Iverson Park – Stevens Point WI

Description

Jules Iverson Memorial Park in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, named for a local philanthropist, is at 121 acres the city’s largest park and its most heavily used. It is located in a basin created by the shallow, meandering Plover River, which provides the park with its swimming hole, and its lovely water landscape. In 1935 the City Council designated the City Manager to apply for Works Progress Administration (WPA) funds to improve the park after about half the land had been donated by Mr. Iverson. Between 1935 and 1940, 395 local men were employed by the WPA to drain swampy areas, clear brush, line the river channels with stone rip rap, dredge a swimming hole and create a beach and build most of the park’s structures which are still in use today. These include two stone entrances and driveways into the park, three stone lodges, two pump houses (one of which is used today as a nature center), several stone picnic pavilions and fireplaces, a ski jump and toboggan slide, and 2.7 miles of trails that run through an adjacent wooded area that is part of a 26-mile “Green Circle” of hiking, biking and cross country ski trails that encircles the city. Several rustic stone bridges over the Plover River channels were also probably constructed by the WPA although their provenance is somewhat in question. An additional 50 men were employed by the WPA in a local sandstone quarry, several of them apprenticed as skilled stone masons and finishers. All of the structures in the park are built with this sandstone.