Ames is a city in Story County, Iowa, United States, located nearly 30 miles (48 km) north of Des Moines in central Iowa. It is best known as the house of Iowa State University (ISU), with leading agriculture, design, engineering, and veterinary medicine colleges. A United States Department of Energy national laboratory, Ames Laboratory, is located upon the ISU campus.

According to the 2020 census, Ames had a population of 66,427, making it the state’s ninth largest city. Iowa State University was house to 33,391 students as of fall 2019, which make up nearly one half of the city’s population.

Ames also hosts United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) sites: the largest federal animal disease center in the United States, the USDA Agricultural Research Service’s National Animal Disease Center (NADC), as without difficulty as one of two national USDA sites for the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), which comprises the National Veterinary Services Laboratory and the Center for Veterinary Biologics. Ames also hosts the headquarters for the Iowa Department of Transportation.

The city was formed in 1864 as a station stop on the Cedar Rapids and Missouri Railroad and was named after 19th century U.S. Congressman Oakes Ames of Massachusetts, who was influential in the building of the transcontinental railroad. Ames was founded by local resident Cynthia Olive Duff (née Kellogg) and railroad magnate John Insley Blair, near a location that was deemed positive for a railroad crossing of the Skunk River.