You Have to Drive to Iowa to Get to This Nebraska Airport
By Ken Jennings. Photos: Alamy.
Eppley Airfield is by far the largest airport in Nebraska, serving 4.3 million passengers every year. But travelers heading from Omaha to the airport might think they took a wrong turn when they pass "Welcome to Iowa!" signs on their way to Eppley—without ever crossing the Missouri. A look at a map reveals the problem: the city of Carter Lake, Iowa, which juts north three miles into the Omaha suburbs. One bad winter in 1877 led to a confusing century for the small city.
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Sometimes you cross the river, sometimes the river crosses you.
In March 1877, a massive gorge of melting ice blocked the Missouri River between Omaha and the Iowa city of Council Bluffs. The river began to flood, and on July 8, it burst through its banks—what geologists call an "avulsion"—and found a half-mile shortcut straight through what used to be the eight-mile "Saratoga Bend." The river bend was left abandoned as a little rainbow-shaped oxbow lake, which locals called "Cut-Off Lake."
Nine judges decided the fate of Carter Lake.
The land inside Saratoga Bend was legally part of Council Bluffs, Iowa, but in a matter of hours it found itself on the Nebraska side of the river. Omaha developers soon began building houses on their new windfall, which they called "East Omaha Island." Iowa sued Nebraska, claiming that the region south of the lake, now called Carter Lake, should remain part of Iowa. In 1892, the Supreme Court agreed, ruling that state lines should shift when rivers gradually change course, but not when they move overnight.
Cut-Off Island gets cut off from progress and law.
The town's iffy legal status—with two cities wanting its tax revenues but neither eager to provide utilities and services—made it a legal no-man's-land for decades. Omaha and Council Bluffs modernized, but this orphaned bit of Iowa was still mostly dirt roads with no sewers or electricity. Amusement parks and posh nightclubs popped up, but so did illegal boxing and animal fighting matches. Locals say that one gambling hall owner built his casino right on the state line, painted a stripe down the floor, and moved all the tables to the far side of the stripe whenever Iowa or Nebraska tried to raid him.
Carter Lakers are still Hawkeyes—but just barely.
Finally, in 1930, residents voted to secede from Council Bluffs and form their own town. Carter Lake, Iowa was born. As it became a prosperous Omaha bedroom community, Nebraska made several attempts to annex it into their state, with no legal success. So today, Carter Lake is still a little peninsula of Iowa that you can't reach without traveling on Nebraska roads. A tenth of an acre north of the town still crosses the state line, so residents have their front yards in Iowa and the backyards in Nebraska—and have to pay property taxes in both states. It's confusing, but that's just how life is in Carter Lake—until the Missouri changes its mind again.
This story originally appeared on Conde Nast Traveler.
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