1854 - Teenagers Marcus, Lipman, and Samuel Younker move to the United States from Lipno, Poland.1856 – Lipman, Samuel, and Marcus Younker establish the first Younker & Brothers Dry Goods Store in…

William Wirt Witmer grew up the 12th of 13 children on Pennsylvania farm. He attended school at Gettysburg College, leaving it to enlist in the 104th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry. After being…

At the turn of the 20th Century, many Des Moines residents sent their laundry out be laundered by others. White Star Laundry was one such company. It was owned by J.O. Anderson and operated out of the…

Were your ancestors so amazing that they lived in two different states in the same house? Probably not, it’s more likely the culprit of changing land boundaries.Between 1836 and 1855 most all 99 Iowa…

Much debate has been held over where the first night professional baseball game was played. In the late 1920s, minor league baseball attendance was slowly declining and night baseball was viewed as a…

Union Park was established in 1894 as one of Des Moines’s first parks. Originally comprised of 27 acres, the park boasted an aviary, pavilion, stone fountain, and greenhouse when it first opened.…

In April of 1873, two men from New York, along with their families, stepped off the Keokuk & Des Moines rail line (Rock Island Line) to start a business based on innovation that would change the…

The story of Alfred Lawson's utopian, non-profit university is one of the stranger episodes in the history of the Midwest.

The "flood of the century" caused great damage to the city of Des Moines, and no one who lived through it was untouched.

Almost 50 years ago Des Moines and Iowa were digging out of a massive snowstorm, remembered by many locals as the “Blizzard of ’73.” The snow started on Monday, April 9, and buried Des Moines in 12…