Stanley brings old interurban railroad to life in Saturday lecture

Starting in 1906, commuters could catch an electric passenger train from Perry to Des Moines that ran every 90 minutes from 6 a.m. until midnight daily.

Officially called the Des Moines and Central Iowa Railroad but locally known as the Galloping Goose, the 40-mile route was one of many interurban railway lines built early in the 20th century across Iowa, according to Dallas County historian Rod Stanley, whose 60-minute lecture on the Perry-to-Des Moines line entertained about a dozen people Saturday morning at the Woodward Public Library.

Local investors in Perry, including David Jackson Pattee, whose family built and opened the Hotel Pattee in 1913, teamed up with Jefferson Polk, the business speculator who built the railroad.

Some 600 people road the line to Perry on its opening day, Nov. 5, 1906, including the noted Iowa agriculturalist Henry A. Wallace, a personal friend of George Washington Carver who later became the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture under Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Stanley said a branch line connected Woodward to the main line through Moran, at that time a thriving town but today virtually abandoned. Other spurs ran to the Yankee Robinson Circus grounds near Granger and Riverview Park in Des Moines.

Although the records of the Des Moines and Central Iowa are lost, and ridership is now impossible to know, Stanley said in its heyday the interurban line was popular with teachers and students going to Des Moines.

The train ran at 35 mph to 40 mph, and it stopped wherever passengers stood waiting, so the time of the journey varied. Fares were 75 cents one way and $1.25 round trip.

By 1949 America’s love affair with the automobile was in full flower, and mass transit no longer satisfied our love of personal liberty. When the Des Moines and Central Iowa ceased passenger service to Perry in September 1949, it was running just one car once a day. The line continued to be used to haul freight until 1953.

A lively question-and-answer session followed Stanley’s desultory presentation, with the eldest audience members recalling their glimpses of the galloping Goose in childhood.