Photograph of United States Post Office — Photograph by C. A. Tucker, CC BY-SA 3.0. Via Wikimedia Commons.

U.S. Post Office

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.

From the record

“The United States Post Office is a historic building located in Des Moines, Iowa, United States. It was individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1974.”
Wikipedia article United States Post Office (Des Moines, Iowa), CC BY-SA 4.0.

One of 208 National Register listings published here for Polk County · listed in 1974 · category: Building.

Sources: the Wikipedia article · the case file at the National Archives · the National Register database, National Park Service · the Wikipedia article

The listing

What is counted as historic. The nomination lists 1 building as contributing to the listing.
Address. 2nd and Walnut Sts., Des Noines, 50265
When was it listed? November 1974
Category. building
Township. Walnut township
Architect. James Knox Taylor
National Register reference number. 74002323 - the number the National Park Service assigned this property when it was listed, and the key its nomination file is catalogued under at the National Archives.

Fires near this property

3 since 2006

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal wildfire occurrence database lists 3 fires within 5 miles of U.S. Post Office between 2006 and 2009, burning about 7 acres in total. None started naturally. None was recorded as arson. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a fire counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Reported cause	Fires
Missing data/not specified/undetermined	3

The most recent of them, most recent first, with the day each was reported and the service that recorded it.

Date	Cause	Size	Reported by	Name on the report
4 April 2009	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	6.0 acres	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named
24 November 2008	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	1.0 acres	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named
13 January 2006	Missing data/not specified/undetermined	under an acre	Iowa Department of Natural Resources	not named

Every fire recorded in Polk County

Mines and quarries near this property

7 within 5 miles

Regional context, not property-specific evidence. The federal mineral resources record lists 7 workings within 5 miles of U.S. Post Office: 5 producers, 2 past producers. 5 still produce. What was taken out: Sand and Gravel, Construction, Stone, Crushed/Broken. Distance is straight-line from the map coordinates, so a quarry counted here may appear on a neighbouring settlement's page as well.

Site	Commodity	Status
Marquette Cement Plant	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Past Producer
Penn-Dixie Cement Plant	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Producer
West Des Moines Plant #8	Stone, Crushed/Broken	Producer
Commerce Pit and Plant	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer
I-35 and Army Post Road Pit	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer
Unknown	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Past Producer
West Des Moines Sand Plant	Sand and Gravel, Construction	Producer

Every working recorded in Polk County

Map coverage status

No historic map-sheet match is published for this property yet. That does not mean no map exists. This record needs a coordinate-quality review before it can be joined to a sheet boundary. Browse the county's mapped places while that work is pending.

Listed places nearby

6 within 8 miles

Other National Register properties close enough to walk or drive between, ordered by distance from this one. Both positions come from the same geocoding pass that matched these properties to their map sheets.

Property	Distance	Listed
Valley Junction Commercial Historic District	0.2 miles	2017
Valley Auto Co.-Morgan Auto Co. Garage	0.2 miles	2021
I.O.O.F. (International Order of Odd Fellows) Valley Junction Lodge Hall No. 604	0.3 miles	2017
Valley Junction-West Des Moines City Hall and Engine House	0.3 miles	1983
Val-Air Ballroom	0.8 miles	2022
Sylvan Theater Historic District	1.3 miles	1995

Sources for this property

National Archives record	The nomination case file for reference 74002323 in Record Group 79.
Wikipedia article	Community-written account of this property, licensed CC BY-SA.
Polk County	All 208 listed properties in this county.

Provenance

Listing record. National Park Service National Register of Historic Places, listed-properties dataset, current to 2026-05-22.
Map join. Address geocoded through the United States Census geocoder, then tested against the published boundary of every sheet in the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection.
How this page is made. Listing fields come from federal records; map-sheet coverage is a labelled coordinate-to-boundary calculation, not a source-field claim.
Wildfire. Short, Karen C. 2022. Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014]. 6th Edition. Fort Collins, CO: Forest Service Research Data Archive. https://doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6 Collected with United States Government funding and usable without additional permissions or fees.
Mines and quarries. USGS Mineral Resources Data System (MRDS) https://mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/ A work of the United States government, no copyright under 17 U.S.C. 105.