New Book Releases

Hamilton County parks have long been popular destinations for a variety of outdoor activities such as hiking, fishing, golf, and boating. At the same time, the parks have worked diligently to preserve wetlands, prairies, and other natural habitats. Hamilton County Parks explores a fascinating and little explored chapter of Hamilton County history. It spans more than 75 years of local history, tracing the development of the park system and the services it has provided its residents over the years. Join author Robert Earnest Miller as he tells the story of the Hamilton County parks through photographs and other visual materials from an extensive collection maintained by the staff of the Hamilton County Park District. The vast majority of these images have never been published or displayed for the public before.

HIstoric Mill Creek Park documents the fascinating, and often surprising, history of this Ohio park.

Founded in 1891 as Ohio's first park district, Mill Creek Park encompasses a unique wealth of natural and designed features that have been the backdrop for generations of family memories, spanning three centuries. A remarkable visionary, park founder Volney Rogers argued that the land itself could improve the lives of Youngstown's residents. Through fresh air for mill-weary lungs and tree laced horizons for workroom-bound spirits, he knew a park would make the community a better place for families. And he succeeded magnificently. Rogers and the nationally known landscape architects that he hired created breathtaking vistas of Lanterman's Falls and scenic gorges and designed trails, drives, and three pleasure lakes. Other park features include nature preserves, display gardens, recreational fields, a Donald Ross-designed golf course, and a legacy of historic structures. Mill Creek Park indeed has earned its legendary claim as the most beautiful urban park in America.

Geneva Lake camps provided education, activities, spirituality, and community in a healthy environment away from the city. The first sites were located on the western shores of Geneva Lake, with Camp Collie established in 1874; seventeen more followed. Although most camps were spiritually based, they differed in what they offered and who they served. People attending the camps came from all income levels and many cultures. Adult- and family-oriented camps provided a setting for vacations or conferences, and children's camps prided themselves on fostering responsibility and solid values. Images of America: Camps of Geneva Lake highlights 18 camps in the days of woolen bathing costumes, steam yachts, and platform tents.

Ogden Dunes, incorporated in 1925, is the largest and most residential of the three Porter County lake-front communities established in the 1920s.

Although it began as a highly restricted resort community with the largest man-made ski jump in North America, it became a middle-class residential community after 1945. Because of its proximity to Gary and Chicago, Ogden Dunes was also a battleground between the forces that wished to conserve the dunes and those that pushed for industrializing them. Alice Gray, Diana of the Dunes; Dorothy Buell, who led the fight to create a national park; and Dale Messick, the creator of comic strip Brenda Starr: Girl Reporter were important members of the community. Over the years, Ogden Dunes has provided a creative and supportive environment for children and adults, especially those with artistic talents and interests.

No other city in the world has a park system as great as Chicago's, which includes over 550 parks totaling more than 7,000 acres. Each park has its own story, as well as unique characteristics and history, and yet the majority of Chicagoans are not aware of the wealth, variety, and sheer number of parks that exist, to say nothing of the ideas they
project, the history they commemorate, and the origins of their names. Chicago's Parks: A Photographic History seeks to remedy this oversight. From Chicago's first park, Dearborn Park, to its more famous parks of Grant and Lincoln, this book provides a wealth of information concerning the origins of the names and plans of these Chicago landmarks. A formal plan for the creation of a park system was developed in 1869, and soon Chicago had some of the greatest parks to be found anywhere in the world. When Chicago was founded in 1837, the city's fathers adopted the motto urbs in horto, or "the city set in a garden." Despite the numerous changes that have taken place over the past 160 years, Chicago is still a city set in a garden. Chicago's Parks: A Photographic History captures the growth of that "garden" with its nearly 200 historic photographs.

A fast-growing frontier community transformed itself into a beautiful urban model of parks and boulevards. In 1893, East Coast newspapers were calling Kansas City "the filthiest in the United States." The drainage of many houses emptied into gullies and cesspools. There was no garbage collection service, and herding livestock through the city was only recently prohibited. Through the diligent efforts of a handful of recently arrived citizens, political, financial, and botanical skills were successfully applied to a nascent parks system. "Squirrel pastures," cliffs and bluffs, ugly ravines, and shanties and slums were turned into a gridiron of green, with chains of parks and boulevards extending in all directions. Wherever the system penetrated well-settled localities, the policy was to provide playgrounds, tennis courts, baseball diamonds, pools, and field houses. By the time the city fathers were finished, Kansas City could boast of 90 miles of boulevards and 2,500 acres of urban parks.