The Council Bluffs area figured in major events in Iowa history, including the explorations of Lewis and Clark, the Mormon Trail, Missouri River steamboat traffic, and the railroad industry. Francois Guittar established the first white settlement at Trader’s Point in 1824, and when the Mormons arrived in 1846 they called the community Kanesville. In 1853 the state legislature changed the name to Council Bluffs, a name derived from a council Lewis and Clark held with Indians in 1804 on the west side of the river. The first steamboat landed in the area in 1819, and for the next several decades hundreds docked in Council Bluffs, bringing people and goods west on the Oregon and California trails and to the western gold fields. In 1856 Congress authorized four railroads to cross Iowa from east to west, with two set to terminate in Council Bluffs, the Northwestern from Lyons and the Rock Island from Davenport. Transportation remained central to the city, and Council Bluffs is served today by Interstate 80 and 29. Grenville M. Dodge made Council Bluffs his home in 1854 and became known as a Civil War soldier, United States Congressman, and chief construction engineer for several railroads, including the Union Pacific, whose eastern terminus was at Council Bluffs; when it joined the Central Pacific in 1869, the first transcontinental railroad in the United States was completed. Amelia Jenks Bloomer, an early resident, was a nationally known women’s suffrage leader who gave her name to a new style of clothing for women, wrote widely in periodicals during the 1850s and 1860s, and lectured on temperance and women’s rights. Another famous resident, Dr. Lee de Forest, was known for inventing the three-electrode vacuum tube and for more than 300 other patents that were significant in the development of the radio and electronics industries during the early 20th century.