A Des Moines Neighborhood That May Be Unique in America
How Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt were connected to Owl's Head
A column for those who love history and/or newspapers.
A grand old house located in one of the oldest residential neighborhoods in Iowa was the setting a week ago for an open house gathering of people who love to create and read good stories well told.
It could have not been a better matchup for an event and its location.
The event was an open house for the members and subscribers of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. The location was the Witmer House in Des Moines’ Owl’s Head neighborhood. It would take a long, hard search to find such a small neighborhood anywhere that was so deeply connected to the newspaper industry, in effect, to people who devoted their lives to the creation of good stories well told.
Owl’s Head consists of no more than five linear blocks along 28th Street, 29th Street, Ridge Road, and Forest Drive with homes on both sides of the street on each block. An enclave of top newspaper executives and leading journalists began settling in the neighborhood in the late nineteenth century and continued to reside there through the twentieth century. Some of them also had deep connections with pivotal events in American history.
Most of the Owl’s Head newspaper history connects in one way or another to The Des Moines Register or the newspapers it acquired as it grew.
The Owl’s Head newspaper story begins not with The Register, however, but with two newspapers that operated in Des Moines alongside The Register in the late nineteenth century – the Daily Iowa Capital, later known as The Des Moines Capital, and the Iowa State Leader, later to become the Des Moines Leader.
W. W. Witmer, who built the house at 2900 Grand Avenue in 1903, was a young man attending college in Illinois in 1863 when he decided to attend the nearby dedication of a Civil War battlefield cemetery in November of that year. For the rest of his life, he would cherish the memory of having heard President Abraham Lincoln deliver the Gettysburg Address. Eight years later, in 1871, after opening a law practice and operating a newspaper in Muscatine, Iowa, he came to Des Moines and joined in purchasing the failed Iowa Statesman, to be relaunched as the Leader.
Witmer served as publisher and/or editor of the Leader until about 1882, when he turned his attention to a different area of the newspaper industry. He purchased a group of failing small-town newspapers and transformed the business into a publisher of pre-printed pages for weekly newspapers. The venture, Western Newspaper Union, took off and soon had offices across the country. The business was acquired in the early 1900s by George Joslyn of Omaha, who would become the first millionaire in Omaha and the wealthiest man in Nebraska as he continued to grow the business. He was a media king producing content for more than 2,000 weekly newspapers. His name and fortune lived on through the creation of the Joslyn Art Museum in Omaha.
Witmer’s interests in Des Moines moved on to real estate development, including Owl’s Head, the Savery Hotel, a banking business, and a coal and mining business. He also became a power player in the Democratic Party and a fierce advocate of tariff reform. He lived at 2900 Grand Avenue with his family until his death in 1916. The Leader and the Register merged in 1902 when both newspapers transitioned to new ownership. The Witmer House also would have a 40-year-run as the residence of Iowa Governors.
Meanwhile, Lafayette Young, an Atlantic, Iowa newspaperman, came to Des Moines in 1890 and bought The Capital. He built the house at 2848 Forest Drive the following year. Young served as publisher and editor of The Capital until his death in 1926 – followed five weeks later by the death of his wife, Josephine, who had run the newspaper when Lafayette went to Cuba in 1898 to cover the Spanish-American War.
While covering the war, Young met Theodore Roosevelt, commander of the Rough Riders, and the two men became close friends. Two years later, in 1900, Young placed Roosevelt’s name in nomination for vice-president of the United States at the Republican National Convention, a nomination that soon gave Roosevelt the presidency when William McKinley was assassinated in 1901.
Lafayette Young, left, President William McKinley and Vice President Theodore Roosevelt, right, inaugural souvenir.
Young covered two more wars for his newspaper – the Second Balkan War in southeastern Europe in 1913 and World War I in 1915, before the U.S. entered that war. He also served five months as a U.S. Senator in 1910-11, when he was appointed to fill a vacant seat. In 1927, within a year of the Youngs’ deaths, The Capital, an afternoon paper, was sold to The Register and Tribune Co. and consolidated with the Tribune.
