304 PUBLIC PARKS OF IOWA 



ered boles on a summer day the emerald prairie gleamed and shone on 

 the horizon's edge. Amid the wooded hills and by the rivers existed 

 many a romantic spot, many a cool and shaded nook. Such places to a 

 pioneer were not left long unknown or unohristened, and the names at 

 first bestowed exist today. There are "coves" and "caves" and "dens" 

 and "springs" and "bluffs" and "palisades" and "backbones" without 

 number. It may surprise my readers to learn that according to popular 

 nomenclature, his satanic majesty has his backbone thrust up in several 

 distinct places within the limits of the fortunate state of Iowa. A "back- 

 bone" is simply a long ridge of the country rock, rising in an otherwise 

 comparatively level country; a "Devil's Backbone," for instance, rises 

 in Delaware county, its rocky walls washed at their base by the clear 

 waters of the Maquoketa river. 



It follows, then, that for nearly all parts of our valley states, 

 parks were, originally, not wanting. All that had been necessary to have 

 given us parks forever had been simply to set apart for the purpose a por- 

 tion or portions of the country which were really good for nothing else. 

 The early settlers soon discovered the situation. The prairies were oc- 

 cupied and cultivated, the woodland was passed by, and, unfenced, was 

 everybody's picnic ground. Every community had abundant park facili- 

 ties, and, consequently, the necessity of reserving park grounds did not 

 at all appear. The woodlands, unvexed by fire, grew up in thickets, the 

 oak openings became closed, and genuine forest conditions began to 

 prevail over large areas. 



Such was the state of affairs in Iowa until a very recent date. Within 

 the last few decades, however, there has come a decided change. The 

 invention of barbed wire, affording a cheap and easily applied fencing 

 material, especially among trees, and the failure of Nebraska and Da- 

 kota prairies to meet the expectations of those who hurried thither, re- 

 sulted in the exploitation of all unused lands in all the older communities 

 and such are now, where wooded, being everywhere cleared and fenced 

 for agricultural purposes. The result is that, unless some means are 

 taken to prevent it, within a very few years every wooded area every- 

 where will be entirely stripped of its natural covering, and the primitive 

 parks, the gifts of nature, which have been for so long enjoyed by the 

 people of these newer commonwealths, will vanish forever away. 



I do not here speak of other ills that must follow wholesale changes 

 in nature's equipoise, such as these. I do not refer to the drying up of 

 our streams, the destructive erosion of our hills, the bleaching of uncov- 

 ered rocks which must soon proclaim our inevitable decadence toward 

 barrenness and desert, I speak not now of any of these things; I am 

 urging only that measures be taken to preserve for the people, country 

 folk and town folk alike, the resorts they have, the gifts of providence 

 and nature, admirable in themselves, susceptible of indefinite improve- 

 ment and competent, if undisturbed, to perpetuate themselves a joy 

 forever. 



Moved by what we esteem right considerations, some of us who per- 

 ceive the necessities of the case have therefore been urging the people 

 of Iowa to reserve for themselves some, at least, of the choicer and more 

 romantic wooded regions of the country as rural parks. Had we a king, 



