Ribbon Cutting Held for Jesse W. Fell Walkway
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by Jill Funke
It is a testament to a vision, of perseverance, donations, grants and the cooperation of city government and community organizations. These are what culminated in the celebration of the completion of the Jesse W. Fell Walkway in Larchwood on Saturday, November 17.
The walkway was included in the original plan for the park made up about fifteeen years ago. The vision was continued and expanded by Carla Manning to have a walking path through the wooded area of the Larchwood park to draw people into this beautiful but neglected area of the park. Perserverance was also hers - after several years of suggesting the walkway to the city council, the idea of making it a historical and informative walkway made it appealing to the City Council, Larchwood Community Group and the Siouxland Community Foundation, all of which gave money to the project. Benches were donated by Modern Woodmen of America and another in memory of the Bill, Maureen and Mike Reckert. Also donated were four mosaics showing a corn field during the four seasons were designed and completed by Carla. Darren Dubbelde was contacted to design and build metal forms and posts for the mosaics. He dived into the project and had a design ready in a matter of days. Carla said that she had made a mosaic flower pot before, so of course this project should be no problem! It turned out that after smashing ceramic tiles and laying them out on fiberglass mesh, that the same color and perspective principles used in painting held true to this art form also. The walkway now has a bronze historical sign explaining who Jesse W. Fell was and what he did for Larchwood, a bronze sign identifying a European Larch tree, 2 benches, and a covered picnic table with a grill. Next summer, vintage flowers will be planted along the walkway.
Following is some history which explains the importance of Jesse Fell to Larchwood.
The site of Larchwood and the land adjacent to it, which was known as the Sykes Estate, was originally given as a grant by the United States government to Charles W. Holder of Bloomington, Illinois. In 1873, Mr. Holder transferred the bulk of the grant to Jesse Fell for $1.25 per acre. Jesse Weldon Fell was a substantial citizen and patriarch of Bloomington, Illinois. He was a friend of Abraham Lincoln and it was he who proposed the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates. Jesse Fell was the great-grandfather of the political figure, Adlai Stevenson, and was described by Stevenson as his "favorite ancestor". Jesse Fell’s legacy still continues after over 125 years with the enhancing of the city by the European Larch trees he planted here. Jesse was famous for planting trees wherever he lived. He planted some ten thousand trees in Normal, Illinois alone. After he had left Pennsylvania, the treeless prairies of the Midwest looked so bleak to him, that he became the greatest tree planter in the area, supplying of thousands of them from his own nursery. After his purchase of the Lyon County land, he immediately dispatched a man by the name of Fred Geiser, to plant trees. The first instructions were to plant willow hedges around every quarter-section of land. These hedges were set by plowing a furrow with horses or oxen and then plowed to cover them. Where the willow poles came from is not clear, but they must have been hauled from along the river or creeks as the area in the immediate vicinity was treeless. The willow hedges were somewhat of a nuisance and of little value, although some of these willow hedges remained in Lyon County fields until the early 1930s. Next, Fell turned his attention to the new town of Larchwood. Mr. Fell imported and planted many useful and valuable trees of the European Larch variety. Along with maples and evergreen varieties which remain as a monument to Fell’s work and foresight. Larch is a common name for a small genus of trees restricted to the colder parts of the northern hemisphere. Larches belong to the pine family and are unusual among the conifers in that they are deciduous, their soft, needles borne in dense clusters that turn golden and drop in the fall and new leaves do not appear until the following spring. Of the ten species of larch in the world, only three occur in North American.
In February of 1881, Mr. Fell disposed of his interest in Lyon County to the Close Brothers of LeMars, IA, who, in turn, sold the tract at an advance of about $1.00 per acre to Richard Sykes of Manchester, England in November of 1881. Mr. Sykes took up the work where Mr. Fell left off. He was well liked and on frequent visits to Larchwood, was royally welcomed and serenaded by the local bands. In appreciation of this courtesy and friendship, he donated two blocks to the city of Larchwood and designated it to be used only as a park. Many of the stately trees still stand there, signaling the origin of the town’s name - Larchwood. In the book entitled "History Reminiscence and Biography of Lyon County, Iowa, an unnamed individual writes of his first visit to Larchwood in its very early days.
It was a glorious day in October when we first saw Larchwood. We had never heard of the place. Our horses, unchecked, went feeding from the tall blue joint grass by the road side as we journeyed at our own sweet will, wrapped in a day dream, and nothing to do, and going nowhere in particular. We had traveled for days over $60-an-acre land (then worth $3 or $4) with no desire for owning a foot of it. Larchwood, with its three homes and a granary with a straw roof, seemed asleep in the sun’s departing smile, and the only sign of life was a man making some repair on the straw roof. That man had been a paymaster appointed by Lincoln, when Lincoln said, "Mr. Fell, you and I have ridden behind the same horse on our law circuit; you have done much for the country; what will you accept?" And Mr. Fell cared for no soft snap in the Quartermaster’s Department, where the salary was inconspicuous compared with the stealage; but he chose a paymaster’s place - a position requiring character and probity. Mr. Fell owned 20,000 acres - to his sorrow. The locusts were bad and to add to trouble, Governor Pillsbury of Minnesota had days appointed for fasting and prayers; and such earnestness had been shown at these meetings as to cause insects to arise and fly. They came down into Iowa, the vicinity of Larchwood getting a good share. Mr. Fell tried to colonize his lands with Quakers from Pennsylvania. He tried to sell the land. The east was turned against the west. The truth never travels fast enough to overtake a lie; and the east still thought of blizzards and Indian outbreaks at Larchwood. In the meantime, Mr. Fell planted trees and laid out a park. The years would drag by and traveled men from foreign lands would wander across this green expanse and wonder what ailed this "bloody country" that it didn’t settle up. And one day an Englishman with money he never earned, but had it fall to him as inherited capital invested in the cloth business at Manchester, came stalking across the prairie like a God, with his dogs and his eye glass, and a tin bath tub bigger than a claim shanty! So he buys the whole business, park and everything for $5 per acre, and wins immortality and perhaps a monument by giving the park to Larchwood. And the years will drag no more, but fairly fly. The population will increase wonderfully, as we approach old-world conditions. The crowded city tenements will send their inhabitants to the Larchwood park in the summer. For it’s a wonderful place; it stretches away into woodland scenery and far dreamy vistas of foliage and flowers like the gardens of Daphne. And the people resting here from the heat of the cities, enjoying the world-famous Larchwood strawberries, will bless the great Englishman who gave away the park, but none will think of the man who planted it. . .A visitor to Larchwood was quoted as saying , "The very air in the park at Larchwood is scented with pine. It’s like being somewhere else, like walking in the mountains."