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At La Crosse City Hall, Planning Director Larry Kirch draws lines on a city map to show routes that might allow bicyclists someday to travel from the South Side to the North Side on paths along the river and link up with trails in the city’s central corridors.
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Ben Mahlke walks his coonhound, Molly, with Chelsea Collier Wednesday through the La Crosse River Marsh on Rabbit Trail. Mahlke said he and Molly walk in the marsh at least 3-times a week
PETER THOMSON photo
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Upstairs in City Hall, Steven Carlyon, director of the Parks and Recreation Department for 10 months, discusses a 1919 map that shows plans to connect the original La Crosse parks with walking paths. That concept, while difficult, is one Carlyon wants to work on, and perhaps connect all neighborhoods with pedestrian and bicycle trails.
These various efforts, along with projects such as the Myrick Hixon EcoPark, could drastically transform the connection between people and nature in La Crosse in the coming years.
“To create an 8-mile-long bluff preserve and connect that with a huge trail system is going to set this city apart from many other communities for a long time,” Kirch said.
History
All three men point back 100 years, when an integrated park system emerged in the city.
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“In the early 1900s, there was this idea that people living in the city should have scenic beauty and outdoor recreational opportunities close at hand,” Jacobson said. “That concept has been carried through for 100 years.”
Several factors brought the park system to fruition.
One was a plan that, Carlyon points out, was designed by one of the most famous landscape architects ever: John Nolen, a protégé of Frederick Law Olmsted, who designed Central Park in New York City.
Carlyon said he is surprised more people aren’t aware of Nolen’s role here.
Another sign of how the park system came into being can be seen in the park names: Copeland, Hixon, Powell.
“Had the city’s leadership 100 years ago — the Hixons and the Copelands and those folks — not come up with the resources to implement the Nolen plan, you would not have what you have today,” Carlyon said. “That was not done on the backs of citizen taxes. That was done on the benevolence and contributions of the citizens of La Crosse, as a way to create a legacy that you and I take for granted.”
A third key component was the Board of Park Commissioners, which will celebrate its 100-year anniversary next month. It remains a forum for community input into La Crosse parks, officials said.
Bluffs
The most significant change coming to the park system here is the addition of the bluffs from Hwy. B in the north to Hwy. 14/61 in the south.
The Mississippi Valley Conservancy has worked for five years to acquire the land from private owners, and then transferred it to city ownership after putting conservation easements on it.
To date, 14 landowners have sold or donated land to the conservancy’s efforts. Along with the 800-acre Hixon Forest, it has added nearly 900 more acres that eventually will be overseen by the city’s Park and Recreation Department.
Jacobson, the conservancy’s executive director for two years, says the project eventually will give the city the equivalent of its own state park.
“We all hear about the endangered rainforests in South America, but how many people realize that the oak savanna and blufftop prairies we have here are much rarer and more endangered than the rainforest?” said Jacobson, who has worked as an environmental lawyer.
The city has allocated $1.47 million to help the conservancy acquire land. With the help of state grants, it has secured $3.75 million worth of land to date, Jacobson said.
And although a contiguous route from Hwy. B to Hwy. 14/61 has not yet become a reality, volunteers with Human Powered Trails have already begun building a trail through part of the newly acquired bluffland.
Looking out his office windows on the 10th floor of the U.S. Bank building, Jacobson can see the entire expanse of bluffs he and others are working to set aside.
“When the leaves are on the trees, I can’t see a single house on our 8-mile stretch of bluffs” in La Crosse, Jacobson said. “When I look to the west, I can’t say the same thing.
“The reason there aren’t houses marring that view is basically luck, and I don’t think we can rely forever on luck.”
Bicycles
Cyclists already can ride from the top of the bluffs to Riverside Park almost exclusively on trails.
But a more extensive bicycle route is in the works that someday could stretch from Isle la Plume north along the river to Copeland Park.
Construction is under way to extend the paved path in Riverside Park south behind The Waterfront Restaurant.
That will connect with an Isle la Plume trail, for which grant funding already has been secured. Construction should begin after the Common Council determines where a bridge should be located to connect the south part of the island to the mainland.
Kirch said they are trying to build a system both for commuters and recreational riders, and added there are challenges beyond the logistics of getting trails built.
“We live in a world where it’s very difficult for people to give up their cars,” he said. “If people don’t feel safe, they’re not going to do it. If they don’t have a place to park their bike, they’re not going to do it. If there’s no place to take a shower at work or freshen up, people aren’t going to do it. So you have to not only build the trails, but employers have to see the light as well.”
The river route isn’t the only park work the Planning Department has in its sights:
-Kirch described other bicycle routes in various stages of planning, including northern routes behind Festival Foods to Monitor Street and Goose Green Park and another north of Gillette Street. In the coming years, Kirch said, he’d like to see at least one bicycle route done a year.
-Kirch worked with Jacobson and others, including Human Powered Trails and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, on the recently completed master plan for the bluffland protection program.
-The department also has worked for three years to line city streets with grass and trees through a boulevard restoration program. Besides providing shade and absorbing storm water, Kirch said, the new green spaces will “take the hard, urban edge off the city and restore this back to the park board’s vision in 1908.”
Parks
From her home on Main Street, Dorothy Lenard can walk to Hixon Forest and the top of the bluffs, to the marsh and to Riverside Park.
One reason why she and her family moved back to La Crosse, Lenard said, is because of its natural beauty.
“Sometimes I don’t think we know or understand that some people don’t live with all this around them,” she said.
Lenard, a Common Council member, is president of the Board of Park Commissioners, and was on the search committee that hired Carlyon last summer.
Carlyon, who was a civilian employee with the Air Force for 26 years before coming to La Crosse, now is working on a parks master plan.
Among his ideas is to move all the city’s baseball fields to a single location and to reclaim parks as gathering points for neighborhoods, with walking paths and natural areas.
“The original design of all these neighborhood parks is that they were to provide environments for neighborhoods to relax and enjoy the outdoors,” said Carlyon. “I don’t think the original intention was to put a ballfield in the middle of the neighborhood.”
But while moving ballfields, which also would make maintenance easier, is just a vision for now, work will begin this summer to transform Crowley Park into the kind of neighborhood center Carlyon hopes become the norm for La Crosse parks.
“A good park system, just like a good school system, will attract people to live here,” he said.
Lenard, who said she uses the parks at least weekly, thinks people need the natural environment to be healthy emotionally and physically.
“If you’ve never experienced trees or something green, it’s hard to have an appreciation for what that gives back,” she said. “They’re not just pretty, but they’re part of the life cycle ... So when you have parks and you have green spaces, the whole area is healthier.”
Parks Board Centennial
The La Crosse Parks and Recreation Board will hold a 100th anniversary celebration from 5 to 9 p.m. May 15 at Riverside Park.
The Common Council on that date in 1908 passed an ordinance creating the Board of Park Commissioners. The current Parks and Recreation Board will re-enact the original board’s first meeting and then hold a regularly scheduled meeting, both open to the public.
Presentations also will be made about future ideas and plans for La Crosse parks. Music, food and children’s entertainment will be featured as well.
The animated film “Over the Hedge” will be shown on the Parks and Recreation Department’s new outdoor movie screen, an event that will be repeated in Riverside Park throughout the summer.
Joe Orso can be reached at (608) 791-8429 or jorso@lacrossetribune.com.
