“I was honestly expecting to see cornfields when I landed,”
said a college freshman from
New York,
as he flew into
Des Moines. “I mean…I knew it was only a stereotype, but
yeah…I kinda thought there would be hog lots and cornfields right next to the
airport.”
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| Downtown Des Moines, 1950s |
Situated between wild rivers, the soldiers of Fort
Des Moines were employed to control
two devastated tribes of Native Americans that had been transplanted from their
native homes in the east. After only
three years, the Sauk and Meskwaki tribes had dwindled into such disrepair,
fueled primarily by racism and illegal whiskey trade, that the unnecessary Fort
was abandoned.
Much to the chagrin of eastern Iowans, Des
Moines was quickly chosen as location for the state capital,
only having been incorporated five years after the territory was admitted into
the Union.
Whereas the previous capitol location in the eastern Iowa
City was refined, scholarly, clean and livable, downtown
Des Moines was defined by its scummy
boardwalks, muddy streets, cheap brothels, rough saloons, open pool halls, rowdy
union halls, lumberyards, machine shops and immigrant houses. Des Moines
was as blue-collared as they came.
 |
| 5th and Mulberry, looking northeast, 1873 |
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| Pleasant St, Sherman Hill Area, 1890s |
With the rise of American rail, the landscape became
littered with lines stretching from east to west, north to south, leaving Iowa
the fourth most covered state in rail road history.
Des Moines
also adopted an electric street car line in 1888, right at the forefront of the
industry. In essence, the city of
Des
Moines became connected to the rest of the
United
States like no other city could. Hauling steel from
Pittsburgh
to build the cities of the west; hauling the cattle from
Texas
to the slaughterhouses in
Chicago;
hauling the wheat from
Kansas to
the mills in
Minneapolis; sending
merchandise from warehouses in
St. Louis
to warehouses in
Omaha; the centrally
located city of
Des Moines was
integral to the development of the entire
Midwest.
 |
| Rock Island Railroad Depot, 4th St, approx 1900 |
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| Union Station Depot, 5th and Cherry, approx 1910; currently a parking lot south of the Court House |
To assist in the WWI effort, the
United
States government created the only African
American officers training camp at
Fort
Des Moines in 1917, located on the
south end of town along
Army Post Road. The
US
government had chosen the
Des Moines
location, instead of the all-black
Howard
University in
Washington
DC, because cynical politicians feared the
east coast press would uncover this “blight” on the war effort.
Farther northwest, white troops were being trained at Camp
Dodge, a massive military city which
soon sported the largest outdoor filtered pool in the world. The first American casualty of WWI brought
about the death of Merle Hay, to whom a street was named.
As if having the first and only African American officers
unit within its gates wasn’t enough, WWII brought WAAC (Women’s Army Auxiliary
Corps) to
Fort Des
Moines, being the only military location for
women across the country to serve in the WWII effort.
 |
| WAAC 16th Co, 3rd Regiment, Fort Des Moines, Apr 25 1944 |
With this kind of forward thinking attitude, the city of Des
Moines should have been more than just a cornfield and
hog lot in the center of the country.
However, like Washington Irving’s story of Sleep Hollow, the
city of Des Moines is a strange and
sleepy place, with a lull that hangs in residents’ minds like a fog. The city’s geographical expanse has been
quite stunted, and the downtown area is the same general size and shape since
the city’s founding. The population of Des
Moines peaked in the early 1960’s around 209,000
residents, and has not risen above those numbers since. Fifty years later, in 2010, Des
Moines was still at least 6,000 residents shy of their
1960 maximum.
Rail lines have all but evaporated throughout the city,
leaving naught but a single line of Union Pacific freight that runs through the
heart of downtown. Nearly all of
Des
Moines industry has vanished, and with it, much of the
downtown businesses. What once was a
vibrant automobile community along Grand and Locust avenues was stripped out
and replaced with insurance companies. The
Walnut St shopping area,
which was at least comparable to outdoor malls in larger cities like
Nicollet
Ave in
Minneapolis,
began quickly vanishing to be replaced by generic office blocks that, to this
day, can’t keep stable tenants. A
bustling downtown theater district has entirely vanished, and with it The
Paramount Theater, The Des Moines Theater, The KRNT Radio Theater, Berchel
Theater, Lyric Theater, The Majestic Theater, The RKO Orpheum Theater, The
Garden Theater, The Princess Theater, The River Hills and Riviera Theaters, The
Onyx, The Lincoln, The Strand, The Casino and The Unique Theater.
