PUBLIC PARKS OF IOWA 303 



build? To be more precise, it behooves us in the present problem of what 

 may be termed park extension, to inquire in every case what we have to 

 start with; what nature has done, what aid she can be relied upon to fur- 

 nish. To such inquiry every locality offers, of course, a somewhat different 

 answer; yet there are conditions which effect in the same way in this 

 country a great number of localities at once. The lower Mississippi Val- 

 ley, for instance, is a forest, the upper Mississippi Valley a prairie in large 

 part. So that the park problem, as it offers itself to any community, has 

 been, in a large measure, .predetermined by nature herself, and the very 

 first thing, as it seems to me, that our people need to learn is how to use 

 what they have. 



In the Old World there are magnificent parks, forests which are partly 

 used by the people. But whence come they? They have in most instances 

 been planted and guarded by kings and nobles for their own pleasure, and- 

 now, in these democratic days, are falling more and more to the share of 

 all men for rational enjoyment and delgiht. Such are the parks of Eng- 

 land, France and Germany. We have over all the more thickly populated 

 portion of our domain groves and woodlands, fountains, hills and rocks, 

 shaped and planted by the King of Kings; and it is simply a question as to 

 whether or not our people are competent to appreciate native beauty as 

 it comes to their hands, and to use that which they inherit. 



These, men, are the general principles. Let us see how they apply 

 to a particular case. Of course my own state must furnish the object 

 lesson. 



Iowa includes an area of about 55,000 square miles. It is drained by an 

 abundance of rather sluggish streams which trend for the most part 

 south and east. Although commonly classed as a prairie state, it has 

 until recently possessed a very large amount of woodland. Along every 

 stream* in all the eastern part, at least, was a more or less continuous 

 fringe of forests. 



Trees being the essential factor in the idea of a park, it is evident 

 that Iowa need never lack such adornment. Trees will grow in Iowa. 

 Trees will grow in all our prairie states much farther west than most 

 people think. Not only is this true but in hundreds of oases the trees 

 are so placed as to give us all the best features of a park to start with. 

 Before the country passed into the control of civilized men, the exten- 

 sion of the forest was limited by fires prairie fires. Trees grew only 

 where the soil was too poor to sustain a crop of grass, whicih, by burning, 

 might choke them out, or where the amount of moisture present in spring 

 and fall, the time of fires, was sufficient to prevent conflagration. The 

 result was two fold: First, the trees grew only in that part of the coun- 

 try least desirable for cultivation, on lowlands, as we have noted, along 

 the streams and on sandy or rocky hillsides, in glens and gorges, over 

 precipitous bluffs; and, second, where the trees did grow they were 

 for the most part scattered, especially on higher ground there was- much 

 open space between them, so that Iowa woodlands, for instance, were 

 commonly called "Oak Openings." 



One could drive through the Iowa forests anywhere. Did one choose to 

 follow some long clay ridge, the trees, chiefly w r hite oaks, opened on 

 every hand, just as in a royal park, and out past their clean, white, weath- 



