Underwood, Iowa: The Engineer's Town
Near Omaha, Iowa
Underwood, Iowa sits east of Council Bluffs, and its story begins not with a homesteader but with a locomotive. When the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad pushed through Pottawattamie County in eighteen sixty-nine, crews needed a new station. The town's name honors the first engineer to run a train over the Milwaukee tracks in the area, which came later.
The earlier settlement nearby, called Downsville, quietly faded once the railroad chose a spot three miles to the northeast. Underwood incorporated and grew steadily as a farm-service town for the surrounding cornbelt country, a role it still plays today for roughly one thousand residents.
