Omaha & Council Bluffs Railway Company built the Douglas Street Bridge, pedestrians had to cross the bridge via a ferry operated by the Council Bluffs and Nebraska Ferry, the successor to the Lone Tree Ferry, a pontoon or floating bridge, or take their chances walking over the ice during the winter months.

At approximately 1,400 feet long, the iron Whipple through truss bridge connected via Douglas Street in Omaha and West Broadway in Council Bluffs. On the Omaha side, the bridge started at around 9th Street and cut through Jobbers Canyon. It had a streetcar track on one side and a lane for wagons and pedestrians on the other side. Despite being a toll bridge, it quickly became the preferred way to cross the river. Demand was so great that the bridge was expanded in 1924.

By 1913, the old Lincoln Highway crossed the Missouri River via the Douglas Street Bridge and traveled west along Dodge Street. While only a few hundred crossed the bridge that year, the number jumped to thousands by the end of the decade. It operated under the name Lincoln Highway Bridge until the Abraham Lincoln Memorial Bridge was built at Blair in 1929. At that time, the former Douglas Street Bridge became known as the Highway 30 Bridge.

Traffic on the bridge continued to increase, particularly as automobiles became the preferred way to travel. The bridge got some relief in 1936 when the South Omaha Bridge opened, connecting Missouri Avenue to Veterans Memorial Highway in Council Bluffs. This allowed traffic supporting the stockyards to bypass downtown altogether.

The tolls became increasingly unpopular, and in 1938, the Knights of Ak-Sar-Ben, a group of businessmen, sold bonds to raise money to purchase the bridge so they could eliminate the tolls. They also purchased the South Omaha Bridge for the same purpose. They continued to charge a toll until it was paid off in 1947. More than 35,000 people joined the festivities that marked the end of tolls on the bridge. They gave the spans of the bridges to each state once it was paid off. Even though streetcars ceased using the bridge in 1948, traffic on the bridge doubled. By 1950, however, the 62-year-old bridge struggled to handle the 19,000 cars that traveled along it each day. Even so, it continued to operate until 1966, at which point it was replaced with the I-480 girder bridge that still stands today.

Despite talk that it could be repurposed as a pedestrian bridge, all but a single set of piers were demolished in 1968. Proposals were made for the two cities to take it over and keep it open. There were some concerns as to whether it was safe given that, “many components are wrought iron, which is particularly susceptible to fatigue failure,” said Deputy Chief Engineer Robert Given per a letter published in the Omaha World-Herald in 1968. Ultimately, the cities declined to acquire and maintain it, and the bridge was dismantled starting in April. It was finished in December after explosives were used to drop a 400-foot span into the river, where it was retrieved by a crane.

Before it was removed, Capt. Frank Schultz, the former train engineer for the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, lived in a cabin beneath the bridge. He was said to have “married the river” after getting divorced.

The east pier nearest the Iowa side was spared after Latenser & Sons proposed using it to build a two-story pagoda-like office building and restaurant on top of it in 1968. The building would be owned by the architecture firm, and the land would be leased by the Council Bluffs Park Board. While Latenser agreed to pay to remove it if nothing was built on it, building on the pier never came to fruition. With the bridge having been demolished and the city not wanting to pay the cost to remove the pier, the pier remained as talk of building on it continued until at least 1980. There was a mention in the newspaper of using it as the base for a fountain in 1976, when planning was underway for the riverfront parks and the “return to the river” movement.

None of the early plans came to fruition, and to this day, the pier remains south of the bridge that replaced it and east of the navigation channel. The long-sought-after footbridge finally arrived in 2008 in the form of the S-curved Bob Kerrey Pedestrian Bridge near Lewis and Clark Landing. The remaining pier continues to serve as a reminder of the first pedestrian bridge to cross the Missouri River 120 years earlier.

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