The Waukee Brief
Waukee looks brand new, and most of it is. But the town under all that new construction is over 150 years old: it started as a railroad stop that got its name in an argument, spent decades as a farm town of a few hundred people, sat on top of the deepest coal mine in Iowa, and then, in one remarkable generation, exploded. Here's the story, start to now.
Waukee was laid out as a town in 1869, and the railroad is the reason it exists. According to the City of Waukee's official history, the land was purchased on April 30, 1869, by General Lewis Addison Grant and Major William Ragan, operating as Grant, Ragan & Co., along the route of the Des Moines Valley Railroad. Before there was a town there was just a right-of-way and a plan: the rail line was coming west out of Des Moines, and a town was platted to meet it. The 1880 census counted just 245 people here, so for its first years Waukee was a very small place built around a depot.
The honest answer is that no one is completely sure what "Waukee" means, and the town almost had a different name entirely. By the City of Waukee's account, the founders originally named the town Shirley, but railroad officials insisted it carry an Indigenous-sounding name instead. The city quotes the old telling directly: "The proprietors named it Shirley, but the 'powers that be' in the railroad office in Keokuk insisted that it should have an Indian appellation, and hence Waukee it had to be." Wikipedia adds a second, separate theory, noting the name "is thought to be named after the Milwaukee Road Railroad." What the word itself means has not been reliably documented, so we won't invent one for you.
If the railroad office in Keokuk had let the founders have their way, the fastest-growing city in Iowa might today be called Shirley. Instead the rail company overruled them, and the name Waukee stuck, meaning and all.
Once the rails arrived, the town filled in fast for its size. The City of Waukee's history notes that daily post office service began in November 1869, and that businesses followed quickly: lumber yards and hardware, drug, grocery, and grain stores clustered near the tracks to serve the surrounding farms. Waukee formally incorporated in 1878. (Note: sources differ on the exact day of incorporation, so we cite only the year, which the City of Waukee and Wikipedia agree on.) For the next several decades Waukee stayed what it had started as, a small farm-and-rail town, with the census recording 292 residents in 1900.
Waukee's biggest early chapter was underground. Central Iowa sat on a coal belt, and Dallas County was part of it. According to the City of Waukee's history, the Shuler Mine, operated by the Shuler Coal Company, opened in 1921 and became the largest coal producer in the state, with the deepest mine shaft in Iowa at 387 feet. At its peak the operation employed up to 500 men and 32 mules. A nearby mine at Harris had opened just ahead of it, in September 1920.
What grew up around the Shuler Mine was a whole immigrant community, a "coal camp" of families who came from across the world to work the shaft. The City of Waukee records that the mining camp drew immigrants largely from Italy, Croatia, and Sweden, and that it supported its own churches, a school, a dance hall, a tavern, restaurants, a hardware store, and a grocery store. It was, for a while, a town within a town. But coal seams run out, and this one did: the Shuler Mine closed on May 27, 1949, and the coal-camp community scattered. The mine is gone today, but it is the single most important thing that happened in Waukee between the railroad and the modern boom, and its immigrant families are woven all through the county's older records.
For most of its history, Waukee was tiny. The census tells the story plainly: 245 people in 1880, 292 in 1900, and still just 501 in 1950, decades after incorporation. Even as the coal era came and went, Waukee remained a modest farm town on the western edge of the metro, overshadowed by Des Moines to the east and the county seat at Adel to the west. The explosive growth that defines Waukee today had not yet begun, and nothing about the place in mid-century would have predicted it.
Waukee's growth is one of the most dramatic in Iowa's history, and it happened in a single generation. The census counted 5,126 residents in 2000, then 13,790 in 2010, then 23,940 in 2020. In other words, Waukee more than doubled in a decade, then nearly doubled again. The drivers were location and land: Waukee sits on the fast-building western edge of the Des Moines metro, in Dallas County, which has been one of the fastest-growing counties in the entire United States. Open land, new subdivisions, a well-regarded school district, and an easy commute into Des Moines pulled families west in waves.
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The clearest symbol of new Waukee is Kettlestone, a large master-planned district on the south and west side of town built around walkability, mixed uses, retail, offices, apartments, and single-family homes stitched together with trails. Alongside it came Triumph Park, a major city sports and recreation complex, and continued expansion along the Raccoon River Valley Trail, the long paved rail-trail that runs through the area. Where the coal camp once stood, Waukee now builds subdivisions and "Main Street" retail districts. The bet the city is making is the same one the railroad made in 1869: put the infrastructure in first, and the people will come.
Nothing shows Waukee's growth more plainly than its schools. The Waukee Community School District is among the fastest-growing districts in Iowa, and it did something unusual for a suburb its size: it split into two comprehensive high schools. Waukee High School (the Warriors) was joined by Waukee Northwest High School (the Wolves), which opened in 2021 when the district divided into two feeders. The district now enrolls on the order of 13,600 students. A town that had 501 people in 1950 now runs two full-size high schools, which is about as clear a measure of a century of change as you'll find.
The 2024 Special Census confirmed Waukee's population at 31,823, up from 23,940 in the 2020 census, an increase of roughly a third in about four years, and the city has kept growing since. That makes Waukee the largest city in Dallas County and consistently among the fastest-growing in Iowa. The throughline from 1869 hasn't really changed: a spot on the western edge of the metro, first reachable by rail and now by interstate, where there's room to build and reasons to come. From a depot and 245 people to a city of more than 31,000, Waukee has spent its whole history growing into the space west of Des Moines.
The Waukee Area Historical Society preserves and shares the city's past, including its railroad and coal-mining history and the story of the Shuler Mine coal camp. Check the society's current hours and exhibits before you visit, and see our Waukee by the numbers almanac for where the town stands today.
Waukee was laid out as a town in 1869, along the route of the Des Moines Valley Railroad, and it incorporated in 1878. The City of Waukee dates the founding land purchase to April 30, 1869, by General Lewis Addison Grant and Major William Ragan.
The meaning of "Waukee" is not reliably documented. The City of Waukee says the founders originally wanted to name the town Shirley, but railroad officials in Keokuk insisted on an Indigenous-sounding name, and Waukee was chosen. A separate theory holds that the name comes from the Milwaukee Road Railroad.
Yes. The Shuler Mine, operated by the Shuler Coal Company, opened in 1921 and was the largest coal producer in Iowa, with the deepest mine shaft in the state at 387 feet. A coal-camp community of immigrants, largely from Italy, Croatia, and Sweden, grew up around it. The mine closed on May 27, 1949.
According to the City of Waukee, the Shuler Mine had the deepest mine shaft in Iowa at 387 feet, and it was the largest coal producer in the state during its years of operation from 1921 to 1949.
Waukee sits on the fast-building western edge of the Des Moines metro, in Dallas County, one of the fastest-growing counties in the United States. Open land, new housing, a well-regarded school district, and an easy commute into Des Moines drove the population from about 5,126 in 2000 to 31,823 in the 2024 Special Census.
Waukee's 2024 Special Census counted 31,823 residents, up from 23,940 in the 2020 census. That makes Waukee the largest city in Dallas County and one of the fastest-growing cities in Iowa.
Waukee is in Dallas County, Iowa, on the western edge of the Des Moines metro. Most other Des Moines suburbs are in Polk County, so Waukee's county services run through Dallas County in Adel.