PARK AND CEMETERY, 
33 
Kentucky Honey Locust. , American Birch. 
Coffee Tree. typical trees, cherokee park. 
possibilities of successive views over the valley. 
The most important feature of the improvements is 
a driveway leading to the summit of “Burnt Knob.” 
It ascends by gradually broadening sweeps alter- 
nating with short curves, always turning back on 
its own path, but constantly attaining a higher 
level, till the last wide sweep carries it quite around 
the summit, ending in a concourse on the brow of 
the hill. From this lofty outlook above the tree- 
tops there is a magnificent view of the city lying 
several miles across the level valley, in the almost 
perfectly shaped horseshoe bend of the Ohio. It is 
a goodly scene, suggesting peace and prosperity, 
and it is good to know that this, the one point of 
vantage in the landscape, is secured for posterity 
with its natural beauty unimpaired. 
* * * 
The striking formation known locally as Burnt 
Knob is composed of soapstone clay underlaid with 
soapstone, and it washes so badly on exposed 
slopes that growth of any sort is established with 
difficulty. The driveways are preserved from wash- 
ing by tile cross drains every two hundred feet. But 
the Knob is, in the main, clothed from base to sum- 
mit with fine forest trees, including great numbers 
of splendid chestnut oaks and of beeches. There 
are also the American and winged elm, ash, pop- 
lar, hickory, tulip, basswood, hard maple, hack- 
berry and red cedar in abundance. At the top, at 
an elevation of 358 feet above the city, lies a natu- 
ral meadow with an area of from twenty- five to 
thirty acres as free from trees as an Illinois prairie, 
though quite surround- 
ed by a fringe of them 
that melts into theheavy 
growth that drops down 
the hill in all directions. 
Although the Knob 
is the salient topograph- 
ical feature of Iroquois 
Park, a large part of the 
site is made up of foot 
hills, outlying slopes, 
and valleys, mostly 
wooded with native 
trees, such as the swamp 
maple, sycamore, sweet 
and sour gum, paw- 
aw, sassafras, persim- 
mon, dogwood, wil- 
lows, plums, etc. Sev- 
eral small streams give 
variety to the landscape. 
¥ * * 
On the long south- 
ern slope of Burnt Knob lies a section called Fenly 
Wood, almost entirely covered by a growth of mag- 
nificent beeches, many of them of large size. Here 
one feels at once the influence of the poetic atmos- 
phere peculiar to beech woods, which seems to ex- 
hale the impalpable presence of the days of pre- 
civilization, turning one’s thoughts to the grace- 
ful freedom of wild deer and the gentler side of life 
in the wilderness. It seems fitting to find on the 
smooth bole of a grand old beech the carved legend: 
Z. Taylor, 
Deer Hunt, 
1835 - 
Which bears the easily verified stamp of being 
President Taylor’s own signature. On another tree, 
also a beech, at a little distance from the first is cut: 
Hancock Taylor, 
1835. 
The first is spoken of in Louisville as the “Presi- 
dent’s tree,’’ and both were discovered only two or 
three years ago. In the valley on the outskirt of 
this wood stands a well preserved log cabin that is 
known to have been used as a hunting lodge by 
President Taylor and others when deer hunting in 
the lovely wilds of Kentucky. 
* * * 
The two trees mentioned and numbers of others 
among the oldest and best of the beeches are more 
or less decayed at the base of the trunks and are 
being in a measure restored, as well as the progress 
of decay materially retarded, by taking out all of 
the rotten wood from the hollow trunks and coat- 
