Des Moines
Fort protecting Native American lands became world's #3 insurance capital; 80+ insurers manage risk with $3.5B annual payroll. Principal's $400M bet extends the cluster.
Des Moines exists because of a paradox: a military fort built to protect Native American rights became the capital of institutionalized risk-sharing. In 1843, Fort Des Moines was established at the confluence of the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers as a garrison to protect Sak and Fox tribal lands from white encroachment. By 1845, when the lands opened to settlers anyway, the fort's military purpose evaporated—but its infrastructure remained.
The name itself hints at the city's destiny: some trace it to 'la rivière des moines' (river of the monks), others to a Moingona village, but the most evocative translation is 'De Moyen'—the middle. Des Moines became the middle between frontier and civilization, and eventually between risk and security. In 1857, state archives were hauled from Iowa City by oxen-driven bobsleds, cementing Des Moines as Iowa's capital.
Then came the mutation that defined everything after. In 1867, Frederick Marion Hubbell founded Equitable Life Insurance Company of Iowa. Insurance is mutualism at industrial scale—risk-pooling that mirrors how naked mole-rat colonies share resources and defense. One company attracted others through network effects. Today, Des Moines ranks as the world's third-largest insurance capital after Hartford and New York, with 80+ insurers employing 16% of the regional workforce.
Principal Financial Group, with $18.3 billion market cap and 9,000 local employees, occupies 801 Grand—Iowa's tallest building at 45 stories. The company is investing $400 million renovating downtown headquarters, betting on the cluster effect that brought insurers here for 150 years. Iowa's 1% insurance premium tax and zero tax on qualified life plans create a regulatory niche no competitor can replicate.
Microsoft and Facebook built data centers here in the 2010s, sensing that risk calculation attracts computation. The trajectory from protecting frontier boundaries to managing actuarial tables suggests Des Moines understood early what most cities learn late: the real currency isn't land or goods—it's trust pooled across populations.