01/01/1976 - Advisory Parks & Recreation CommissionReport Work Acclompished 1976
Eagan Park Department had a real good year for completing
extra dabs amd up grading of city parks, because of the dry
season.
We made a two mile walking and cross country ski trail in
Patrick Eagan Park. We had some help by concerned persons who
had some experience in laying them out. We did the actual work
of cutting out all brush and mowing. We put up signs along the
trail to assure people they were an the path. We will be putting
rest areas in the park and possibly a picnic area.
We also made a walking trail and cross country ski trail at
Blackhawk that is 12 mile long. Eagan has a total of three and
a half miles of trails in wooded and wild parks. They will be
maintained in the summer for walkers and nature lovers, and main-
tained in the winter for cross country skiers.
We regraded the ground at Carnelian to up grade our pleasure
skating rink, Public Works helped us out with the grader. This
is a job we would have normally contracted out but we wanted to
try it ourselves to see what we are capable of and to save money.
We completed that job in 27 hours and it cost us less than one
half of what a contractor would have charged. We had skateable
ice two weeks earlier than usual because of what we graded.
Due to the interest and growth of Eagan we added three more
soccer fields and practice football fields. We made our own
goals and striped the fields on a regular base with our exist-
ing fields. We also striped foul lines on all our baseball fields.
We weren't able to do them in the past years because of lack of
help and equipment. We took over nine of the baseball fields at
Metcalf Jr. High on May 15, 1976. We are now maintaining 30 ball
diamonds, 5 soccer fields, 2 practice soccer fields and 3 foot-
ball fields in the summer, in the winter we maintain 7 hockey rinks,
8 pleasure rinks and 2 ponds for skating.
In the spring of 1976 we disced up some land behind the Public
Works garage and planted 660 Norway Pine and 160 Ponderosa Pine.
We planted 70 Norway Pine on Blackhawk Cove Road to help hide a
lift station. We then added to our nursery on Gold Trail by add-
ing 338 Ginella Maples, 96 Norway Pine, 398 Honeysuckle and 121
Ponderosa Pine. When these trees grow up in a few years we will
transplant them to City Park. We have made good use of the shrubs
Blue Cross gave us in 1975. We have planted some at City Hall and
around the new Public Works Garage. We donated a lot of shrubs to
garden clubs that wanted to make a planting area in our City Parks.
We helped them prepare the ground and plant. We used our new
flusher truck for water. Northview School Parent Teachers Orginiza-
tion planted pines on the school property, we volunteered our
services to water them.
Happy to say all planting areas and nureries are doing real
good with very little kill.
The full time city employees worked 266 hours on diseased
trees in city park. C.E.T.A. employees worked 186 hours. If
possible we will get a permit to burn on the site where there
were a lot of trees. If we couldn't burn we would haul them
back to the Public Works Garage and burn them at the burning site
we had made for disposal of diseased trees. People who had
diseased trees in their yards would cut them down and haul them
to our garage and we would burn them and keep control over the
fire.
During our slack season we made them shelter to go out to
places where we didn't have a warminghouse for the skaters, so
the kids would have a place to put their skates on and to get
out of the wind to warm up. We then tore down the old warming
house at Cedar Pond that was all rotted and replaced it with a
different house, we bought in Lakeville.
The Eagan Lions bought a flag and flag pole for Cedar Pond.
We put in the concrete base for it and put the pole up. We then
planted shrubs from our nursery at Gold Trail around it. They
had a presentation of the flag during the 4th of July celebration.
We have a lot of plans for the 1977 season and hope we can
complete as much as we did in 1976.
James McGuffee
City Park Department
and
all park employees