West Des Moines, Iowa

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The city of West Des Moines is primarily located in Dallas County. A portion of West Des Moines extends into Polk County.

Typical abbreviation for West Des Moines: W. Des Moines

West Des Moines is 290 feet [88.39 m] above sea level.^<1>

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

We searched for American and Canadian communities that also have the name of West Des Moines, but it seems to be unique to this community.

At the time of the 2000 Census, West Des Moines had a population of 46,403 people^<2> (or 113% of the total population of Dallas County). The population of West Des Moines represented 1.59% of the total of Iowa, making it the state's 9th most populous community.

From the Census Estimates for 2008, West Des Moines had a population of 55,426 people. This is an increase of 19.44% 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 West Des Moines.

The following is a sample of nearby communities:

	Community	Direction	Distance<3>	2008 Population	Change Since 2000
	Altoona	NE	16 mi [25.75 km]	13,854	33.92% increase
	Ankeny	NE	14 mi [22.53 km]	42,287	55.94% increase
	Carlisle	E	14 mi [22.53 km]	3,693	5.6% increase
	Des Moines	E	7 mi [11.27 km]	197,052	0.82% decrease
	Grimes	N	8 mi [12.87 km]	8,419	65.14% increase
	Indianola	SE	17 mi [27.36 km]	14,361	10.49% increase

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

Websites for West Des Moines

If you know of a local history or genealogy society for either West Des Moines or Dallas 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

People have found Google's 'Search-by-Location' to be a useful tool when planning 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) West 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