Council Bluffs

4 photos · 2017

4 photographs tagged Council Bluffs, 2017.

Google data center facility with large metal-roofed buildings in Council Bluffs, Iowa. — Google's data center campus in Council Bluffs sits on the city's north side, near the Missouri River bluffs that gave the city its name. The company broke ground on the site in 2007, making it one of Google's first wave of purpose-built data centers outside its original Oregon location. Council Bluffs was chosen in part for its access to low-cost electricity and fiber infrastructure along the Union Pacific rail and telecommunications corridors that pass through the area. Google has expanded the campus multiple times since its opening, adding server buildings and cooling equipment to support growing demand for cloud computing and search infrastructure. The facility employs several hundred workers and remains one of the larger private employers in Pottawattamie County.

Aerial view of Google data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa, showing metal-roofed buildings and cooling infrastructure. — Google broke ground on its Council Bluffs data center in 2007 and brought the facility online in 2009, making it one of the company's earliest Midwest computing hubs. The campus sits in Pottawattamie County along the Missouri River, chosen partly for access to abundant water and power infrastructure. Google has since expanded the site multiple times, with cumulative investment in the Council Bluffs campus surpassing $5 billion. The facility relies on rooftop cooling systems and outdoor chiller units to manage heat generated by rows of servers, a design common to Google's newer data centers that reduces reliance on traditional air conditioning. Iowa's cooler climate for much of the year helps lower energy costs tied to cooling the servers that power Google Search, Gmail, and cloud computing services.

Google data center campus in Council Bluffs, Iowa, with a large server building and cooling equipment. — Google’s data center campus in Council Bluffs, Iowa, is centered on a warehouse-scale server building with extensive cooling and electrical infrastructure. The facility is part of Google’s large operational footprint in Council Bluffs, developed beginning in the late 2000s. Data centers like this house the computing, storage, and networking systems behind Google’s online services and cloud operations.

Aerial view of Google's data center facility with cooling equipment in Council Bluffs, Iowa. — This data center is located in Council Bluffs, Iowa, and is operated by Google. The facility houses rows of exterior cooling and generator equipment along its southern side, supporting server operations inside the building. Council Bluffs has hosted a Google data center campus since 2007, one of the company's earliest large-scale server facility investments in the United States. The site sits near the Missouri River on the western edge of Iowa, adjacent to industrial and agricultural land.

Built in Minneapolis

Minneapolis Photographer

Browse by location, move through long-running series, or start with recent work.

Facebook Instagram Threads X Bluesky Flickr

© 1996–2026 Chad Davis