Boggstown Road was named after George and Martha Boggs, land owners who donated the land for the road, which was 22 feet wide and three blocks long. Shortly after World War I, Frank Stark bucked criticism from his neighbors by drafting a petition to widen and extend Boggstown Road. The petition was accepted by the board of supervisors, and Polk County extended the road to White Pole Road (now Highway 163) and improved the road's surface. The road then became known as Stark Lane before reverting back to its former name of Boggstown.
The center for town affairs was the general store. Joe Gass had started the store before the turn of the century. After Gass, C. D. Landsfield, affectionately called "Old Dad," took it over. Ira Daniel's had the store next, though whether he ran it is debatable.
Cheese and Hospitality at Daniel's General Store
"That store was a kind of gathering place for all the guys. They would sit on the porch there and gab. Rhet Daniel's, Ira’s daughter, was the clerk. The old folks did not have much to say about it; she ran the business,” according to Daisy Peterson.
"We've never forgotten Rhet's cheese. She used to get this big, round cheese wheel and have it under a glass cover. The store also had a big pot belly stove and a checker board. And it had a front porch for people to sit on."
"Ira used to sit out there and talk to the boys. (He and his wife lived upstairs and his wife got tired of the talk.) She got kind of fussy every once in a while and would come down and say, 'Ira, you'd better get up here now. Since they ain't got enough sense to go home, why don't you tell them to go.' Then, in the winter, she would come in and throw a lump of coal in the stove and tell the hangers on, 'When that's gone, you go home.' "
Daniel's eventually could not make enough money to keep the store opened, and others who tried were no more successful. The store was then used as a residence.
Store Burns
Fire, started by a toppled kerosene lamp, destroyed the historic store one night in 1956. The area had no fire protection, so someone called the Des Moines Fire Department. The Des Moines trucks came as far as the bridge, then stopped and watched the store burn. It was only about a block from the Des Moines city limits to the store, but the trucks would not cross those limits.