It is a place in transition, where old factories like the smoke-spewing Quaker Oats plant coexist with a spate of upstart tech companies, and where chains like Applebee's have made room for chic eateries with names like Blend.
When a local boy makes good, however, word spreads as it would in a one-stoplight town. So too does pride, of which Johnson is quite literally a towering source.
Out by the airport, a billboard welcomes visitors with a picture of a fist-pumping Johnson. North of downtown, the road to Johnson's training ground, Elmcrest Country Club, is now Zach Johnson Drive. And if Johnson walked into Moose McDuffy's diner and sports bar on April 10 (Zach Johnson Day, by mayoral proclamation), he'd have a hard time paying for a cup of coffee.
"He was the talk of the town after he won, and rightfully so," says Tom Haddy, the Moose's former owner. "He won the biggie."
Which caught even Johnson's family by surprise. "I don't remember anybody thinking he had a chance, including me," says Dave Johnson, Zach's father.
And this was on the morning of the final round, when his boy was just two off the lead. "I was just thinking, 'OK, let's get a top 10 and some Presidents Cup points.'"
Larry Gladson, the head pro at Elmcrest and Johnson's swing coach through college, never envisioned Johnson in the green jacket, either.
"The Masters?" Gladson says. "The thought of Zach playing pro golf never entered my mind."
Call it Midwestern pragmatism or plain dumbfounded-ness, but among those who know Johnson, there's a consistency to the astonishment at what he accomplished.
Jamie Bermel, Johnson's coach at Drake University in Des Moines, says, "To come from the No. 3 player on the Drake team to Masters champion — I ... I don't know how to put it into words."
Johnson's longtime friend Brian Rupp is a financial analyst in town, and played ahead of Johnson on their high school golf team. "Sometimes I see guys from that team, and we just shake our heads," Rupp says.
A meeting room in an office building just off Interstate 380 is filled with Elmcrest members who sponsored Johnson for six years on the mini-tours. Most of them never thought he'd survive the Prairie Golf Tour.
"Did any of you ever think we'd get our money back?" Cal Ernst says. "I didn't."
But if they can't believe what Johnson has accomplished, they always believed in him.
"I had a dream," Johnson says today, "and they grabbed hold of that dream and helped push it along."
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