60 Fun Facts About Des Moines

The French name Des Moines is usually translated as 'River of the' what?

Monks: 'des moines' is French for 'of the monks', but the name probably began as Moingona, a people living along the river whose name French fur trappers bent into a word they knew.

Which river merges with the Des Moines River at the spot where the city was founded?

Raccoon: the Army officers who built the fort at the two rivers' meeting point in 1843 proposed calling it Fort Raccoon, but the War Department turned the name down in favour of Fort Des Moines.

In the 1969 Tinker case, the Supreme Court backed Des Moines students suspended for wearing what to school?

Black armbands: Mary Beth Tinker, 13, her brother John and a friend wore them in December 1965 over the Vietnam War, and the Court ruled 7-2 that students do not shed free-speech rights at the schoolhouse gate.

Which town was the state capital before the seat of government moved to Des Moines in 1857?

Iowa City: when the government left for Des Moines in 1857, the stone capitol it vacated was handed to the young University of Iowa as its first permanent building, and it is now a museum on the campus.

Fort Des Moines was built in 1843 on land still held by which peoples, soon removed to Kansas?

Sauk and Meskwaki: the fort closed in 1846 once both had been sent to Kansas, but Meskwaki families came back and in 1857 bought 80 acres in Tama County, the start of the Meskwaki Settlement.

Roughly how many people lived within Des Moines' city limits at the 2020 census?

About 214,000: the 2020 count of 214,133 was the first census to top the city's 1960 peak of 208,982, ending six decades in which Des Moines sat below its mid-century size.

Fort Des Moines was designated the seat of which county in 1846?

Polk: the new county seat was little more than the log buildings the Army had abandoned that same year, which settlers moved straight into as the soldiers left.

Which Des Moines utility plant was swamped in the 1993 flood, cutting service to a quarter of a million people?

The Water Works: the river came over its levee on July 11, 1993, and tap water was not safe to drink again for nearly three weeks, so the utility raised the levee and later built backup treatment plants.

Which reservoir controls the Des Moines River upstream of the city?

Saylorville Lake, a Corps of Engineers reservoir just north of the city, holds back the Des Moines River; its emergency spillway overflowed anyway in 1993 and 2008.

Which rust-brown Des Moines tower did 801 Grand overtake as Iowa's tallest building?

Ruan Center: trucking magnate John Ruan wrapped his 1975 tower in Cor-Ten steel, an alloy made to go unpainted, so it weathers to the rust-coloured skin that marks it out on the skyline.

Which Des Moines-based company built the 801 Grand tower, completed in 1991, on its downtown campus?

Principal Financial Group: it faced the tower in granite that was quarried in Brazil, cut and polished in Italy and only then shipped to Iowa.

What sits on top of the 801 Grand tower?

The tower is capped by an eight-sided copper pyramid; designers expected it to weather green, but the low-sulfur local air turned the copper a deep brown instead.

Des Moines has been nicknamed the 'Hartford of the West' because of which industry?

Insurance firms began clustering in Des Moines in the late 1800s, earning it the 'Hartford of the West' tag after Connecticut's insurance capital; Iowa's low premium tax helped keep them there.

Which magazine did Des Moines-based Meredith Corporation publish before merging with Dotdash?

Better Homes and Gardens: Edwin Meredith, who had been Woodrow Wilson's agriculture secretary, first published it under the title Fruit, Garden and Home and gave it its famous name soon afterwards.

Which future US president worked as a sportscaster at Des Moines radio station WHO?

Ronald Reagan worked as a sportscaster at WHO in Des Moines from 1933 to 1937, recreating baseball games from telegraph reports before leaving for Hollywood.

Which masked heavy metal band was formed in Des Moines in 1995?

Slipknot formed in Des Moines in 1995 and titled their second album, released in 2001, simply Iowa.

Bill Bryson's memoir about growing up in 1950s Des Moines is The Life and Times of the what?

Thunderbolt Kid: the title is the superhero alter ego Bryson invented for himself as a boy, complete with imagined superpowers.

Both of Bill Bryson's parents worked for which local institution?

The Register newspaper: his father, Bill Sr., went off each autumn to cover the World Series for it, 32 years in a row, while his mother, Mary, wrote about home furnishings.

Which Des Moines-born actress won an Oscar for her role in The Last Picture Show?

Cloris Leachman: born in Des Moines in 1926, she went through Roosevelt High School and reached the 1946 Miss America pageant as Miss Chicago, then spent her winnings on acting school in New York.

Edna Griffin was refused ice cream in 1948 at which Des Moines business, sparking sit-ins and a landmark court case?

Katz Drug Store: after pickets and sit-ins led by Griffin, Maurice Katz was convicted under Iowa's 1884 civil rights law and fined $50, a verdict the state Supreme Court upheld in 1949.

How many domes crown the Iowa State Capitol in Des Moines?

