The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1908-03-26

Santa Fe shops are located just north
of this grove. 1t is alreadya natural
park. The ground is rolling and
there are several nice trees in the
grove. Shunganunga creek borders
the tract on the southeast. Little
work would be required to make a
nice and attractive park of this grove.
This movement of the progressive
mended and should be encouraged by
everybody. Parks are a blessing as
well as a great pleasure to any city
in the summer time. Green grass and
trees in the midst of paved streets
and brick buildings when the sun is
shining like a furnace and the air is
laden with dust are beautiful spots
and make places of beauty as well
come as an oasis in the desert. Their
benefits to children and women are
priceless. They strike the eye of
strangers and visitors with peculiar
force. The money spent by munich
palfty for parks is as we'll spent as
for paving, sewers or any other i'm
provements even if the parks do not
appear to be such imperative necessi-
ties all the year round.
Good Judgment in Selections.
Then these East Side people showed
splendid judgment in the selection of
sites for their parks. They picked
| places where the land is covered with
the worst eyeSoreS in the city. They
will not only have secured parks, but
will have transformed their ug1iest
places into the most beautiful spots
in that section of the city. The Santa
Fe park is the worst needed of the
three. Imagine the contrast between
a pile of wrecked box cars and old
junk and collection of shacks scat
tered all the way between Fourth
and Sixth streets south of the depot
and a tract of grassland, shaded by
trees and dotted with flower beds and
cut by driveways and graveled walks.
1t is the contrast between day and
night. Beauty and the beast
DR.. Harding and Superintendent
Reinisch returned from the drive heart
| lily in favor of these three parks for the
East side. They thought that they
were not only badly needed, but that
| the choice of the sites was singularIy
happy and practicable. They thought
| that every East side citizen who takes
| a pride in his section of the city and
who wants to see it improved and beau
tilted, its worst and ugliest features re-
moved and the value of property ad-
| vanced as a result, should sign the
petition for the issuance of park bonds
| and urge others to sign them.
just the Place for Lake.
After the inspection of the parks,
which was the main object of the
| drive, Mr.. Roof drove his party out
/
| eastern limits at the end of Eleventh
street and the cemetery to show them
| what he declared was the finest natur-
al place in the United States for a lake.
Mr.. Roofs ambition, after the parks
| are realities, is to have a dam built
| from the east limits of the city across
to the rock quarry on the west side of
| cemetery hill which will hold the wa
| tiers of Biddle creek which flows in the
hollow between and which often gets
| on a rampage and floods the little val
| ley. The dam would have to be about
400 feet long. 1t would be built across
| natural water shed which drains the
| surface water from 10000 acres Of land.
This lake would cover the Gordon land
| and would extend from Eleventh to
Eighteenth street north and south and
| would be from 400 to 600 feet wide east
| and west. 1t could easily be made
thirty to forty feet deep. DIR. Harding
and Superintendent Reinisch were inn
pressed with the beauty of the spot.
The hills on either side make natural