76 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
one management. The Park Department 
has been taken out of politics and was 
placed under civil service rules. The three 
city commissioners, who were elected for 
four years, act as a board, with one of 
their members as president. 
Owing to the strict business methods of 
this commission the parks of our city begin 
to show the systematic work of the last 
two years. Many neglected small parks 
have been remodeled and made attractive. 
Four new playgrounds have been estab- 
lished with tennis courts, croquet, basket- 
ball, swings, slides, giant strides and boat- 
ing. This movement, however, is growing, 
and more facilties will be put up in the 
near future. 
New greenhouses and stables have been 
built and connected with large working and 
store rooms. The annual flower display 
has been enlarged wherever possible and 
the flowering season extended by planting 
of thousands of bulbs. 
We have collected several thousands of 
coniferous trees and deciduous shrubs in 
the Rocky Mountains. The most of these 
are growing good in our nursery and some 
have been planted on dry slopes, where 
only an occasional watering is possible. 
Picea pungens, Pinus scopulorum, Junip- 
erus sibirica and Juniperus scopulorum do 
exceedingly well in this southern part of 
Colorado, while the Engelmann’s and 
Douglas spruce and the balsam fir are 
mostly failures. 
Rhus trilobata, three-leaved sumach or 
squaw currant, is one of our native shrubs, 
growing just as well on hot, dry slopes 
as on moist places. One can see this dwarf 
spreading shrub creep up in gulches ex- 
posed to the full sun, forming colonies 
where a little seepage trickles through the 
ground, sending the roots to a great depth, 
which enables the plant to keep its dark 
green foliage perfectly fresh during the hot 
weather and drought. Near rivers and on 
moist places it grows erect, forming bushes 
six to eight feet high, covered with bright 
scarlet fruit ; branches and leaves are 
strongly aromatic and entirely different 
from other plants of the sumach family. 
It should do well in dry, hot sun exposed 
slopes, between boulders and gravel. 
We have at City Park a low place of 
about five acres. This was excavated un- 
der a former administration and a lake 
proposed. The bottom consists of sand 
and gravel to a depth of fifteen feet. I 
would like to ask the members of this as- 
sociation if it is possible to seal the bot- 
tom with twelve to fourteen inches of 
adobe, which can be had nearby. The wa- 
ter is supposed to be four feet deep. 
I shall take this occasion and answer 
question nine of our question box, “Meth- 
ods of lawn sprinkling, as to equipment, 
force of men, sprinkling, etc.” 
Our parks are equipped with a network 
of pipes, terminating in a hydrant or street 
washer of the Eclipse or Murdock type, 
every hundred feet square, more or less. 
Fifty to seventy-five feet rubber hose is 
needed to reach every spot. It would be 
better to have the hydrants arranged in 
eighty-feet squares ; a fifty-foot hose will 
then be sufficient to cover all spaces, allow- 
ing for some shortening of the hose for re- 
pairs. We are using moulded inch hose 
and the C. & B. sprinkler. We start irri- 
gating about the first of April and con- 
tinue to November 1, but 1 there have been 
some winters when we had to irrigate in 
December and again in February. 
The force of men depends entirely upon 
the local conditions of the soil and sub- 
soil. We have parks where one man takes 
care of only thirty sprinklers and is kept 
busy, and others, with heavy adobe soil, 
one man can take care of a hundred. In 
the latter park we water a certain space 
once in six or seven days thoroughly. In 
other parks, with gravel and subsoil, we 
water once in two days. During the hot- 
test season we water day and night, shift- 
ing the sprinklers only twice in the night 
and every thirty minutes during the day. 
Our report for 1913 contains very inter- 
esting figures on this question. At Mineral 
Palace, with heavy adobe soil, located in a 
river valley, it costs $12.74 per acre to 
water during the summer months. At City 
Park, sandy soil, $17.16 per acre, and at 
Mitchell Park, located on a hill, with very 
sandy soil, $28.25. The annual rainfall dur- 
ing 1913 was below the average. 
G. Hennenhofer, 
Pueblo, Colo. Supt. of Parks. 
* * * 
As a secretary, I am unable to recite 
any unusual accomplishments as to outside 
work in Seattle, but will mention a feature 
of secretarial work which has been some- 
what of a hobby of mine, to-wit : Publicity. 
I believe that it pays to exploit in every 
possible way, locally, the recreation facil- 
ities at the disposal of the citizens, en- 
courage the use of them and keep the pub- 
lic informed as much as possible of the 
plans of the department. 
I have made during the last few years 
over 300 stereopticon views, illustrating 
the plans and work of the department. 
These views I am continually showing be- 
fore commercial and civic organizations, 
church clubs, fraternal societies, etc. Mem- 
bers who were present at the Boston con- 
vention will probably recall my presenting 
some of them there. These views have 
won friends for our work, and the fact 
that we have secured four million dollars- 
of extension funds, voted by the people, is 
evidence that the people are with us, and 
it is generally conceded that these pictures 
and our other publicity methods did the 
business. Last year, with the aid of one 
of our daily newspapers, I carried out an- 
other idea which I think is worthy of emu- 
lation. 
A space in the paper each day was as- 
signed to us, free of charge, headed 
“Beauty Spots of Seattle’s Park System,” 
three columns wide, below which ap- 
peared a picture of some park or boulevard, 
location, how reached, etc. I managed to 
furnish a new picture for every day for 
about three months last summer, and it 
made a great hit as well as increasing the 
use of our park system. 
I am going to inaugurate this same 
scheme again this summer. 
Roland Cotterill, 
Secretary, Park Board. 
Seattle, Wash. 
While in Seattle during the past year 
we have been carrying forward a number 
of extensive improvement projects in park 
work on a scale for which this progressive 
metropolis of the Pacific Northwest is at- 
taining fame; one feature of our work is 
worthy of particular mention as being un- 
usual. 
I refer to the use of city prisoners in 
connection with the clearing, grading and 
seeding of an eighteen-hole golf course and 
the grading of a driveway 7,200 feet in 
length, leading to the course from the 
boulevard system. The city many years 
ago acquired 235 acres of logged-off land 
on a high ridge overlooking the city and 
harbor and but three miles from the center 
of the city. A five-acre tract was enclosed 
as a stockade with prisoners’ quarters 
about four years ago, and all short-term 
city prisoners are sent there, and the 
clearing and grubbing of the land was 
taken up first and has proceeded so far 
that nearly 200 acres have been turned over 
to the Park Board and is known as Jeffer- 
son Park, of which 101 acres are taken up 
by the golf course and the remainder by a 
nursery, greenhouse and athletic field. 
The inmates of the “stockade” vary in 
number from 50 to 150 men, and a large 
percentage of these men are assigned to me 
for work in the park. 
A few trusties are used at the nursery 
all the time, while on the golf course and 
driveway work I have had as high as sixty 
men, at no expense other than supervision 
and guards. 
Surprisingly good results were obtained, 
too, as the men are glad to be in the open 
and do good work, as they are well fed. I 
am just getting ready to construct a $5,0CO 
golf shelter and will use the prisoners on 
excavation, common labor, etc. This idea 
of using prisoners on park work is prob- 
ably an innovation and may be thought un- 
wise by some of our members, but I can 
attest to the good results obtained, and, of 
course, it has meant a tremendous saving 
in labor cost. I might mention that I have 
not worked the prisoners with other men, 
aside from foremen and guards, keeping 
them distinctly by themselves except at the 
nursery and greenhouse, where a few 
“trusties” work with my regular men. 
J. W. Thompson, 
Seattle, Wash. Supt. of Parks. 