Five: one large central dome with a smaller one at each corner. A fire swept through the building beneath them in 1904, while its gas lights were being converted to electricity.

The Iowa State Capitol's central dome is covered in what?

23-karat gold leaf: the sheets are tissue-thin, and the dome has been regilded several times, most recently in 1998 and 1999 at a cost of about $482,000.

Which songwriting duo set their only musical written directly for film at the Iowa State Fair?

Rodgers and Hammerstein: their 1945 film State Fair follows an Iowa farm family to the fair in Des Moines, but when Hollywood remade it in 1962 the story was moved to Texas.

The very first Iowa State Fair, in 1854, was held in which town?

Fairfield: the first fair ran there for three days in October 1854 on a budget of $323, and the event then moved from town to town for decades before Des Moines gave it a permanent home.

The Iowa State Fair's famous life-size cow, a fixture since 1911, is sculpted from what?

Butter: the sculptor layers about 600 pounds of it over a wood-and-wire frame inside a cooler kept near 40 degrees, until a life-size dairy cow emerges.

Which act drew a record 26,200 people to the Iowa State Fair grandstand across two shows in 1972?

Sonny and Cher: their 1972 total was counted across two shows, which is how it topped any single night; the Beach Boys came within a thousand of it in 1975 with one performance.

Roughly how many people attended the 11-day Iowa State Fair in 2024?

About 1.2 million: the 2024 count was 1,182,682, then a record, for an event that has been called off only for an 1898 exposition in Omaha, World War II and the 2020 pandemic.

Which Triple-A baseball team plays its home games where Des Moines' two rivers meet?

Iowa Cubs: the club kept its old name, the Iowa Oaks, through its first season as Chicago's top farm team in 1981, and only took the parent club's name the following year.

Future Super Bowl MVP Kurt Warner played arena football in the 1990s for which Des Moines team?

Iowa Barnstormers: Warner had been stocking supermarket shelves on the night shift when the newly formed arena team signed him in 1995, and by January 2000 he was a Super Bowl MVP.

Des Moines' NBA G League team was bought and renamed in 2017 by which NBA franchise?

Minnesota Timberwolves: they bought the Iowa Energy, until then the Memphis Grizzlies' affiliate, and renamed it the Iowa Wolves, while the Grizzlies started a new team of their own near Memphis.

The track at Drake Stadium, home of the Drake Relays, is famous for being which colour?

Blue: the track, known as the Blue Oval, has drawn hundreds of Olympic champions, a long way from the first Relays in 1910, which were run in a blizzard.

Which dog breed is Drake University's mascot, celebrated in the Relays' 'Beautiful' contest?

Bulldog: a new Beautiful Bulldog is crowned each April from a pageant of pets brought from across the country, and the winner serves as mascot for that year's Relays only.

Which Midwest grocer became presenting sponsor of the Drake Relays in 2013?

Hy-Vee, the West Des Moines-based supermarket chain, became presenting sponsor of the Drake Relays in 2013, putting up prize money for the meet's elite running and field events.

Which architect designed the 1968 wing built for large sculpture at the Des Moines Art Center?

I. M. Pei: he tucked his concrete wing in behind Eliel Saarinen's low 1948 building, where it was all but hidden from the street.

Des Moines' central library, opened in 2006, was designed by which English architect?

David Chipperfield: his London practice wrapped the two-storey library in glass panels with a sheet of metal mesh sealed inside, which cuts glare and heat while keeping the views out to the park.

Salisbury House was built in the 1920s by Carl Weeks with a fortune from his Armand brand of what?

Cosmetics: his best-seller blended face powder with cold cream, and he poured the profits into a house modelled on the King's House in Salisbury, England, fitted with 16th-century English oak.

Terrace Hill, built in 1869 by Benjamin F. Allen, was the home of Iowa's first what?

Benjamin F. Allen, called Iowa's first millionaire, built Terrace Hill in 1869; the Hubbell family bought it in 1884 for $60,000 and gave it to the state in 1971.

Which governor became the first to live at Terrace Hill when he moved in during 1976?

Robert D. Ray, governor from 1969 to 1983, moved into Terrace Hill in 1976; the Robert D. Ray Asian Gardens downtown honor his resettlement of Southeast Asian refugees.

Downtown Des Moines is threaded by about four miles of climate-controlled what?

Skywalks: planners borrowed the idea from Minneapolis but ran many of the corridors along the outside walls of buildings, so the network can stay open after the businesses inside have closed.

The World Food Prize, awarded at the Iowa State Capitol, was conceived by which Nobel Peace laureate?

Norman Borlaug: honoured in 1970 for the Green Revolution, he pressed for a Nobel Prize for agriculture, was told Alfred Nobel's will ruled it out, and so founded his own award in 1986 with General Foods' backing.

The World Food Prize Hall of Laureates occupies which restored Des Moines building?

