Davenport Locomotive Company Engine Used In China

Des Moines Register. September 14, 1930.

The Des Moines Register printed this picture of the Number One locomotive on China's K. P. Railroad. It was made by the Davenport Locomotive Company and has been in service for years. 

Booze, Bad Decisions, And Robbery In Long Grove

Stockmen's Savings Bank in Long Grove Iowa

The automobile had changed everything. In the past, men robbed banks on foot or horseback. Now they could now roll into a town, strike, and disappear down country roads before a sheriff could arrive. Small towns with one bank and a handful of streets suddenly looked vulnerable. A quiet place could be cleaned out in minutes. Newspapers across Iowa and the Midwest called them auto bandits.

Long Grove sat ten miles north of Davenport and had a population of about 150. Strangers stood out like a sore thumb. That’s why the Hudson touring car drew attention as it rolled into town on December 15, 1921.

William Clausen, a truck driver for Tri-City Bottling Works, saw it pull up and felt something was off. Then, just as quickly, he watched it move on and let the moment go. He didn’t connect it to anything until the shooting started and the whole town seemed to crack open at once.

Lucielle And Erma Iversen Clinton Iowa Performers

Lucille and Erma Iversen, better known as "The Iversen Dolls," performed for large audiences in Clinton, Iowa, in the early 1920s. The children could sing and dance like real actors.

Lucielle, age 3, usually performs as a man, and Erma, age 4, as a woman. They have performed at Red Cross benefits, automobile shows, and numerous conventions.

Ruby Hall, Queen of the Clear Lake Winter Carnival (1929)

Ruby Hall, 18, winner of the bathing beauty contest at Clear Lake, Iowa. The contest was part of the city's Water Carnival and she was named "Queen of the Carnival." As winner, she got to ride in the Queen's Float in the Venetian parade.

Lewis Worthington Smith Drake University Poet

Lewis Worthington Smith was an English professor at Drake University from 1906 to 1940. He believed writing mattered. Style wasn’t decoration. Ideas should stand up to pressure.

He belonged to the Poetry Society of America and the Authors’ Club of London, alongside writers who shaped modern literature. Locally, he was active in Des Moines intellectual circles like the University Club and the Prairie Club. That mix—Midwest roots with international reach—defined him. He was proof that you didn’t have to live on the coasts to think seriously about culture.

 

Smith wrote eighteen books, ranging from criticism to broader reflections on language and civilization. Ships in the Port used metaphor and reflection to explore stillness, waiting, and transition. The Mechanism of English Style broke writing to its moving parts, treating prose like a machine that had to work cleanly and efficiently. The Skyline in English Literature examined how writers used cities, horizons, and modern landscapes to express ambition, anxiety, and change.

 

He didn’t chase trends. He asked how English actually worked—and what it revealed about the people using it.

No Justice For Evelyn Lee

Evelyn Lee

Nine-year-old Evelyn Lee was playing near her Des Moines home on Saturday afternoon, May 10, 1930, when she disappeared in the woods along Four Mile Creek. 

Two days later, E.M. Wessels stumbled upon Evelyn’s battered body while digging up shrubs in the same woods, just south of the Youngstown Bridge on Scott Street. Investigators quickly determined she had been choked to death by a left-handed attacker. Footprints found at the scene matched Evelyn’s shoes, and showed her attacker might have been a man with a crippled right foot. 

Detectives wasted no time in narrowing their search to two suspects—Carl McCune, 34, and Elmer Gibson, 35—scrappers who had been spotted driving a beat-up 1926 Ford roadster loaded with barrels and scavenged items. Witnesses recalled seeing the pair in South Des Moines that Saturday, drinking heavily and behaving erratically. 

The manhunt ended on May 15 when police apprehended McCune and Gibson at McCune’s mother’s house in Des Moines.

Evelyn’s parents were devastated. Her stepmother learned of Evelyn’s death when Agnes Arney, a reporter for the Des Moines Register, showed up at her door.

Carlisle Straw Stack Murder

Man running from straw stack
murder scene

The straw stack murder mystery broke in Des Moines in early August 1925. A red-haired woman was clubbed her to death and then burned in a straw stack on the George Patterson farm near Carlisle.

Investigators had little evidence to go on—a pile of bones, an expensive brooch, a string of pearls, and a tuft of red hair.

Earl Leverich and Harlan Cain found the charred skeleton at the top of Watts Hill. Leverich was driving home when he saw a skull in a pile of ashes in the field.

“Harlan thought I was seeing things,” said Leverich. He stopped the truck a couple of hundred feet down the road and walked back to investigate. “As we got closer to the skull, we could make out the rest of the body, which was badly burned.

“It looked to me as if someone was having a party that ended in murder.” He saw a partial bottle of ginger ale, alcohol, and some sandwiches nearby.