January is a crucial month for gardeners. By the end of the month, seed catalogs are dog-eared, orders are penciled in, and colorful dreams and schemes begin to solidify.
So it was on this date in 1932 when a group of North Dakota and Manitoba gardeners – and dreamers – went public with plans for a new garden in the Turtle Mountains that would span the 49th parallel between Dunseith, North Dakota and Boissevain, Manitoba. Not a vegetable garden, mind you, but a 3,000-acre plot containing hills and trees and lakes to be dedicated as a natural monument to peace.
The sponsors announced that the site would be known as the International Peace Garden. Free of commercialism, and with half the land in the United States and half in Canada, they said it would be a shrine to peace.
The idea grew out of annual “peace picnics” that had been taking place in the “shady recesses of the Turtle Mountains” for several years. The picnics celebrated the long history of peaceful relations between the US and Canada. It was out of these peace picnics, which were attended by as many as 5,000 people, that the dream of a permanent peace garden was born.
The founders envisioned a natural landscape complemented by the work of leading gardeners and landscape artists of both nations. Their vision excluded any commercial development. They were seeking legislation that would disallow any gasoline stations, road houses, dance pavilions or other resorts within five miles of the park, providing a protected zone.
No small thinkers, they asked for five million dollars, right in the middle of America’s Great Depression—over 70 million in today’s dollars. One fifth of that would be used for direct improvements of the park, and four fifths would be set aside as a permanent endowment to assure proper maintenance down through the years.
The organizers sought support from service clubs, the state and provincial governments, individual donors, and even the nickels and dimes of American and Canadian school children.
Perhaps the financial bleakness of the 1930s, and the fear of another war, had helped inspire the peace garden planners, but in July of 1932, 50,000 individuals traveled from all over the United States and Canada to witness the groundbreaking and dedication ceremony for this unique and enduring garden in the center of North America – the International Peace Garden.
Dakota Datebook written by Russell Ford-Dunker
Source:
N.D. Peace Garden Plans Dispel Lowering War Clouds. The Fargo Forum. 31 Jan 1932: p.4
