Changes

Grant Schulte: There was a time, long before the forklifts and bulldozers came, when Bill Giles could rise before the sun, step into his front yard, and stare through empty darkness at Des Moines' skyline 15 miles away.

Now, street lamps poke through Waukee's night. Realtor signs mark a thicket of housing plots on acres he once farmed. More vehicles than ever rumble down Waco Place, chalking the air with gravel dust in front of his brick farmhouse on the border of Waukee and West Des Moines.

The quiet, 93-year-old farmer stares through silver-rimmed bifocals at the development crawling toward his home. He doesn't mind Waukee's growth. And he doesn't long for the blistering, 12-hour days milking cows and plowing with a rickety two-cylinder tractor.

But old Waukee - his drowsy, familiar, bump-in-the-road farm town - is gone. Years of construction have edged out most farmers, replacing pickups with minivans and barns with condominiums. The population of Iowa's fastest-growing city has more than doubled since 2000, topping 10,000 last year. Giles, one of the few farmers left in Waukee, watches amazed as new housing reshapes the landscape and forever changes his town.