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PARK AND CEMETERY. 
PARK BUILDING TO KEEP PACE WITH CITY GROWTH 
By Charles A. Butterfield, Landscape Architect and 
Superintendent of Parks, Muskogee, Oklahoma 
City building in the West and 
Southwest is such a highly commer- 
cial development that too frequently 
we find the skyscrapers occupying all 
the available space before any one 
thinks, or has time to act, on the 
necessity for developing the aesthet- 
ic, in the way of parks, playgrounds 
Muskogee has just begun its park 
work. The success of the past has as- 
sured a most comprehensive work for 
the future. 
All of the park improvement that 
has been done covers a period of less 
than two years, but the results at- 
test what a magnificent soil and cli- 
a distance of four miles, and at the 
juncture of the Arkansas, Grand and 
Verdigris rivers. 
This makes the most comprehen- 
sive system of park improvement out- 
lined and approved by any city of 
this size in the Southwest. 
It not only will furnish breathing 
REST HOUSE AND PERGOLA IN A MUSKOGEE PARK; DESIGNED BY CHAS. A. BUTTERFIELD. 
and boulevards. In this respect 
Muskogee, Okla., is the exception 
among the cities of the Southwest. 
In 1900 Muskogee was a town of 
6,000 people, with no parks and no 
title to land, not even to the lots on 
which brick buildings, banks and 
mercantile establishments stood. To 
that period the town had been built 
on hope and faith. Today Muskogee 
is a city of 35,000 people, and, along 
with its ten-story buildings and ever- 
changing skyline, it also has sixteen 
parks, eight of them highly improved, 
embracing a total of ninety-four 
acres, and eight miles of 80-foot 
boulevard, improved. 
So rapid, and so satisfactory has 
been this improvement that I am told 
by all classes of business men that 
the public parks and boulevards are 
the greatest public asset the city has, 
because every person in the city and 
every visitor must see them; and 
mate eastern Oklahoma possesses for 
highly specialized park work. 
The park board now has under con- 
templation a plan, the details of 
which are being worked out, whereby 
the total park acreage is to be 
brought up to 347 acres by donations 
and purchase of desirable park sites 
within a radius of five miles from 
the center of the city, and the boule- 
vard system to probably eighteen 
miles in length. 
In this connection. I pay tribute to 
the magnificent spirit of Muskogee 
town builders when I say that for 
several parks that have been acquired 
and the eight miles of boulevards 
built, title has been secured without 
the expenditure of the city’s money, 
except for surveying. 
A very popular boulevard, of which 
three miles is completed, will be 
known as River Drive, running north 
from the city to the Arkansas river, 
places for a large population, but 
will place a park, large or small, 
within fifteen minutes’ walk of prac- 
tically every home in the city. 
To accomplish all this the city will 
in all probability vote $150,000 in 
bonds in the spring. 
And in addition to this, private 
citizens have agreed to donate for a 
boulevard three miles long, a strip 
of land 300 feet wide along Goody 
creek, including 38 acres of heavily 
timbered ground, which fills in a gap 
of the boulevard system. 
The park board is picking up here 
and there all over the city a block 
or triangle at street intersections 
whenever it can be obtained at a rea- 
sonable figure, and will convert these 
into “inside” parks so that the bene- 
fit may be evenly distributed over 
the city. 
The park improvement work has 
included the establishment of play- 
