The Black Angel of Council Bluffs: Iowa Time Machine September 5, 1916

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On September 5, 1916, Ruth Anne Dodge, wife of Civil War general and railroad builder Grenville M. Dodge, passed away shortly after telling her daughters about a recurring dream in which an angel offered her water from a bowl. The dark bronze figure that later rose above Fairview Cemetery transformed that intimate story into one of Iowa’s most memorable public monuments.

Ruth Anne Browne Dodge belonged to a family whose life became closely tied to the making of the nineteenth-century West. She married Grenville M. Dodge in 1854, before his ascent as a Union Army general, congressman, engineer, and railroad executive. Grenville Dodge helped direct construction of the Union Pacific portion of the transcontinental railroad and made Council Bluffs a central place in his business and civic life. He died in Council Bluffs on January 3, 1916, at age 84. Ruth Anne’s loss came within the same year, placing the Dodge family at the end of an era in which its name had been associated with Civil War service, western expansion, railroads, and the growth of Council Bluffs.

Dodge described three visions while she was dying. In each, she stood on a rocky shore as a boat emerged from the mist; an angel in the boat urged her to drink from a bowl. She refused twice, then accepted on the third night and told her daughters that she felt transformed into “a new and glorious spiritual being.” Her daughters, Anne Dodge and Eleanor Dodge Pusey, commissioned sculptor Daniel Chester French to create a memorial drawn from that account.

The work was completed and dedicated in 1920 at Fairview Cemetery, although Ruth Anne and Grenville Dodge were interred in the Dodge family mausoleum at Walnut Hill Cemetery. The sculpture depicts a winged angel with one arm extended and the other supporting a vessel from which water flows. Time darkened the bronze surface, contributing to the popular name “Black Angel.” The memorial became part of the National Register of Historic Places in 1980 and was later included within the Lincoln-Fairview Historic District, marking it as both a work of nationally significant sculpture and a defining Council Bluffs landmark. #Iowa #OTD #History #CouncilBluffs #BlackAngel