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| KRNT Radio Theater, 10th and Pleasant, approx 1940s; currently a "green space" |
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| Paramount Theater, 6th and Grand, 1930; currently Polk County Convention Complex |
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| Princess Theater on left, Berchel Theater on right, 4th and Walnut, approx 1900s; currently Capital Square and Nollen Plaza |
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| River Hills and Riviera Theaters, 2nd Ave, November 2000; currently Wells Fargo Arena |
Another interesting aspect of
Des
Moines is slowly vanishing at the inept hands of a
national corporation (Gannett) that couldn’t sell a newspaper if it was free. The Des Moines Register, has left the
hallowed confines of the Register building and moved into a few floors of Capital
Square – itself, an ugly mass of poorly designed and corrupted architecture
that was built in place of useful, older buildings.
Other sad excuses for architecture include the empty Des
Moines Convention Center at 6th and Grand, which never housed a single event
anyone cared to see; the Des Moines Civic Center showing the least acclaimed
shows in the country at twice the going rates; the empty Kaleidoscope Mall
featuring products you can ignore at any real airport (not including Des Moines
unInternational Airport, a scheme in and of itself); the godawful Nollen Plaza
(recently renamed Cowles Commons) featuring homeless bathing and birdshit
benches; The Des Moines Science Center, which allows people of all ages to pay exorbitant
fees in order to see rudimentary (often dilapidated) exhibits on uninspired
topics; The Des Moines Central Public Library, featuring the finest creaky
plastic floors, busted copper windows, state-of-the
art-but-constantly-broken-money-sinkhole-boiler, and reduced operational hours;
the Des Moines Sculpture Garden, featuring special Boner sculptures; and Wells
Fargo Arena, which has seen (maybe) a half dozen Z-List acts, and includes at
least three failed semi-pro teams.
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| Gymnast III at Des Moines Sculpture Garden - aka Giant Metal Boner with Rusty Scrotum |
On a side note, it’s interesting to consider that the state
of
Iowa has had the same
governor, Terry “The Mustache” Branstad for the last 18 years. Terry is the 2
nd longest serving
governor in
US
history, and will soon surpass the 18
th century record holder
(George Clinton of NY) if he wins his next term. Terry has never really liked
Des
Moines much, instead favoring giant-agri-business industrial
farm companies, corporate hog confinements and Chinese espionage expats. When Terry took the helm, an already
struggling city was reborn into
Corporate
Republican Wet Dream
Land full of postcard generic
Ten-Years-Behind-the-Rest wholesale history destroyers.
 |
| Terry Branstad, Governor of Iowa - hates Des Moines, love pigs. |
So what’s this all about?
Why the rant? Who cares about Des
Moines (except maybe a few people in the city itself)?
Des Moines, Iowa
was once a pretty decent place. We stood
on the forefront of history – often. Our
newspaper, the Des Moines Register and Tribune, was once only rivaled by the
New York Times for total Pulitzers won.
We lead the nation in education.
Our Iowa State Fair was, and still is, one of the biggest and best. Des Moines was even scheduled to be the first ever city to host a night time baseball game with permanent electric lights (there's a little historical wrinkle to that title). Aside from having tons of freight and
passenger rail spanning from coast to coast, aside from leading the country in
Gay rights, aside from being the only home to both African American officers
and a women’s auxiliary corps, Des Moines
used to be a place you could be proud of.
Now, it’s a joke. It’s a laughing
stock. Idiots from New
York to Seattle
heap on the chuckles when Des Moines
is at the butt.
Between a senile governor simpering and rude, a city council
bent on demolition, and corporate overlords who twist the titties of any
politician that so much as suggests “guidelines”, our town was dismantled one
dream at a time. Now, Des
Moines is the ugly eunuch at the back of the harem,
bitterly itching its bulbous flesh stump where sex organs once resided. And buddy let me tell you, it ain’t much fun.
The Disciples of Des Moines will light the torches once
more. Hovering in the shadows of
demolished buildings, or standing at the skirts of empty rail yards, we’re the
picture takers, the poem writers, the novelists. We will dip our brushes into the ether and
reawaken the spirit of creativity in this town.
