This week in West Des Moines
About West Des Moines
West Des Moines started out as Valley Junction, a railroad town that grew up where several Rock Island lines met, with switching yards and repair shops; it was incorporated in 1893. Before that, cattleman James C. Jordan, whose name Jordan Creek still carries, had settled here, and his white frame house on Fuller Road was a station on the Underground Railroad, where John Brown stayed at least twice, once while guiding a dozen freedom seekers north. When the railroad shops moved away in the 1930s, townsfolk voted to trade the old name for a new one, and on New Year's Day 1938 Valley Junction became West Des Moines. The old business blocks on 5th Street live on as Historic Valley Junction, full of local shops, a Thursday farmers market in summer and holiday strolls in winter, and the Jordan House is now a museum run by the West Des Moines Historical Society. Out west, families can walk the trail around Blue Heron Lake in Raccoon River Park, rent a canoe or watch for some of its 180-plus bird species, and Jordan Creek Town Center, named for that same creek, is the biggest shopping center in Iowa.