Commemorative Cultural Landscapes of the Midwest

The memorial landscape at George Rogers Clark National Historical Park, lit up. NPS photo.

Places of remembrance

People have long honoured a person or an event with ceremonies and with things they build. A commemorative designation or feature, such as a memorial, can be a place of personal connection, healing, respect and remembrance — and it carries memory into the future.

The commemorative sites the National Park Service and its partners look after range from small family burial plots on old farmsteads to large designed landscapes, monuments and memorial buildings.

• Some existed before they joined the park system, built by a state, city or local group.
• At others, the NPS itself developed the memorial features and operations.
• Elsewhere the NPS or a partner commissioned a new work — such as the Gateway Arch or the Oklahoma City National Memorial.

The curves of the Gateway Arch landscape in spring. NPS photo.

Behind the scenes, preservation professionals plan, design and specify the care each site needs, so that its commemorative message keeps being conveyed — and even adapted. Some sites are highly formal in design, others light-handed or vernacular. Either way, they usually have physical features tied to a period of significance — the time of the event, activity or person they recall — which help visitors grasp why the history matters and why the place deserves to be kept.

Integrity and the Cultural Landscape Report

NPS experts manage the tangible features of these landscapes so they convey the intangible qualities of integrity, such as setting, feeling and association. The Cultural Landscape Report (CLR) underpins research, planning and stewardship: it is the main guide for managing and using a cultural landscape, with detailed documentation, analysis and treatment recommendations.

Four Midwest examples

Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial — a formal design

In Spencer County, Indiana, this landscape recalls Abraham Lincoln's formative years — he lived on the farm here from age seven to twenty-one — and holds the grave of his mother, Nancy Hanks Lincoln, who died in 1818.

• In the 1920s local residents and state officials began a movement to commemorate the grave and farm, and in January 1927 the state hired Olmsted Brothers, the landscape architects of Brookline, Massachusetts, for a preliminary design. The project brought together major figures in state park development, among them Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and Richard Lieber.
• The design includes a memorial at the site of the Lincoln cabin and a memorial building set in a formal landscape: sculpted panels, a memorial court with gravel paths and stone benches, and a tree-lined walk — an allée — linking a prominent flagpole with the memorial plaza. Just beyond the walk, in a pioneer cemetery, stands Nancy Hanks Lincoln's grave marker.
• It is also an example of cooperative projects built under Depression-era federal work programmes.
• Period of significance: 1927–1945.

The flagpole at the end of the allée. NPS photo.

The allée and plaza, existing conditions, from the 2001 Cultural Landscape Report. NPS.

George Washington Carver National Monument — an informal path

Fittingly for a man known for his humility, the landscape at Diamond, Missouri, is less formal. Born into slavery, George Washington Carver spent his early years on the Moses and Susan Carver farm. His life there and after was complex; the park honours his youth and the curiosity, love of learning, appreciation of nature and humble character he carried through life.

The visit is a walk of reflection:

1. It starts at the site of the cabin where Carver was born, where a reconstruction now stands.
2. An interpretive trail passes restored native grassland, which has replaced fields the Carvers once farmed.
3. It continues past the Moses and Susan Carver house — moved to its present spot — and the Carver family cemetery, with sculpture and quotations along the way.
4. It ends in a small plaza with a bust of the scientist and a recording of his voice.

The design invites visitors to walk a path like the one Carver might have taken as a boy, and to spark the curiosity about nature that could inspire future naturalists and scientists. The landscape is managed by the recommendations of its Cultural Landscape Report.

A trail through the monument. NPS photo.

• Periods of significance: 1865–1876, when Carver lived there, and 1943–1960, when the site was dedicated and developed as a memorial — ending with the dedication of the Mission 66 visitor center. Many features were built between 1953 and 1960.
• The Boy Carver statue was designed and cast by Roberta Amendola.

A creek in the monument's landscape. NPS photo.

Perry's Victory and International Peace Memorial — Beaux Arts grandeur

At Put-in-Bay, Ohio, this memorial honours those who fought in the Battle of Lake Erie on September 10, 1813, under Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry in the War of 1812, and stands for peace between Great Britain, Canada and the United States.

• A nine-state commission, with matching federal funds, built it between 1912 and 1915, centred on a 352-foot column. The designer was Joseph Freedlander.
• It is in the Beaux Arts style, a neoclassical style that reworked French classical architecture, landscape design and planning. In landscapes that meant balanced, usually symmetrical layouts, axial avenues, grand views and monuments for dramatic effect. Here, flat open lawns on the plaza emphasise the vertical column, and the symmetry and layout remain intact.
• Congress transferred the site to the NPS in 1936. The first Cultural Landscape Report followed in 1994, and a Cultural Landscape Treatment Plan and Environmental Assessment in 2018 guides its care on a demanding site.
• Period of significance: 1911–1963; the site also matters for social history, politics, government, and architecture and engineering.

The column and its designed landscape. NPS photo.

Contributing features of the landscape, from the 2018 treatment plan. NPS.

Pea Ridge National Military Park — preserving a battlefield

At Pea Ridge, Arkansas, the park preserves the site of the Battle of Pea Ridge (March 7–8, 1862), the largest Civil War engagement west of the Mississippi. It was established on July 20, 1956; the state of Arkansas bought the land and donated it to the NPS in 1960, and in the 1960s, under Mission 66, the NPS built the visitor center, Tour Road, overlooks and interpretive stops, with the focus on the visitor's experience.

The 1963 master plan set goals that still apply:

• restore and keep fields and woodlands as they were in 1862;
• preserve Elkhorn Tavern, the foundations of Leetown's buildings, trenches and other features of 1862;
• keep the network of historic trace roads of 1862;
• limit new building, to protect the battlefield.

The land holds an older tragedy too: the Trail of Tears (1835–1839) followed the park's Telegraph Road from Missouri into Arkansas and camped in Ruddick's Field. The park's resources include archeological and historic sites, structures, collections, and landscape features of the battle and of the farming community once here.

• Periods of significance: 1862–1865 and 1956–1963.

Cannons on the Leetown battlefield. NPS photo.

Elkhorn Tavern and the Huntsville Road. NPS photo.

Sources

• National Park Service, Midwest Region, "Commemorative Cultural Landscapes of the Midwest." https://www.nps.gov/articles/commemorative-cultural-landscapes-mwr.htm
• Further reading: A Noble Avenue: Lincoln Boyhood National Memorial Cultural Landscape Report; The Evolution of a Sanctified Landscape; the Cultural Landscape Report and Environmental Assessment for George Washington Carver National Monument; the 2018 treatment plan for Perry's Victory; and the Cultural Landscape Report and Environmental Assessment for Pea Ridge.
• The original names Perry's Victory's designer as "Joseph Freelander"; the architect was Joseph Freedlander.
• Rewritten in hubnx's own words.