The Grimes Brief
For most of its life, Grimes was a quiet farm town on the edge of the prairie. Then the Des Moines metro reached it, and in a single generation it nearly tripled. Here is the short history of how Grimes got here, and where the name came from.
Grimes was platted in 1881 along the railroad, incorporated in 1894, and named for James W. Grimes, the third Governor of Iowa. It stayed small for a century, then grew from about 8,200 people in 2010 to nearly 18,000 today.
The town takes its name from James W. Grimes, who served as the third Governor of Iowa and later represented the state in the United States Senate. That is also where the city's summer festival, Governor's Days, gets its name. It is a piece of local trivia that surprises a lot of newer residents, who assume the name is just a family surname rather than a nod to a 19th-century statesman.
Like many Iowa towns of its era, Grimes owes its start to the railroad. It was platted in 1881 as rail lines pushed out from Des Moines across Polk and Dallas counties, giving farmers a place to ship grain and buy supplies. The community incorporated as a city in 1894. For the better part of the next hundred years it remained what it had always been: a small, tight-knit farm town a few miles northwest of the capital.
The change came fast. As the Des Moines metro spread northwest, Grimes had what growing families were looking for: open land, an easy commute, and the well-regarded Dallas Center-Grimes school district. New subdivisions, retail along the Gateway and E 1st Street corridors, and a rebuilt downtown followed. The numbers tell the story better than anything:
That pace, nearly doubling in a decade and then adding thousands more, has put Grimes near the top of Iowa's fastest-growing cities list, and it is the reason so much of the town looks brand new.
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James W. Grimes, the third Governor of Iowa and later a U.S. Senator. The Governor's Days festival is named for the same connection.
It was platted in 1881 along the railroad and incorporated as a city in 1894.
A 2025 special census counted about 17,809 residents, up from 15,392 in the 2020 Census and 8,246 in 2010.