Samuel Ryan Curtis and the Fight For the Frontier

General Samuel Ryan Curtis

Samuel Ryan Curtis didn’t look like a war hero. He looked more like a county surveyor who wandered onto the battlefield by mistake and never quite left. Thick sideburns. Heavy jacket. A man built for long walks and paperwork, not cannon smoke and screaming horses.

But the war didn’t care what men looked like. Curtis had been a West Point engineer, a congressman from Iowa, and a man who believed in the Union the way farmers believe in fences. When the shooting started in 1861, he quit politics and picked up a sword at age fifty-six. Most men that age were done charging at anything. Curtis was just getting started.

Missouri was the problem. Torn in half. Bushwhackers in the trees. Guerrillas in the shadows. Everybody armed. Everybody angry. Confederate armies wanted it back. Union generals wanted to hold it. Civilians just wanted to survive. One Missouri paper called it “a land where every fence rail hides a rifle and every road leads to ambush.”

Curtis was sent in to clean it up.

In early 1862, the Confederates made their big gamble. General Earl Van Dorn gathered an army and marched north into Arkansas, aiming straight at Curtis. Win the fight. Take Missouri. Threaten the Mississippi. Shake the whole Western war loose. Southern papers bragged that Van Dorn intended “to march through Curtis as through dry leaves.”

Curtis saw it coming and didn’t blink. He planted his army along Little Sugar Creek near a place called Pea Ridge and waited. Ten thousand men. Cold ground. Wet boots. No retreat planned. If the Confederate army came, they would come straight into his teeth.

The Joye Sisters Betty Ballard and Bobby Jean Lewis

Betty Ballard and Bobby Jean Lewis, better known as the Joye Sisters, were a Des Moines singing duo in the 1920s and 1930s. They headed to Mexico in May 1928, but were forced to turn back after a series of unfortunate events.

While in El Paso, they saw two Negroes lynched for attacking two white girls. That “horrible sight,” said Miss Ballard, “seemed to forecast the nightmare” of events.

They were detained in Juarez, then sent home because of the Revolution. They told reporters, “The queer taste of the Mexican food and a rumor that the revolutionists were poisoning all the food made them refrain from eating anything.”

No matter, the girls didn’t intend to let a bit of bad luck discourage them. They planned to return to Mexico in a few months after things cooled down.

Blood on the Beat: Remembering Des Moines Policeman Ollie Thomas

Policeman Ollie Thomas

Nobody agrees on the number, but the official count says seven. Seven shots cracked through the humid August night like the city itself had snapped.

August 21, 1925, near Fourth and Grand.

Some poor bastard heard the first few go off and thought it was just a car backfiring. Then two shots boomed louder than the rest, the kind that don’t lie about what they are. Gunfire always has a signature. Anyone who’s heard it knows when the lie ends.

Moments later, a bareheaded man came flying out of an alley and tore east down Grand Avenue like hell had suddenly remembered his address. The witness said the build looked right. The speed looked right. The panic looked right. Bootlegger energy, all of it.

By the time the echoes finished bouncing off brick and glass, Patrolman Ollie Thomas lay dead.

They found him crumpled at the bottom of a stairway landing, soaked in his own blood. Two bullets did the job. One through the abdomen. One through the head. Both traveling downward. That detail stuck with the detectives like a splinter in the brain.

Will Higgie Dances the Charleston Atop the Des Moines Register & Tribune Building

(from the Des Moines Register.
 August 26, 1925)

In August 1925, Des Moines got a rooftop performance no one forgot. Will Higgie—one of the original creators of the Charleston—strutted onto the roof of the Des Moines Register and Tribune building alongside his partner, Dorothy Ryan, and turned the city skyline into a dance floor. Below them, crowds looked up as the pair showed off the fast-kicking, rule-breaking dance that was sweeping the nation.

Later, Higgie let everyone in on a little secret. That famous “naughty wiggle” everyone loved? It wasn’t part of the original dance at all. It didn’t show up until after the Charleston was already loose in the world—proving that even America’s wildest dance craze was still evolving, one rooftop at a time.

That Charleston Band Davenport Iowa 1925

That Charleston Band were the featured entertainers at the Coliseum in Davenport on December 19, 1925.

(from The Daily Times. December 27, 1925)

Drake Bulldogs vs Iowa State Cyclones 1927

A scene showing the Drake Bulldogs and Iowa State Cyclones football game held at Drake's Stadium in 1927. Captain Bill Cook from Drake is running with the ball.

New Heating Plant at University of Iowa

(From the Des Moines Register. November 6, 1927)

The Des Moines Register published a photograph of the new heating plant under construction at the University of Iowa in Iowa City. The project was expected to be completed by the spring of 1928.

The plant was designed by Proudfoot, Rawson & Souers, with Professor B. P. Fleming serving as consulting engineer. The total projected cost was $500,000.