Des Moines is the capital and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Iowa. It is also the county seat of Polk County. A small part of the city extends into Warren County. It was incorporated on September 22, 1851, as Fort Des Moines, which was shortened to "Des Moines" in 1857. It is located on, and named after, the Des Moines River, which likely was adapted from the early French name, Rivière des Moines, meaning "River of the Monks". The city's population was 214,133 as of the 2020 census. The six-county metropolitan area is ranked 83rd in terms of population in the United States with 699,292 residents according to the 2019 estimate by the United States Census Bureau, and is the largest metropolitan area fully located within the state.
Lafayette "Lafe" Young was a newspaper reporter and editor, and (briefly) a Republican Senator from Iowa.
Robert John Duax Sr. was an American athlete, coach, and politician. He was an All-Chicago football player and a star halfback for the St. Joseph's College football team. From the early 1940s through the 1990s, he was a coach, instructor and administrator, including 16 years as the head basketball coach and nine years as the athletic director, at St. Ambrose University in Davenport, Iowa. He earned a reputation as a basketball innovator and strategist and founded the St. Ambrose women's basketball team, serving as its first head coach from 1975 to 1977. He also held several political offices in the 1960s and 1970s, including service as mayor of Davenport from 1976 to 1977.
The Miss Iowa competition is the official preliminary for the state of Iowa in the Miss America Scholarship Competition.
Interstate 80 (I-80) is a transcontinental Interstate Highway in the United States, stretching from San Francisco, California, to Teaneck, New Jersey. In Iowa, the highway travels west to east through the center of the state. It enters the state at the Missouri River in Council Bluffs and heads east through the southern Iowa drift plain. In the Des Moines metropolitan area, I-80 meets up with I-35 and the two routes bypass Des Moines together. On the northern side of Des Moines, the Interstates split and I-80 continues east. In eastern Iowa, it provides access to the University of Iowa in Iowa City. Northwest of the Quad Cities in Walcott is Iowa 80, the world's largest truck stop. I-80 passes along the northern edge of Davenport and Bettendorf and leaves Iowa via the Fred Schwengel Memorial Bridge over the Mississippi River into Illinois.
The Hawk Eye is a general-circulation newspaper based in Burlington, Iowa, United States, and boasts itself as "Iowa's Oldest Newspaper."
Carroll O. Switzer was an American politician who was an unsuccessful candidate for Governor of Iowa who later served as a state court judge and briefly as a United States district judge of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Iowa.
Robert Templeton was an American artist. His work includes the civil rights collection "Lest we forget...Images of the Black Civil Rights Movement", highlighting seminal figures from the movement. Templeton painted the portrait of former President Jimmy Carter that is displayed in the Hall of presidents of the Smithsonian Institution's National Portrait Gallery.
Ruth Ann Gaines is the Iowa State Representative from the 33rd District. A Democrat, she has served in the Iowa House of Representatives since 2011.
Karl Knaths was an American artist whose personal approach to the Cubist aesthetic led him to create paintings which, while abstract, contained readily identifiable subjects. In addition to the Cubist painters, his work shows influence by Paul Cézanne, Wassily Kandinsky, Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Paul Klee, Stuart Davis, and Agnes Weinrich. It is nonetheless, in use of heavy line, rendering of depth, disciplined treatment of color, and architecture of planes, distinctly his own.
Agnes Weinrich (1873–1946) was an American visual artist. In the early twentieth century, she played a critical role in introducing cubist theory to American artists, collectors, and the general public and became one of the first American abstractionists. A life-long proponent of modernist art, she was an active participant in the art communities of Provincetown and New York. Early in her career, she traveled widely in Europe and spent extended periods studying in Paris and Berlin. She also studied art in Chicago, Provincetown, and New York. During most of her career, she worked in a Provincetown studio during the warm months and a Manhattan studio during the cold ones. Weinrich's easel work included oil paintings, watercolors, and pastels. She also made block prints and etchings and drew using pencil and crayon. Her paintings, prints, and drawings appeared in solo and group exhibitions throughout her career and she received favorable critical attention both during her life and after her death.
Ida Sedgwick Proper was an American suffragist, writer and artist. She was an art editor for The Woman Voter. Proper has work in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian, and the Des Moines Art Center.
Thomas "Tom" Jeffrey Knudson is an American journalist and a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner in 1985 and 1992.
The 2022 United States Senate election in Iowa was held on November 8, 2022 to elect a member of the United States Senate to represent the State of Iowa. Incumbent Republican Senator Chuck Grassley faced Democratic nominee Michael Franken.
The Des Moines Women's Club, founded in 1885 as the women's club movement swept through the United States, today serves the Des Moines community by providing scholarships, support for the local arts community, and other civic projects.
Russell Cowles (1887–1979) was an American artist who painted landscapes, still lifes, and human forms in a style that combined both modernist and traditional elements. In 1947 the New York Times critic Howard Devree said "his work shows a remarkably dynamic understanding of both traditional occidental and oriental painting as well as of the abstract principles which activate and underlie the modern movement as such". Over a career that spanned some fifty years, he achieved an unusual degree of success as measured by gallery representation, commercial sales of his work, critical reception, and representation in museum collections. He traveled widely throughout his life, combining the study and practice of art with an interest in learning about distant places and cultures. These travels included a circumferential world tour of nearly two years as well as frequent trips to Europe and travel within the United States.
Shannon Willis Deniston was an American athlete and sports coach. A native of Long Beach, Deniston attended St. Mary's College of California for one year before starting a professional baseball career in 1939. He played for several minor league teams before serving in World War II at the San Diego Marine Corps Base. While there he also coached the baseball team at Pepperdine University, where he received a degree, and played professional football in the Pacific Coast Professional Football League (PCPFL) and on a military service team. After the war was over Deniston returned to professional baseball as a player-manager, spending 1947 to 1955 both playing for and managing several minor league teams while also serving as a college coach at Pepperdine and Drake University. Deniston retired from playing in 1956 and became a high school football coach, a position he would serve in until 1977, when he was named head coach at United States International University. He retired from coaching in 1987. Deniston became a centenarian in 2019 and died at the age of 101 in 2020.
Robert Bauer is an American painter who creates pictures of people, landscapes, backyards, and gardens. Bauer's paintings of backyards and gardens gained him much recognition and his art has been shown in multiple exhibitions.
Charles S. Van Eaton was an American politician and businessman.
