Built for Bondurant’s Explosive Growth — and Iowa’s Punishing Storms

Alexander Conley Bondurant arrived in Polk County on horseback in the 1850s, spied a slight knoll on the tall-grass prairie, and built a one-room dwelling from lumber milled from a nearby grove. After marrying Margaret “Meg” Brooks in 1861, the Bondurants expanded the home into a stately Victorian mansion — sided with sturdy black walnut, featuring ornamental spindlework, decorative shutters, a wrap-around veranda, and three brick chimneys. An 1880 biography described it as a “stately mansion, surrounded by shade trees,” and the 1908 book The Pioneers of Polk County called it “a beautiful home, surrounded by the environment of luxury and comfort.” The Bondurant house also served as a schoolhouse for pioneer children and hosted church picnics and Old Settler reunions on the property. The historic home was lost to fire in January 1917 after standing for more than 50 years. Today, Morris Elementary and Anderson Elementary stand directly west of where the original Bondurant homestead once stood at 604 South Grant Street.

From that single homestead on the prairie, Bondurant has become one of the fastest-growing cities in Iowa — surging 143% since 2010, climbing past 9,400 residents, and breaking ground on new master-planned communities every season. The city commissioned a Special Census in 2024 because its growth had outpaced the federal count. Alexander Bondurant would hardly recognize the place — but the impulse that drove him to build well on this prairie is exactly the impulse we bring to every roof we install here.

The Bondurant Family House — the Victorian homestead of town founder Alexander Conley Bondurant and his wife Meg, sided with black walnut and standing on the prairie for more than 50 years before it was lost to fire in 1917. Photo restored and tinted from the original.

That growth means Bondurant’s housing stock is overwhelmingly new construction — and that creates a specific roofing problem. Most new homes are built with builder-grade architectural shingles that meet minimum code requirements but are not engineered for Iowa’s severe hail and high-wind conditions. A single significant hailstorm can crack granules, loosen seal strips, and compromise flashing on shingles that are barely a few years old. Homeowners often don’t realize the damage is there until a leak appears months later.

Bondurant’s position along the US Route 65 corridor on the eastern edge of the Des Moines metro means homes face the full force of storm systems rolling across Central Iowa. Open agricultural land to the east and north offers nothing to break severe winds, and the same storm cells that batter Altoona continue northeast directly into Bondurant’s neighborhoods.

Bondurant’s Neighborhoods

In Prairie Point View and the NE 108th Street corridor, D.R. Horton and other production builders are delivering ranch and two-story homes on a rolling schedule. These neighborhoods attract young families upgrading from starter homes in the metro, and many bring higher expectations for roofing quality. In Deer Ridge and the Bluff Drive area, the slightly older homes (built 2008–2018) are now entering the prime inspection window where accumulated storm damage becomes visible. In downtown Bondurant’s original grid — the older core south of Grant Street, where Alexander Bondurant’s homestead once stood — mid-century ranches and split-levels are often on their second or third roof, with original siding showing brittleness from decades of Iowa freeze-thaw cycling.

The Bondurant-Farrar Community School District — home of the Bluejays — serves more than 2,700 students across five schools, and enrollment keeps climbing as families move in. Lake Petocka, the Chichaqua Valley Trail, and the Bondurant Recreational Sports Complex give the city a recreation-centered identity. These are families investing in their community for the long term — and their homes deserve roofing and exterior protection built to match.

Home of the Bluejays — Bondurant-Farrar’s sports facilities and growing school district reflect a community investing for the long term.

Superstorm Roofing & Siding has inspected 14,500+ properties across Central Iowa and completed 3,100+ roofing and exterior projects since Chandler Steffy founded the company in 2012. We are one of only eight Owens Corning Platinum Preferred contractors in Iowa — the top 1% nationally — and we carry Iowa’s first $25,000 Good Contractors List guarantee. Whether your Bondurant home is brand new or decades old, we build for all of it.