Des Moines Researchers Uncover City's Hidden History Through New Projects

For decades, the stories of Des Moines' Black community, its early industrial corridors, and the lives of ordinary residents have waited in archives and cemeteries. Now, a new generation of local researchers, genealogists, and historians is pulling those narratives into the light, using everything from century-old city directories to modern public library tools.

Digitized Directories and Defunct High Schools

At the Des Moines Public Library, the Local History Collection has gone digital. City directories from 1860 through 1922 are now searchable online, alongside yearbooks from both current and defunct high schools, including West High and the now-closed Technical High. For emerging researchers tracing family roots or neighborhood change, these records are invaluable. The collection is available through the library's website, making it possible to find a great-grandfather's grocery store address or a grandmother's senior portrait without leaving home.

Woodland Cemetery and the Underground Railroad

One of the most tangible projects attracting new talent is at Woodland Cemetery, a site listed on the National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom. In recent years, researchers have documented the graves of over a dozen Underground Railroad conductors and freedom seekers buried there. The cemetery is becoming a focal point for historians and volunteers who are working to ensure those names are not forgotten. The documentation, according to reports, has grown through community-led efforts rather than institutional mandates, reflecting a grassroots push to preserve Des Moines' role in the abolition movement.

Center Street's Lost Corridor

Long before the interstate, Center Street was the cultural and commercial spine of Des Moines' Black community. From the early 1900s until the late 1960s, the street hosted Black-owned grocery stores, jazz clubs, and restaurants. The construction of Interstate 235 largely destroyed that corridor, but the memory of it has inspired a wave of storytelling, from historical markers to oral history projects. Emerging voices are now using library collections and museum archives to reconstruct the vibrancy of that era, and the Iowa History Journal has noted that state historical markers, like the one at Center Street, deserve continued attention.

Fort Des Moines: Training Ground for Firsts

Fort Des Moines Museum has long told the story of where the U.S. Army trained its first 639 commissioned African American officers for World War I in the 1910s, and later established the first training school for female commissioned officers for World War II. Today, younger curators and educators are reframing that legacy, connecting it to contemporary conversations about race and service. Their work is part of a broader Black Heritage Trail that winds through the city, linking sites like the Fort, Center Street, and Woodland Cemetery.

Grand Avenue's 17-Mile Story

A current book project is underway to chronicle the full length of Grand Avenue, from Model T assembly lines to Gilded Age governor residences. The 17-mile corridor cuts through the city's evolution, and the research, anchored at the Gray's Lake area and stretching past the State Capitol, is drawing in historians, photographers, and urbanists. The project, hosted by the Des Moines Public Library's digital tour platform, shows how one street can hold the story of an entire city's industrial rise, architectural ambition, and social change. For the next wave of local historians, Grand Avenue is both a subject and a classroom.

Whether through digitized yearbooks, cemetery documentation, or a single street's long arc, Des Moines is rich with material for those willing to dig. The key resources, the library's Local History Collection, the Fort Des Moines Museum, and the new book project, are publicly accessible, inviting anyone with curiosity to contribute to the next chapter of the city's story.