By Andy Ostmeyer

aostmeyer@joplinglobe.com

The president of the Missouri Parks Association might be expected to have favorites.

And, in fact, Susan Flader does. Rock Bridge State Park near Columbia is close to home for Flader, professor emeritus at the University of Missouri. She has taught courses in U.S. Western and environmental history, world environmental history and the history of Missouri.

Another favorite is Hawn State Park, near Sainte Genevieve, in eastern Missouri. There’s scenery there, for sure, as well as a great story about the love Missourians have for their parks.

It was a Missouri schoolteacher, Helen Coffer Hawn, who over the years began buying small parcels of land with her salary. Eventually, Hawn’s holdings grew to 1,459 acres, which she willed to the state in 1952. Her donation became the centerpiece of what is today a nearly 5,000-acre park.

“This is somebody who had a vision,” said Flader.

Flader, who spent her life studying people with a conservation vision, also is the past president of the American Society for Environmental History and an expert on conservationist Aldo Leopold.

Missouri parks were built in large part because of the vision of some its residents.

Closer to Joplin, she notes, Thomas Sayman, a St. Louis businessman, bought 2,400 acres surrounding Roaring River near Cassville in 1928, and, within a month, donated the land to the state. Roaring River State Park is today one of the jewels in the state’s necklace of 85 parks and historic sites.

But it has taken more than generous donors to create the state park system, Flader said.

“Parks have always received periodic infusions from outside for capital improvements,” she said.

One of the first and largest of those came during the Great Depression, when young men were put to work building trails, cabins, hatcheries and other features that are still visible at Roaring River and elsewhere.

A second infusion came during the 1960s and ’70s, with the creation of the Land and Water Conservation Fund. It designates that a portion of receipts from offshore oil and gas leases be placed into a fund and used annually for state, local and federal conservation.

A $600 million state bond issue for public projects was authorized in the 1980s, with 10 percent of that for parks, said Flader.

It has been nearly a quarter of a century since there was a major infusion of cash for state parks, and it shows, she said. Right now, Missouri parks and historic sites face a $200 million backlog for infrastructure work and other projects. That’s not including the wish list for such things as the mule barn at Harry Truman’s birthplace in Lamar, or for campgrounds, for example, at Big Sugar Creek State Park near Pineville.

“It is just taking care of what we have now,” Flader said.

The Missouri Parks Association thinks the time is right for another bond issue, Flader said. They are pushing for one in the neighborhood of $700 million to $1 billion for public projects in the state, with 10 percent of that for parks.

Why now?

Missouri is about to pay off its previous bonds, and that revenue stream could be “shifted” over to pay for the new bond issuance, said Flader. And with many contractors looking for work, this is a good time to get competitive bids. What’s more, interest rates are low and could be made even more attractive by the fact that the state could qualify for federal Build America Bond money, which would pay 35 percent of the state’s interest rate using federal stimulus money.

MPA officials worry that in lean times, state parks might be seen as “just a luxury,” but Flader said nothing could be further from the truth.

“We need (parks) for a sense of who we are,” Flader explained.

There are practical benefits as well. Two surveys this past year indicated that Missourians have found an additional reason to support parks as problems such as obesity rise to epidemic levels.

“Both of those are showing that what people especially value is the health benefits. ... That’s not a luxury,” Flader said.



Mark it down

Susan Flader, president of the Missouri Parks Association, will speak about the work and writings of conservationist Aldo Leopold and his connection to the Ozarks at 2 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 6, at the Wildcat Glades Conservation and Audubon Center in Wildcat Park in Joplin. The cost is $5 per person.

Flader is the author and editor of numerous works, including “Thinking Like a Mountain: Aldo Leopold and the Evolution of an Ecological Attitude Towards Deer, Wolves and Forests” (1974; 1994); “The River of the Mother of God and Other Essays,” by Aldo Leopold with J.B. Callicott (1991); and “Exploring Missouri’s Legacy: State Parks and Historic Sites” (1992).