A South-Side Neighborhood with an Unusual Beginning
The Easter Lake Area is one of those Des Moines neighborhoods that feels both established and still wonderfully open. On a summer evening, residents can walk along Easter Lake Drive, watch boats move across the water, or follow the Mark C. Ackelson Trail near Watrous Avenue and Evergreen Drive. Yet beneath the park’s picnic shelters, wooded hills, and playgrounds is a surprisingly industrial past.
Before the lake, much of southeastern Des Moines was farmland, oak savanna, and tallgrass prairie. The area was also home to coal mining. In fact, the site that became Easter Lake was the location of the last operating coal mine in Polk County. When the strip mine closed in 1959, the future of the land was uncertain.
That transition—from working landscape to public recreation area—is the central story of Easter Lake. It is a story about neighbors organizing, city and county planning, suburban growth, and a community gradually learning how important it is to protect the water and land it shares.
How Easter Lake Got Its Name
The exact origin of the name “Easter Lake” is not clearly explained in the surviving public histories of the area. Unlike some Des Moines place names, it does not appear to have been named for a prominent pioneer, landowner, or historic military event. The name was already associated with the proposed lake and park project during the planning period of the 1960s, and it became official as the recreational lake took shape.
What is well documented is how the lake itself came into existence. After the coal mine closed, some officials and planners considered using the property as a landfill. That possibility alarmed nearby residents. Around 1960, neighborhood leaders formed the South Town Lake and Development Society to promote a lake and public park instead. Their efforts helped redirect the property toward recreation rather than waste disposal.
For longtime residents, the name now feels perfectly suited to the landscape. Easter Lake is associated with spring outings, family picnics, children’s fishing trips, and the annual return of green grass and migratory birds. Even if the original naming decision remains somewhat mysterious, the name has become deeply connected to renewal.
Building a Lake Where a Mine Once Operated
Construction of Easter Lake, including its dam and spillway, began in 1965. The lake officially opened in 1967, creating a major new recreational destination on the southeast side of Des Moines. The surrounding Easter Lake Park eventually encompassed more than 460 acres, with the lake serving as its centerpiece.
The park was developed for everyday recreation rather than grand architecture. Its attractions included fishing access, boating, picnic grounds, trails, playgrounds, shelters, and a swimming beach. The nearby City of Des Moines’ Ewing Park added another layer of open space, trails, wooded areas, and family amenities west of the lake.
Roads such as Indianola Avenue, Watrous Avenue, Evergreen Drive, and Easter Lake Drive became the practical framework of the neighborhood. These streets connected the park to the established south side while also opening surrounding acreage to residential development. The lake was no longer an edge-of-town curiosity; it was becoming the heart of a growing community.
The Owens Covered Bridge
The most distinctive historic landmark in the Easter Lake Area is the Owens Covered Bridge. The bridge was originally built in the nineteenth century and crossed the North River near Carlisle. When the Easter Lake recreation project was taking shape, the bridge was moved to the park in 1968, where it spans an arm of the lake. It is recognized as Polk County’s last remaining covered bridge.
Today, the bridge gives the park a connection to a much older Iowa landscape. Before modern highways and subdivisions, rural roads, river crossings, and timber bridges shaped travel through central Iowa. The bridge’s presence is a reminder that the Easter Lake Area did not begin with postwar housing construction. Its history reaches back to the transportation routes and river communities that existed long before the lake was dug.
For many visitors, the bridge is simply a favorite photo spot along the trail. For local history enthusiasts, it is a surviving piece of nineteenth-century Polk County preserved in a twentieth-century park.
From Open Countryside to New Town
For much of the twentieth century, the land south and east of Easter Lake remained a mix of farms, acreages, mine remnants, and open fields. That began to change as Des Moines expanded outward. The city annexed the Easter Lake New Town area in 1987, bringing roughly 1,900 acres into the city’s long-range development picture.
During the late 1990s, builders began constructing nearly 100 homes a year in several developments south of the lake. The area’s appeal was easy to understand: residents could enjoy larger lots, newer homes, convenient access to Army Post Road and Indianola Avenue, and proximity to Easter Lake Park, Ewing Park, and Southridge Mall near Southeast 14th Street.
Planning became increasingly important as farmland gave way to streets, rooftops, and storm sewers. The Easter Lake New Town Plan, adopted in 2001, called for coordinated neighborhoods, open-space connections, stormwater detention areas, and future community facilities. It recognized that growth should preserve the natural features that made the area attractive in the first place.
Water Quality Brings the Community Together
Growth also brought challenges. As more land was developed, stormwater carried soil and nutrients into Yeader Creek and then into Easter Lake. The lake lost a significant amount of its volume to sediment, and water clarity, fish habitat, and swimming conditions declined. Easter Lake was placed on Iowa’s impaired waters list because of sediment and nutrient problems.
The response became one of the most important modern chapters in the neighborhood’s history. Beginning in the 2000s and especially after the 2013 Easter Lake Water Quality Management Plan, local residents, the City of Des Moines, Polk County Conservation, Iowa’s environmental agencies, and watershed partners worked together on restoration. Projects included dredging, wetland improvements, shoreline work, fish habitat, stormwater controls, and native plantings.
The lake’s restoration also improved the park experience. The Mark C. Ackelson Trail now creates a paved route around the lake and connects the shoreline to surrounding neighborhoods and Ewing Park. The trail honors Mark C. Ackelson, a longtime Iowa conservation leader who advocated for trails and protected open space.
A Neighborhood Still Growing into Its Heritage
Recent improvements have made Easter Lake more accessible and welcoming. The Athene North Shore Recreation Area added universally designed amenities, including accessible docks, boat launches, fishing equipment, water access, and pathways for visitors of different ages and abilities.
That spirit of inclusion fits the neighborhood’s history. Easter Lake exists because residents spoke up when a landfill seemed likely. It endured the pressures of urban growth because people recognized the lake as more than a scenic backdrop. And it continues to evolve because neighbors, public agencies, and conservation groups understand that the park is both a recreational resource and a piece of local heritage.
The Easter Lake Area’s special quality comes from that layered past. Coal mining, farms, covered bridges, new subdivisions, family parks, and environmental restoration all belong to the same story. When residents walk along the shoreline or drive down Easter Lake Drive, they are moving through a landscape that has repeatedly reinvented itself—without losing the community determination that made the lake possible in the first place.