Fort Des Moines: The Garrison That Became a City

In the spring of eighteen forty-three, a column of soldiers from the First Dragoons arrived at the confluence of the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers and began cutting timber for a fort. The man in charge was Captain James Allen, and the garrison they built was called Fort Des Moines, the third installation in Iowa to carry that name, as earlier forts bearing it had been established and then abandoned further south along the river.

The soldiers were not there to fight anyone in particular. They were there to enforce the terms of a treaty that had opened central Iowa to American settlers, and more immediately, to keep the peace between incoming homesteaders and the Sauk and Meskwaki peoples who still moved through the region. The fort accomplished this ambiguously. Settlers came anyway, in numbers, and the native population was progressively pushed out over the following decade.

What the fort actually produced was a town. Settlers clustered around the garrison walls because soldiers meant relative security, and by eighteen forty-five, a civilian settlement of some size had grown up around the fort. The military abandoned the post in eighteen forty-six, selling the buildings at auction. The settlers stayed. The territorial legislature, watching the population shift northward from the original capital at Iowa City, took notice.

Iowa achieved statehood in eighteen forty-six. The question of a permanent capital came to a vote in eighteen fifty-seven. Des Moines won, and the legislature moved north from Iowa City. The decision was partly geographic, Des Moines sat near the center of the new state, which made it easier to reach from all directions in the era of river travel, and partly political, a recognition that the population was now concentrated in the central and northern portions of the state.

The town that grew from a military timber camp in eighteen forty-three is now a metropolitan area of roughly seven hundred thousand people. The fort itself is gone. The land it occupied is now the downtown riverfront.