Page 70 - Curriculum Visions Dynamic Book

Iowa
Des Moines, the capital city of Iowa
Founded 1843 Incorporated 1851 Elevation 955 ft (291 m) Population 203,433
Metro 611,549 (91st)
Des Moines is both the capital and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Iowa.
It began as Fort Des Moines which was shortened
to “Des Moines” in 1857. Fort and city are named for the Des Moines River (originally French ‘Rivière des Moines’), meaning “River of the Monks”.
Today Des Moines is well known as a center of insurance,and has an increasing role in high-tech industries, but it did not start out that way.
Des Moines is at the junction of the Des Moines and Raccoon. It has been in continuous occupation for many thousands of years. It became home to the Sauk and Meskwaki Native Americans relatively recently, however. That all stems from the U.S. government deciding to
move the Native Americans west and away from lands they wanted for pioneer settlers. In this case they moved, temporarily as it happened, the Sauk and Meskwaki Native Americans from eastern Iowa.
So the city of Des Moines began with the fort built in May 1843, whose job was to act as a kind of police station. However, by 1846 it was decided to uproot the Native Americans once again and move them ever farther west, at which point the fort was abandoned. But in this short time
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