Des Moines Tribune
Tuesday, October 7, 1980
By Walter Shotwell
When the bell clanged in the rickey tower atop Valley Junction’s city hall, a few guys would scamper in, shove the “grab-it-and-run outfit” into the main drag and wrestle it through dirt or mud to get the fire.
Heroic as all get out.
“But in those days, they didn’t have far to go,” said Shorty Nelson. “I was just a little kid then, but I used to watch ‘em. Valley Junction only went north to Prospect-by the old high school-and west to about Thirteenth Street, and the houses were pretty sparse out that far.
If they got to the fire in time, and if there was water pressure, they’d put it out. But lot of roofs were cedar shakes, and people had coal furnaces with lots of sparks, so roof fire were common. They almost always lost the house.”
But from one two-wheeled cart with its single spool of hose in 1905, Valley Junction now lays claim to having the biggest volunteer fire department in Iowa.
Also, besides celebrating Fire Prevention Week this week, Valley Junction (Oops! West Des Moines) is celebrating its recent elevation to a Class 5 insurance rating.
This is like having Valley High’s football team go to the Rose Bowl; volunteer fire departments rarely win Class 5 ratings. It means residents and businesses pay smaller premiums than they did under the old Class 6 rating. Des Moines, with its big full-time department is only one point better -Class 4.
“It’s super,” said Nelson, who modestly acknowledged helping build “a pretty good department.”
At 69, Shorty (almost no one calls him Lloyd) Nelson of 1817 Locust St., West Des Moines, is retired after 38 years as a Rock Island Lines switchman. For 26 of those years he was chief of the fire department, and he’s still a volunteer.
Even before Nelson’s time in the department was a moving force in Valley Junction, not as firefighters but as a bunch of young blades.
“The Rock Island kinds of sponsored the fire department,” Nelson explained.
Thus, old photographs don’t show the volunteers performing death-defying feats at fires, or even displaying equipment. They’re shown as smartly uniformed drill corps, each man wielding a wooden nozzle instead of a gun.
Nelson said the corps traveled to state conventions in such far away lands as Council Bluffs and Davenport, where it did well at marching, tug-of-war and other manly arts.
The “grab-it-and-run” fire cart was kept in the old city hall, a period brick building sandwiched between what later became McIntyre’s furniture store and the Lyric Theater on Fifth street, still the downtown heart of West Des Moines.
Nelson said the fire department never used horses, but it finally did get a Model-T Ford truck to replace the hand cart.
On top of the city hall was a metal tower, much like and old windmill tower. Two ropes dangled. With no way to summon volunteers by telephone, when a fire was reported the first guy to arrive at city hall yanked the ropes to toll the bell.
Volunteer firemen (and anyone else hanging around) came running, Nelson said, and off they clattered with the “grab-it-and-run” cart as bystanders cheered them on.
Then Valley Junction burgeoned from a little railway town into a thriving business and residential community.
In about 1957, after much land to the west was annexed, Nelson recalls the mayor’s order to extend fire protection.
“What the hell with?” Nelson demanded.
“Do the best you can,” replied the mayor.
So Nelson conned the Public Works Department out of an old beat-up truck and had it spruced up. Then, for $50, he bought an old oval tank he found rusting in a field.
He mounted the old tank on the old truck and had a new tank-truck, the fire department’s first.
Today the West Des Moines fire department is still a volunteer outfit, but with a full-time chief, Randy Bracken.
The force may be far less romantic than in the old days, but it’s far more efficient, with two modern stations in widely separated parts of town and 12 pieces of equipment, including two brand new pumpers and a utility truck, the latter a gift this week from the West Des Moines Firemen’s Association.
The volunteers even have a ladder that reaches 100 feet into the air. That’s about as high as the old bell tower that used to summon brave young men of Valley Junction to duty.