102 PUBLIC PARKS OF IOWA 



a-ake enjoyable 'the journey from home to this pleasing ground. The 

 Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific; the Chicago & Northwestern; the Chi- 

 cago Great Western; the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul, and the Minne- 

 apolis & St. Louis join their steel lines, continental in extent, within 

 ten miles of the lake shore. To ride over these lines in the richly ap- 

 pointed trains, to the man in health, seeking rest and recreation, to 

 watch the bulging farmsteads, the sentinels of the surrounding wealth- 

 giving fields, is a pleasure of rare worth. Before the visitor even comes 

 to the final .stage of his journey he will experience the thrill of a new 

 life, and when he again selects a vacation spot, it will be Clear Lake. 



The farthest corners of the. state are but a scant twelve-hour journey 

 from Clear Lake; Illinois and Wisconsin points but little ifarther. 

 Marshalltown, Council Bluffs, Sioux City, Des Moines, Dubuque and Fort 

 Dodge are but one-half the distance, and intervening points to these 

 important Iowa centers have no difficulty at all in making the journey.- 



An interurban line, with hourly service, links up the last lap of the 

 journey. 



Clear Lake is no new discovery. It dates back to the glacial age. 



Nature did not drop this lake down among mountains where it would 

 be robbed of much of its charm by their majestic loftiness. Nor need 

 the traveler seek amidst desert sands for this prize playground. None 

 of these. Nature, that kindly god-mother of all ministering agencies 

 of mankind, stole out upon the open plains, where her children now 

 dwell upon her yielding fields, scooped out the firmer sod and filled the 

 basin with laughing, shimmering water. 



And when the lake was found, her discoverers could think of . no 

 more fitting name as they looked into her cooling depths and watched 

 the waves wash and tumble the whitened pebbles along the shore line, 

 than "clear," and Clear Lake it has remained. The name is not famous, 

 only as pleased pilgrims give it fame. 



Men who are able to read nature's book with the keenness of the 

 student mind, record that Clear Lake of itself, is distinct. It claims 

 no kinship to any other body of water. Lakes go in families and owe 

 their being to parentages geologically traceable. The thousand and 

 one lakes that dot north Iowa and Minnesota are in groups and belong 

 one to the other. But Clear Lake is none of these. It is unique, alone, 

 an orphan among the lakes. 



No underground channels lead from the beds of other lakes to thereby 

 rob her of her waters in time of need. Her waters are not born of 

 the fleeting snow. No growling glacier disturbs her in her bed, nor does 

 she owe aught to the whimsical shower. Her waters are fed from foun- 

 tains of perpetual springs, safely hidden beneath her surface, whence 

 no one has yet gone and returned to tell of them. 



Peace rests with her. No restless spirit troubles her. No dangerous 

 reefs or hidden shoals fret the mind of the amateur boatman to make his 

 voyage dangerous or uncertain. Fitful gusts and sudden squalls seek 

 her fair surface. Childhood and youth may plow her waters with secur- 

 ity. There are no shelving shore lines to trap the unwary. The clean 

 white sand of the lake bed receded from the surface of the water inch 



