288 PUBLIC PARKS OF IOWA 



COUNTY PARKS AND FORESTS. 

 By Elmer Reeves. 



A few years ago such a thing as a county park would hardly have been 

 thought of and would not have been advisable, but with the present 

 methods of travel over 'the country roads such a thing seems not only 

 practical but a very desirable thing. In a county of average size the op- 

 posite corners are but forty-eight miles apart and a park at all centrally 

 located would be only an hour's drive from almost any part of the county. 

 This would permit the people of the whole county to gather for conven- 

 tions, picnics, and other meetings of general interest. A community in- 

 terest could be developed to which Iowa has so far been a stranger. We 

 hear of large gatherings of Iowa people in other places and why not have 

 these at home. The county park would serve to arouse an interest and 

 get them started, and if large meetings of a general interest are once 

 established they would be popular enough to become permanent. Each 

 city has its park and even the village aspires to the ownership of a piece 

 of ground they designate as a park. These are often sadly neglected 

 spots and of but little use and too small to serve the need of a county 

 gathering or the other uses to which a real park may be put. I would 

 picture a county park as a place large enough not only for public gather- 

 ings, but, as my subject suggests, a forest as well a place where all the 

 native trees are allowed to flourish and all the plants that grew in pioneer 

 times are encouraged to multiply. 



There was a wealth of native plants in the woods of pioneer times and 

 while many sorts are no longer seen, they would largely reappear if given 

 the chance. There were the little creeping things that grew in low dark 

 places and gave a succession of bloom from earliest warm days of spring, 

 the upland flowers of brighter and more showy appearance, and innum- 

 erable plants of interesting growth and habits, among which the lover of 

 nature could spend days of delight. In the openings were the sunflowers, 

 goldenrod, asters, and many other attractive plants that many class as 

 weeds but which are being sought by landscape decorators. There were 

 the bramble patches where the red and black raspberries ran riot and the 

 wild blackberry gave more luscious fruit than is usually grown in our 

 gardens. Elderberries showed a wealth of bloom in early summer and, 

 later in the season, their no less attractive pannicles of black fruit, which 

 formed the foundation for the pies of our boyhood days, were fully ap- 

 preciated. There were thickets of plum where the bloom resembled a 

 bank of snow and, later, the loads of fruit, of variable quality, but much 

 of which was equal to any grown in our orchards of the present time. The 

 thickets of wild crabapple when in bloom gave a profusion of beauty and 

 a fragrance that could not be matched in any climate. 



There were the sumacs, tall growing and coarse shrubs, but which 

 are now catalogued as choice ornamentals in foreign countries ; the wealth 

 of roses, some of low growth and others climbing high and covered with 

 masses of 'bloom as beautiful as any of the double beauties of our gar- 

 dens and of a fragrance to which the latter are strangers. Most of the 

 roses bloomed in June but some- continued through the summer, so in this 

 there is nothing new under the sun. 



