Wapsipinicon State Park seeks National Historic Register designation

By Dave DeWitte

ANAMOSA – Cruising the crazy up-and-down loop drive through Wapsipinicon State Park here, it’s difficult to grasp that the scenic stone arch bridges, rustic park lodges – even the drive itself – were originally built by inmate labor.

That’s one of many curious facts about one of Iowa’s most beloved state parks in a nomination for the National Historic Register to be reviewed by a state panel next month.

The park has so endeared itself to local residents, whose ancestors bought the park land and donated it to the state, that they want the entire park to be a National Historic District. The nomination includes 400 acres of riverbanks, pine forest, bridges, creek beds, limestone bluffs, campgrounds, picnic areas, caves, playgrounds and a golf course.

“It’s been a big part of most peoples’ lives who live in this area,” said John Pearson of rural Anamosa, a retired Rockwell Collins toolmaker whose father, a construction foreman for the Anamosa State Penitentiary, conducted one of the first surveys of the park and laid out its road design, among other things.

Local garden clubs tend to plantings in the park, and the local Rotary Club helps maintain the park’s more modern Rotary Lodge.

Mr. Pearson’s wife, Jan, spent more than 50 hours poring over newspapers to provide research input for the 126-page historic district application that state historic preservation officials are being asked to recommend to the National Parks Service.

“It’s an unbelievable place,” Ms. Pearson said. “If we don’t preserve it, nobody’s ever going to.”

Leah Rogers of Tallgrass Historians in Mount Vernon prepared the National Register of Historic Places nomination and helped coordinate the research with members of the Jones County Historic Preservation Commission for the nomination. She said the park was established in 1921 after local residents pooled their resources to buy a forested area that a local horse breeder was proposing to sell to the state prison as a source of timber.

Research indicated that on the day after the first donation of land to the state, hundreds of local residents who’d heard the news went out to see the site of their future park, even before a road had been built into it.

Work on the park went on for about three years before it was dedicated in June 1924. Beyond building the park, inmates provided entertainment for massive groups of park visitors at Sunday afternoon concerts in the summer months during the early days, Mr. Pearson said.

The park is just west of Anamosa’s municipal water plant and ball field complex across the Wapsipinicon River. The nomination includes a still functional dam that diverts the river waters through a hydroelectric turbine, a historic bowstring bridge and a historic steel truss pedestrian bridge across the Wapsipinicon River.

The park is historically has some of the highest attendance numbers of any state park. Park Manager Dennis Murphy says that’s not because of intensive use, but because its loop drive is a popular spot for residents of nearby Anamosa to commune with nature from the comfort of their cars.

“You’ll see deer, turkey – all kinds of things,” Mr. Murphy said. “That road is one car after another, just making the loop.”

One of the park’s non-designated attractions is a shallow-water crossing on the park drive at which vehicles must traverse a section of Dutch Creek several inches deep with water on a paved surface.

Although park staff would prefer they didn’t, young park visitors often gather by what’s become known as the “upside down bridge” on hot days, urging passing cars to drive fast enough to splash them, Mr. Murphy said.

Wapsipinicon State Park is the last in the state to have a private country club leasing its nine-hole course, according to Mr. Murphy. The arrangement keeps the DNR out of the business of operating the golf course, including regulating the serving of alcoholic beverages, Mr. Murphy said

Wapsipinicon Country Club recently renewed a 50-year lease on the hilly course, which has a rustic log lodge as its clubhouse. The lease requires the country club to keep the course open for public play, however.

The state has properly maintained the park over the years, but parts of it have been lost to time. A natural swimming pool built by damming Dutch Creek was closed in the 1930s, in part because of fears that its lack of chlorination could lead to the spread of polio. An early swimming beach on the river was washed away by a flood, and recent flooding also washed out the last of the 1920s-era park pavilions along the park’s river drive.

Mr. Murphy is only aware of one park building that currently is threatened. The foundation stone of the rustic log Boy Scout Lodge is crumbling, he said, and in need of the restoration.

Work is also needed to preserve the Dutch Creek dam, Mr. Murphy said, and to begin replanting the park’s pine forest. Originally planted as part of a tree nursery by the state, it is now so tall that tree tops, and even tall trees can, be broken off by high winds.

Receiving a National Historic District designation could help the state obtain grants to rehabilitate some of the park’s structures, according to Rose Rohr, chairwoman of the Jones County Historic Preservation Commission. After 18 months of effort by commission members, community volunteers and Ms. Rogers, she feels positive about the chances for the park’s historic significance to be recognized by a National Register of Historic Places listing.

More than an honorary designation, a listing protects properties on the National Register of Historic Places, allowing a federal historic preservation advisory council to provide input on any federally funded projects that would impact the property. The nomination, Ms. Rohr noted, would even cover the “view shed” or visual environment of the park.