The Register’s first connection direct with Owl’s Head dates to a little more than 100 years ago, when Harvey Ingham and his family acquired the house at 2834 Forest Drive, two doors east of Lafayette Young. Ingham had come to Des Moines from Algona as associate editor of The Register and Leader in 1902. He persuaded his banker friend, Gardner Cowles, also of Algona, to join him in Des Moines and buy the newspaper the following year.
For the next 40 years, the two men worked together, Ingham as editor, Cowles as publisher, shaping a statewide newspaper of national renown. The Register, as it was known beginning in 1915, won its first four Pulitzer Prizes – two for editorial cartooning (more about this later) and two for editorial writing – under Ingham’s leadership. All four can thus be claimed by Owls Head, a possible record for any small American neighborhood. Ingham lived at 2834 Forest Drive until his death in 1949.
After the Inghams, 2834 Forest became the home of Mary Ann Riley and her family. Riley was a freelance writer who specialized in book reviews. She wrote about 400 of them during her lifetime, many for The Register’s book page, where her work became a fixture. She also wrote nine novels. Books were central to the lives of both Riley and Harvey Ingham, who was a passionate book collector. Ingham donated his collection of about 500 rare books, including a first edition of Dr. Samuel Johnson’s dictionary, to Drake University.
In 1931 or ’32, Harlan Miller and his family became Owl’s Head residents at 2900 Forest Drive, where they remained for more than 30 years. Miller created the daily Over the Coffee column in The Register in 1925 and wrote it until his retirement in 1968 with time out for service in World War II. The column was, as his successor, Donald Kaul, described it, a collection of anecdotes, jokes, and pithy observations – and it captivated Iowans each morning for decades. Miller and his family remained Owl’s Head residents until the mid-to-late 1960s.
Gordon Gammack and his family, including daughter Julie Gammack, creator of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, became Owl’s Head residents in about 1946, about 13 years after he joined The Register and Tribune news staff. Gammack, also a daily columnist, lived at 2800 Forest Drive until his death in 1974. He memorably covered three wars – World War II, the Korean War, and Vietnam – thus matching the record of Lafayette Young. Another probable first-and-only newspaper claim in America for Owl’s Head.
Gammack’s column appeared in the afternoon Des Moines Tribune, where it became a fixture on Page 1. His report about the experiences of Iowan Michael Kjome, a POW held by the North Vietnamese for five years, won one of the nation’s top journalism awards in 1974, the National Headliner Award. Julie Gammack purchased the house on Forest from her mother and lived there from 1986 to 89; she, too, worked for The Register as a columnist, from 1984 to 1992.
James McGuire came to work for The Register as assistant farm editor in 1950. He and his family resided at 2831 Ridge Road beginning in 1955. He progressed in his career to farm editor, and then to editor of the legendary Farm and Home section in The Sunday Register. He also wrote a series of articles about the dangers of slow-moving farm vehicles, which resulted in legislation creating the fluorescent orange warning triangles that still appear on combines and tractors as they drive the state’s roads. The McGuires remained at 2831 until a few years after he retired in 1981.
Frank Miller joined The Register in 1953, and his editorial cartoons appeared daily on Page 1 until his death in 1983. He won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1963. That’s three Pulitzers for Owl’s Head, likely another American first for a single small neighborhood. Miller and his family resided at 2848 Ridge Road from 1965 until about 1974. His work as a scenic watercolorist also is widely known and respected. His daughter, Mindy, who grew up at 2848 Ridge, worked at The Register as an artist in the news department.
The newspaper connection to Owl’s Head ultimately ended where it began. Mary Ann Riley continued to reside at 2834 Forest Drive until 2004. She produced book reviews for several years after that. But her last book review for The Register was published in 2001, marking the end of the Owl’s Head connection to newspapers.
Footnote
This column is based on a story I wrote for a book, Owl’s Head, A Hidden Gem, created by Sondra Ashmore, who now resides with her family in Owl’s Head. The book, which has won awards for artistic design, is available at the Beaverdale Book Store in Des Moines and at the Des Moines Art Center, as well as on Amazon.
It should be noted that Mr. Garson, a pretty fair journalist in his own right, also resided in Owl's Head.
Very interesting, Arnold. I learned a lot! I also enjoyed reading about my son-in-law’s grandfather, James McGuire.