Waukee began on April 30, 1869, when General Lewis Addison Grant and Major William Ragan purchased land around the site where the Des Moines Valley Railroad had announced it would build a railroad. They first named the town Shirley, but railroad officials in Keokuk insisted on an Indian name, and it became Waukee. Businesses quickly followed the railroad, including lumber yards and hardware, drug, grocery, and grain stores, daily post office service began in November 1869, and Waukee incorporated on July 2, 1878. Coal mining later became an important part of the area's history: speculators first surveyed Waukee in 1883, the Harris Mine opened on September 20, 1920, and the Shuler Mine opened in 1921. The Shuler Mine was the largest producer of coal in Iowa, had the state's deepest mine shaft at 387 feet, employed up to 500 men and 32 mules, and supported a mining camp community made up largely of immigrants from Italy, Croatia, and Sweden, with churches, a school, a dance hall, a tavern, two restaurants, a hardware store, a grocery store, and small homes called South Camp and North Camp on what is now Alice's Road. Railroad history also shaped Waukee: in 1881 the original narrow gauge Des Moines and Northwestern Railroad ran from Des Moines through Panora to Fonda for 113.8 miles, later became part of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, and Pacific Railroad, was widened to standard gauge, and carried Central Iowans to lakeside destinations before passenger service ended in 1952 and freight service ceased during the mid-1980s farm crisis. In late 1987, the Central Iowa Energy Cooperative purchased the right-of-way, and with the Iowa Trails Council and county conservation boards helped turn the former rail line into a multi-use trail, beginning with a 34-mile section from Waukee to Yale that opened on October 7, 1989, followed by later extensions and a North Loop completed by 2013.