Des Moines, Iowa

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The city of Des Moines is located in Polk County. It is the county seat and the capital of Iowa.

Des Moines is 240 feet [73.15 m] above sea level.^<1>

Time Zone: Des Moines lies in the Central Time Zone (CST/CDT) and observes daylight saving time.

California, New Mexico and Washington have communities that are also named Des Moines.

At the time of the 2000 Census, Des Moines had a population of 198,682 people^<2> (or 52.85% of the total population of Polk County). The population of Des Moines represented 6.79% of the total of Iowa, making it the state's most populous community.

From the Census Estimates for 2008, Des Moines had a population of 197,052 people. This is a decrease of 0.82% since the 2000 Census.

The following table shows the recent changes in population. For the years after 2000, the population counts are estimated. More information can be found on the Census Page for Des Moines.

The following is a sample of nearby communities:

	Community	Direction	Distance<3>	2008 Population	Change Since 2000
	Altoona	NE	8 mi [12.87 km]	13,854	33.92% increase
	Ankeny	N	10 mi [16.09 km]	42,287	55.94% increase
	Clive	W	9 mi [14.48 km]	15,234	18.51% increase
	Grimes	NW	11 mi [17.7 km]	8,419	65.14% increase
	Indianola	S	14 mi [22.53 km]	14,361	10.49% increase
	Johnston	NW	9 mi [14.48 km]	15,691	81.42% increase

To learn more about neighboring communities and counties, please visit the Neighborhood Page for Des Moines.

Websites for Des Moines

If you know of a local history or genealogy society for either Des Moines or Polk County, would you please send us the URL for their website? We would like to add their link to our Gazetteer. To contact us, please visit our Feedback Page.

The Commemorative Quarter for Iowa<4>

Search for Local Businesses

Google's 'Search-by-Location' has proven to be a useful tool by people who planned visits to this area. We have prepared the following searches to help you find businesses, travel and vacation activities that are in (or close to) Des Moines. It's likely that the search results won't include all of the businesses that are in this area, but the results should give you a good foundation for further searches.

For what it's worth: In addition to helping you submit your own search, clicking 'Other...' will frequently (but not always) show you some popular searches for this area.

If you find an error or your business wasn't included in the results, please contact Google to help them resolve the issue (we simply link to 'Search-by-Location' and have no control over their results).

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Footnotes