The fork of the Des Moines and Raccoon Rivers was recognized as an ideal site for a military post as early as 1834. Fort Des Moines was established in 1843, but it was abandoned in 1846 after a treaty under which the Sauk and Mesquakie Indians relinquished their rights to the surrounding lands. The sale of army property provided housing for white settlers who began moving into the area then. Des Moines became a county seat in 1846, and in 1857 the state capital was moved there from Iowa City. Iowa’s present capitol building was constructed between 1870 and 1884. Another military post was created in 1901 for cavalry units. Its four hundred acre facility was later used as a training center for black officers during World War I and as the first training camp for the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps during World War II. The word Fort was dropped from the town’s name in 1857. Des Moines grew to have the largest population of any municipality in the state. It became the largest insurance center in the Midwest, home to several major publishing companies, and the site of the Iowa State Fair, one of the largest agricultural expositions in the world. Among the prominent people who lived in Des Moines were John A. Kasson, who moved there in 1857 and served as a U.S. Congressman, Assistant Postmaster General, diplomat, Minister to Austria-Hungary, and U.S. representative at international congresses on postal regulations, the Congo, Somoa, reciprocal tariffs, and boundary disputes; Mary Jane Coggeshall, who came in 1865 and was a pioneer in the women’s suffrage movement, editor of the Women’s Standard, president of the Iowa Woman Suffrage Association, and a member of the Board of the National Woman Suffrage Association; Albert B. Cummins, a nationally known Progressive leader who served three terms as Governor, three terms as U.S. Senator, and as President of the Senate after Coolidge’s elevation to the presidency in 1923; and Edwin T. Meredith, head of a well known publishing firm who served as Secretary of Agriculture under Woodrow Wilson, was a candidate for Governor and U.S. Senator, and was appointed to numerous federal commissions and boards.