Discreet 24/7 Biohazard Remediation in Dexter, IA

Dexter is a small city in Dallas County that was founded in 1868, just north of Interstate 80 on the western edge of the Des Moines metropolitan area.

Dexter is famous as the site of a July 23, 1933 shootout at Dexfield Park between members of the Barrow gang — the outlaw crew of Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow — and a posse of lawmen who came from as far away as Des Moines.

On September 18, 1948, Dexter hosted a national plowing match at which President Harry Truman delivered a speech attacking the 80th Congress over its farm record, an address considered one of the most important of the 1948 whistle-stop campaign that returned Truman to the White House.

In the late 1800s Dexter was essentially a college town: the three-story Dexter Normal School opened in 1879, its enrollment neared 600 students by 1892 — roughly doubling the town — before the school closed by 1895 and the building was demolished in 1905.

The 2020 census counted 640 people in Dexter living in 254 households, with a notably young median age of 35.6 years.

Dexter's population peaked at 795 in 1900 and has stayed in the 600s for most of the past century, dipping to 611 in 2010 before rebounding to 640 in 2020.

Dexter students attend the West Central Valley Community School District, which was formed on July 1, 2001 by the merger of the Dexfield and Stuart-Menlo districts.

Dexter was the home of Edwin H. Conger, who served as United States ambassador to China, Brazil, and Mexico, and is also the hometown of Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird.

Although Dallas County is one of Iowa's fastest-growing counties, Dexter has kept a small-town footprint of about 1.25 square miles within the Des Moines–West Des Moines metropolitan statistical area.