Young Pioneers

Terrace Hill became the home of two teenagers who "went west" to a small, rugged frontier fort called Des Moines. The teenagers were Benjamin Franklin Allen (known as Frank) and Frederick Marion Hubbell (known as Fred). Their lives were to be intertwined with each other and with the history of Iowa.

Ultimately, Frank Allen built Terrace Hill as a monument to his wealth, and Fred Hubbell saved Terrace Hill from the fallout of Allen's bankruptcy.

Frank Allen arrived at Fort Des Moines in 1851, five years after Iowa became a state. He was 19 years old and destined to become Iowa's first millionaire through his investments in banking, which also destroyed him.

Frank Allen had family ties in Des Moines; his uncle, Captain James Allen, had helped establish the fort a few years earlier to protect the Indians from land-hungry settlers.

Fred Hubbell arrived at Fort Des Moines by stagecoach with his father in 1855. Young Hubbell was 16. He had no intentions of staying. He would end up dying in Iowa at 91 years of age after establishing a dynasty of wealth and creating a legacy by pioneering in real estate, railroads, public utilities and life insurance.

Hubbell's father had come west to speculate on land. His land speculating completed, he soon returned to the family home in Connecticut, leaving Fred behind with a $5 gold piece in his pocket.

Hubbell immediately got a job working at the federal land office. Thankful to have a job, he worked two weeks before learning what he was earning: $8.33 a month ($100 a year), plus board.

At $1.25 an acre, settlers were quickly buying up the central Iowa frontier. Among them was Frank Allen, who bought 30 acres of prairie land far west of Des Moines -- including the eight acres of ground on which Terrace Hill stands today.

Land was selling quickly, and Hubbell saw that his job would soon end. So, within a year of his arrival, he headed farther west to Sioux City, Iowa. There he took a job in the land office recording deeds. Getting there was a bumpy 10-day journey by stagecoach.

When Hubbell arrived in Sioux City, it was a tiny Missouri River outpost with 150 settlers.

Hubbell could see that there were land bargains all around, but he was under 21 and could not legally make a claim. He convinced his father and brother to journey back from Connecticut to Sioux City so that he could invest.

At 17 years old, Hubbell bought his first five acres of land, a city lot, and an interest in the small town of Logan, Iowa. By the end of his first year in Sioux City, Fred Hubbell's property interests were estimated to be worth $4,000.

When an economic depression hit in 1857, Hubbell capitalized on it by buying up county warrants at roughly a quarter of their worth. The next year, the economy bounced back, and he doubled his money.

By the time he turned 19, Hubbell had become a lawyer. He also had fallen in love with Sioux City's first school teacher, but she jilted him. In 1861, he returned to Des Moines.

While Hubbell had been making his start in western Iowa, Allen had been making his start in commerce and banking in Des Moines.

Soon their paths would cross. To learn more about these pioneers, read Little Man with a Long Shadow by George Mills, available at the Terrace Hill Gift Shop.