[3] Located in a hollow of the Loess Hills on the east side of the Missouri River, Glenwood was established by Mormons in 1848 as Coonsville.

[4] It prospered during the California Gold Rush largely due to the grain mill on Keg Creek.

Two Glenwood attorneys were elected to the Nebraska territorial legislature, and they were run out of town for accepting shares in Scriptown.

Early industries included an iron foundry, an expansive marble and stone works, the Glenwood Creamery, and a large cannery that covered a city block on the east side of Locust Street.

Darting & McGavern's "Sanitary" cannery on South Vine and Railroad Avenue canned tomatoes, pumpkin, apples, and beets into the 1920s.

In 1876 the State Veterans' Orphan's Home at Glenwood was adapted for use as the Iowa Asylum for Feeble-Minded Children,[7][8] the seventh such facility in the country and the first located west of the Mississippi River.

The Glenwood facility expanded with increased acceptance of treatment and institutionalization for intellectual disability; it became the Iowa Institution for Feeble-Minded Children.

The grounds and Administration Building were largely patterned on the Kirkbride Plan, as state funding permitted.

The institution has long dominated Glenwood both economically and culturally, although the IIFMC was self-sufficient and intentionally isolated the residents from the rest of the town.

By 1925, the Glenwood IIFMC was the home of 1,555 inmates classified as idiots, imbeciles, and morons, according to contemporary definitions.

Under the influence of eugenics theory, the state had ordered sterilization of those defined as feeble-minded or worse, and experimental treatments such as cold baths and electroshock were used to reduce symptoms of psychosis and depression.

A November 17, 1957 article in the Des Moines Register revealed that Mayo Buckner had spent 59 years confined to Glenwood, despite an IQ of 120, indicating above-average intelligence.

It is now known as the Glenwood Resource Center and provides services and skills training to support people living in communities.

During the early 1950s, it had one of America's largest kosher packinghouses,[4] with most of its product shipped to New York and the East Coast.

[10] Glenwood officials worked with Mills County to help flood efforts in nearby towns like Pacific Junction, which was nearly completely submerged with hundreds displaced.

Saint Albert Catholic Schools in Council Bluffs takes students from Glenwood.