Johnston: A Train Stop That Became a City

The land northwest of Des Moines was first settled in eighteen forty-six when Ezekiel Hunt built a sawmill along Beaver Creek. The community went by several names over the following decades, including Huntsville and Ridgedale. The name that stuck came from John F.

Johnston, a freight supervisor on the Des Moines and Central Iowa Railway when the interurban line opened in nineteen oh five. At that point about twenty-five homes surrounded the station; the community called itself Johnston Station and eventually just Johnston. For most of the twentieth century it remained a small outpost.

But Interstate Thirty-Five made it accessible and postwar growth transformed it into one of the fastest-growing suburbs in Iowa. Today Johnston is home to DuPont Pioneer's research headquarters and nearly twenty-five thousand residents.