Have you read it in a French accent?
The state’s capital, Des Moines, also reveals the state origin. During the 18 th and 19 th centuries, the region was part of Spanish Louisiana and, most of the time, of French Louisiana.
That is why the state’s flag looks very like the national flag of France —but with a motto written in the center of it.
The state was literally purchased from the Napoleonic French by the United States in 1803, in an episode called “The Louisiana Purchased”, when the US bought the French territory called Louisiana.
It was a 828 square miles, or 2.140.000 km², piece of land that goes from the actual state of Montanna, at North, to the actual state of Louisiana, at South. It is equivalent to 21% of the actual national territory.
The name of Des Moines comes from Fort Des Moines, which takes its names from the Des Moines Rivers. All those names, of course, are in French.
Historians have found that Des Moines means “from the monks”, and was derived from the term “Moingona”, the name of an important indigenous native clan of North America —the place where the city was built is known for being the first place where European explorers have encountered Moingona people.
Well, fast forward almost 300 years and you will get to today, when the city of Des Moines has over 214.000 residents, but an average download speed of only 80 Mbps.
That low average download speed might be explained by the fact that there are only two Internet Services Providers (ISP) in the city that offer 1 gigabit internet (those with around 1 Mbps download speed) and only one of them has fiber connections.
Fiber is the most recent technology for internet connections and is still being implemented throughout the United States. Although it has more data capacity and more speed capacity, it is not available everywhere.
In Des Moines, the only company that offers fiber internet is CenturyLink. The bad news is that the starting price for the company’s plans is $ 50, but the good news is that it only raises until $ 65.
The other alternative for very fast internet is Mediacom, that has a lower starting price ($ 20), but its most expensive plan costs $ 200 per month.
The problem is that Mediacom offers only cable connections. Although cable is very common and, as for today, it still delivers a good internet for almost anything we need in our houses, this technology will soon get obsolete.
The good news for people living in Des Moines is that fiber is available in almost 60% of the city’s addresses, but more than 2% of the residents of the city have no more than one provider available at their homes.