The former public library: built on the riverfront in 1903 as part of the City Beautiful movement, it gave up its books to a new central library in 2006 and reopened in 2011, restored as the Hall of Laureates.

Which convenience-store chain put its name on the downtown Des Moines arena in July 2025?

Casey's: a 10-year naming deal put the Ankeny-based chain's name on the county-owned arena on July 1, 2025, ending the 20 years it had carried a bank's name since opening in 2005.

Living History Farms, the 500-acre open-air museum with a 1700 Ioway farm, is in which Des Moines suburb?

Urbandale: Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass on the museum's fields in 1979 for about a third of a million people, after an Iowa farmer wrote inviting him to speak about stewardship of the land.

Adventureland and the Prairie Meadows racetrack-casino are both in which town northeast of Des Moines?

Altoona: Prairie Meadows opened there in 1989, was bankrupt within three years and was rescued in 1995, after local voters let the track add slot machines.

The Jordan House in West Des Moines, built in the 1850s by settler James Jordan, was a stop on what?

The Underground Railroad: Jordan was its chief conductor for the area, and John Brown stayed with him at least twice, the last time in 1859 while leading 12 people out of slavery in Missouri.

Des Moines' oldest sister-city tie, dating from 1958, is with a city in which country?

Japan: the tie with Kofu paid off within two years, when typhoons wrecked its region's farms and Iowans flew breeding hogs and shipped corn across the Pacific, an airlift remembered as the Hog Lift.

Which Balkan country, where Iowa National Guard troops served as peacekeepers, opened Iowa's first consulate in Des Moines?

Kosovo: its consulate opened downtown in 2016, three years after Iowa and the young republic signed a sister-state pact that grew out of the Guard's peacekeeping tours there.

Des Moines has no passenger rail; the nearest Amtrak stop, on the California Zephyr, is in which town?

Osceola: the Zephyr runs on the old Burlington main line across southern Iowa, which passes well south of the capital, so Des Moines passengers drive down to a restored 1907 depot.

Whose early campaigning made the 1976 Iowa caucuses a must-visit for candidates?

Jimmy Carter: he drew fewer supporters on caucus night than the 'uncommitted' bloc, but he beat every named rival, the press declared him the winner and he rode the attention to the White House.

The 'Des Moines Plan' of 1907, soon copied across the country, was a new way of organising what?

City government: a mayor and four commissioners elected citywide each ran a department, an idea borrowed from Galveston, which had devised it to rebuild after its 1900 hurricane.

Hoyt Sherman Place, an 1877 mansion, gained Des Moines' first public what in 1907?

Art gallery: the Des Moines Women's Club leased the empty mansion from the city in 1907 and built a gallery beside it; in the 1890s the same house had been the first home of Mercy Hospital.

Kanzi, a research ape in Des Moines famed for understanding spoken English, belonged to which species?

Bonobo: Kanzi picked up his keyboard of symbols as an infant simply by watching scientists try to teach it to his adoptive mother, Matata, and used it until his death in Des Moines in 2025.

Which basketball star was born in Des Moines and played her high school games for Dowling Catholic?

Caitlin Clark: with too few girls' teams around, she started out on a boys' team, then starred at Dowling Catholic in West Des Moines before breaking the NCAA's career scoring record at Iowa.

At a 1982 concert in Des Moines, Ozzy Osbourne notoriously bit the head off what?

A bat: a fan threw it on stage at Veterans Memorial Auditorium and Osbourne, who said he took it for a rubber toy, bit down, then had to have a course of rabies shots.

The 'Palace', an archaeological site found in southeast Des Moines in 2010, dates back roughly how long?

7,000 years: archaeologists checking the ground ahead of a new wastewater plant, as the law requires, uncovered traces of houses and what were then the oldest human remains found in Iowa.

Which Des Moines-born gymnast became Olympic balance beam champion in Beijing in 2008?

Shawn Johnson: her parents signed her up for gymnastics at three because she had so much energy, she trained at Liang Chow's gym in West Des Moines, and a year after Beijing she won Dancing with the Stars.

Which two interstate highways meet in the Des Moines metro area?

I-35 and I-80: the two share one roadway around the north and west of the metro, and the pair gave their numbers to 80/35, the city's summer music festival.

Which Des Moines district between the river and the Capitol is known for boutiques and restaurants?

East Village: in 2000 the city had slated several of its old buildings for demolition, until residents rallied to save them, and the survivors now house the district's shops, eateries and lofts.

Which picture magazine did Des Moines publisher Gardner Cowles Jr. launch in 1937 as a rival to Life?

Look: a teenage Stanley Kubrick sold the magazine his first photograph in 1945 and then joined its staff photographers, the job he held before he turned to directing films.

Which railroad ran Des Moines' last passenger trains, in 1970?

Rock Island: its last passenger trains called on May 31, 1970, ten years before the failing railroad shut down altogether, and its downtown depot was later restored as offices and a restaurant.