Parks

Ann Arbor, Mich.
June 30, 1905

To the Ann Arbor Park Commissioners--

Dear Sirs:

I have spent today in looking over the grounds which you have recently acquired for park purposes and wish to congratulate you and the city of Ann Arbor on having secured so beautiful a piece of ground. The land borders the Huron river for some distance and contains a hillside from the top of which one gets beautiful views of the city and the valley of the Huron. The river banks and portions of the hillside are covered with attractive native trees and shrubs. Every city should try to secure for posterity an attractive native woodland. It is not so important to develop the park by introducing carefully kept lawns and flower beds, but it is important to retain the native growth. No landscape gardener can plant as well as Nature has planted. Some years ago I visited with William Robinson his country place about thirty miles outside of London. Upon this there was a tract of sixty acres of original forest. He assured me that such tracts were extremely rare in England and were prized very highly. We are in danger of losing our native woods especially about cities, and the boys and girls of the future will be deprived of a great deal of the pleasure which there parents and grandparents employed if they cannot have a chance to go out into the woods.

With your limited income the force of men employed at Cedar Bend park should be reduced to a minimum. What is needed is merely to give the public facilities to see the beauty which now exists along the river and hillside, that is those who drive or walk should be enabled to reach the points of interest with ease and comfort. I find that it is quite feasible to make a driveway with easy grades connecting the river drive with the Boulevard at the top of the bluff. The construction of such a drive should be the first work undertaken, but it should not be undertaken until the lines are established and the road carefully staked out. Some of the work which has been done in the park is unnecessary and a wasteful expenditure of money. It is unnecessary, for instance, to mow the hillside. Nature has covered it in a beautiful manner with sumachs and various wild flowers, which are attractive in appearance, even if some of them might be weeds on a farm. It is unnecessary to dig a hole around a tree for a little pool of water or to introduce any other trivial feature intended for ornamentation. Bog gardens, lily ponds, etc. may be very properly introduced in time, but first let us make the drives and walks that are necessary and before introducing any feature let it be carefully considered. Nothing is so expensive as doing work over two or three times.

There is a town of forty or fifty thousand inhabitants on the Mississippi river [probably either Quincy, Illinois, or Hannibal, Missouri] which has a number of parks. In this town there is no park superintendent, the duties being performed by the President of the Park Commission, without charge to the city. A park of about 40 acres with magnificent views up and down the Mississippi river, is usually cared for by one man. This man works every day. When more than one man is needed, he is foreman, but he does as much work as any other man. The same system prevails at each of the other parks. The annual income is quite limited but good use is made of it so that the city now has, free from debt, a larger number of acres. The money has gone for the purchase of land, for the building of roads, for planting, and a small percentage for care. With this city as a precedent, I should say that ordinarily, there would be employed in Cedar Bend Park, one good man, who should be willing to labor with his own hands, physically able to do a good day's work and still have judgement enough to keep money from being wasted. He should be employed at the present time in cutting out dead trees, cutting off dead branches and working on the grading of the drive. With the amount of money at your disposal you should be able to grade the drive during the present year. It could then be thrown open to the public so that they could easily drive through the park and learn what a valuable acquisition it is. When the frost is coming out of the ground in the spring, the drive might be closed. This is frequently done in other cities until such time as the city is able to macadamize the park drives.

It seems to me exceedingly important that you should acquire the land along the opposite river bank so as to prevent the destruction at any future time of the large an beautiful trees that now grow on this bank and add greatly to the beauty of the scenery. I am not sure but this is more important even that the building of a drive or walk. What I wish especially is to ask the Commissioners not to do work on things that will not be of permanent value or things that are liable to be changed or discarded.

Yours respectfully,

O. C. Simonds