When 19-year-old Benjamin Franklin “Frank” Allen arrived at Fort Des Moines in 1848, he brought with him gold coins in a burlap bag.

David Wiggins’ 2002 book “The Rise of the Allens: Two Soldiers and the Master of Terrace Hill” tells how Allen parlayed the gold into a stunning fortune with help from business partners of his uncle, Capt. James Allen, the dragoon soldier who built the fort in 1843 that became Des Moines.

Before Frank Allen’s business empire imploded in 1875, he was instrumental in transforming Des Moines from a backwoods trading post into a thriving commercial center. During the 1850s and 1860s, Allen evolved from a quick-witted youth to become Iowa’s best-known business leader and philanthropist. 

His best friend was Hoyt Sherman, who arrived at “The Forks” of the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers the same year as Allen. Six years later in 1854, Allen married the daughter of Francis West, a newly arrived “man of substance.”

In 1856, Sherman and Allen chartered a bank in Omaha, which issued notes engraved with the image of Allen’s wife, Arathusa. The following year, Sherman named his first child Frank Allen Sherman, in honor of his friend. (The men got out of the Nebraska bank in 1858 after a new Iowa constitution legalized banking.)

The year 1857 was also when “Fort” was dropped from Des Moines’ name and when Des Moines was selected as Iowa’s capital. 

A born entrepreneur, Allen engaged in businesses as varied as retail sales, animal slaughter, coal mining, insurance, real estate development and transportation.

He helped bring the first railroad to Des Moines in 1866, two years before he moved into Terrace Hill, the gilded-age mansion that is now the official home of Iowa governors. At one time, Allen owned 55 square miles of Iowa; as a railroad promoter, he helped establish new towns in western Iowa.

But his success “was built on poor foundations … held together by little more than faith and misdirection,” Wiggins wrote. Much of it involved Ponzi-like schemes where new money paid off old debts. Allen was “a plunger … always tempted to take a chance.”  

Allen’s activities attracted East Coast investors. His civic pride was infectious and helped grow the local economy. Among other things, “Allen was credited with helping get the votes necessary (in 1870) to construct a new capitol in Des Moines,” Wiggins reported.

Connections between Frank Allen and his dragoon uncle were tenuous. After establishing Fort Des Moines, Capt. Allen died in 1846 as he prepared to join the U.S. military’s invasion of Mexico. 

The captain’s younger brother, Robert, was also in the army and during the Mexican-American War was quartermaster in charge of supplies for U.S. troops.

Seventeen-year-old Frank joined uncle Robert as a civilian employee in Mexico, where Frank ran a side business buying discounted payment vouchers from contractors who had to wait long periods for payment. Unlike the contractors, Frank was able to cash the vouchers immediately with his uncle and pocket the discount as profit. 

When Frank arrived in Des Moines, he said his sack of gold coins came from Mexico. The precise source of the gold is unknown, but it is possible, Wiggins wrote, that uncle Robert somehow obtained the coins during the eight months he was stationed in Mexico City. 

In any case, between the gold coins and James Allen’s former business partners at “The Forks,” Frank was “in the right place at the right time with the key element in hand, money.” 

The collapse of Allen’s finances was also a matter of timing.

In 1867, while Terrace Hill was being built, Allen was appointed to oversee more than $600,000 in cash and bonds set aside by the Rock Island Railroad to purchase a failing competitor. 

When it was time for Allen to hand over the assets in 1873, he couldn’t do it, because he had lost the holdings through poor investments.

His efforts to come up with the money on short notice led to new schemes that worsened the situation and resulted in his going bankrupt.