Amphitheater and Fieldstone WPA Features at Valley City Pioneer Park

The Depression-era work relief features in Valley City's Pioneer Park are considered in the historical context of Valley City as a progressive community, interested in promoting the prosperity and well-being of its citizens and the residents of surrounding Barnes County. Valley City has long been identifiable in North Dakota as a politically and socially "Progressive" community. Since the city's founding, community leaders actively promoted civic activities including progressive farming practices, agricultural fairs, public schools, a state-chartered Normal School, bands and a music academy, the Chautauqua lecture circuit, churches, temperance groups, lodges and fraternal organizations, business associations, and public utilities, Progressive politics, early hospitals and (perhaps with less public pride than for the other enterprises) a necessary county poor farm.

Three features in Pioneer Park are associated with local response to unemployment and the economic collapse of the 1930s. They are historically significant under National Register criterion "A" insofar as they reflect a prevalent attitude about municipal parks as important features of Progressive community and civility as local social concerns during the Depression years. The features associated with WPA work relief construction further reflect historical events associated with local and federal response to unemployment. The three features are also significant under National Register criterion "C" because of their distinctive architectural style, materials, and labor-intensive method of construction. While the individual features can be demonstrated to be significant based on NRHP criteria, the overall park landscape in which they are situated lacks the overall integrity of setting and design that would justify nominating it as an encompassing historic landscape, and no work beyond the three features can be demonstrated as having been connected with work-relief design or implementation.

Two main city parks ("City Park" and "Chautauqua Park”) were already well-established civic and recreational features in Valley City before Pioneer Park was ever contemplated. Pioneer Park was first proposed in the mid-1930s on land that had previously been a somewhat blighted part of the city landscape. Local civic leaders associated with the Pioneers Club and the Pioneer Daughters were seeking a venue to celebrate the heritage of founding families and their role in establishing successful agriculture and urban culture in Barnes County from the Dakota Territorial Period onward. A park location was identified on the northwest edge of the community, adjacent to the place where U.S. Highway 10 (the historic “Red Trail”) entered Valley City from the west. The connection with historic Highway 10 is not merely incidental. Soon after the park's dedication, the Greater North Dakota Association (GNDA) sought to promote tourism by disseminating literature from a cluster of modest historic buildings that were relocated to the southwest corner of the park. Pioneer Park was also identified as bearing relationship to Valley City's public tourist camp, as enhancements and attractions for the traveling public. The amphitheater is referenced in North Dakota: A Guide to the Northern Prairie State, an important depression-era publication of the Federal Writers Project.

Pioneer Park took shape on a parcel of land that had served a variety of purposes throughout the town's history. Block 15 of B.W. Benson's Addition to Valley City -- known since 1937 as "Barnes County Memorial Pioneer Park” -- was originally part of a Northern Pacific railroad land grant. Investor B. W. Benson established a real estate speculation business in 1879, and the site of this park was one of his early business successes. His holdings included town and rural properties in Barnes, Lamoure, Stutsman, Griggs and Trail Counties. Benson was a vice president of the First National Bank, a member of the Territorial House of Representatives, director of the Barnes County Agricultural and Mechanical Association, one of the committee involved with the incorporation of the city of Valley City, a Barnes County Commissioner, President of the Hillside Cemetery Association, and a member of the school board.

Mr. Benson bought the southwest quarter of Section 21 in Township 140 North Range 40 West on May 22, 1880, from the Northern Pacific Railroad for the sum of $1,000. In 1881 he platted this acreage as "B.W. Benson's Addition to Valley City." According to that plat, all of Block 15 and part of Block 10 was the site of the Valley City Brick and Tile Company, a venture that Mr. Benson started with the help of Walter F. Jones in the spring of 1881. The company was a manufacturer of pressed brick and sewer tile. On the first day of operations on June 15, 1881 the brick enterprise consisted of an iron brick machine powered by a “Minnesota Giant" steam engine, a kiln, several large sheds to house the machinery and operations, and a stable for the accommodation of the teams used in the business. Using local clay, in the beginning months the brick machine molded just 6 bricks at a time (one "stroke"). By September 1881, at its peak of production the brickyard reportedly turned out 20-25,000 brick per day that were marketed as "white as snow".?

The Valley City Brick & Tile Company legally incorporated on January 10, 1882, with B.W. Benson as President. By June, the company employed thirty men and was contemplating the purchase of another machine. Orders for brick were received from Jamestown, Tower City, New Buffalo, Mayville, Casselton, Mapleton and Fargo. An artesian well was dug to supply water to the brick works. Mr. Benson sold the property (land) to the corporation on October 6, 1882. Despite its successful beginnings, on October 22, 1895 the property of the Valley City Brick & Tile Company was foreclosed upon by the Farmers & Merchants Bank of Valley City, which held the $2,500 mortgage on the property.

On April 14, 1897, the bank transferred ownership of the brickyard property to Barnes County, which held the land in a generally disused condition for the next 38 years. For a time (from 1883 to 1908), a two-story frame building on the site served as the residential feature of the Barnes County poor farm. The house was relocated from the poor farm to a different site in 1909. Barnes County transferred the derelict poor farm property to the Valley City Parks Department on December 14, 1935.

Pioneer Park was the location of an important Works Project Administration (WPA) project that encompassed all three features that are the subject of this nomination; the entry gates, the amphitheater, and the ground-set cobblestone signage feature that bears the message "PIONEERS”. In 1936, with the cooperation of the federal government, the Barnes County Commission, the City of Valley City and its park board; the Barnes County Pioneer Club sponsored and managed the construction of the park, located along Highway 10, also known as the Red Trail or National Parks Highway. On September 30, 1937, the park was dedicated in commemoration of the pioneers of Barnes County and was officially called the Barnes County Pioneer Memorial Park. The dedication ceremony accorded an opportunity for local speakers to call attention to their notion of the park as a place to celebrate the pioneering spirit as well as reflecting upon the past history of the park site and a renewed vision for its future. These were timely and appropriate affirmations of commitment and civic optimism during the dark years of the Depression.

As one of the most well-known work relief agencies of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, WPA was established in 1935 to provide immediate jobs in public works. Under the leadership and advocacy of its national director, Harry L. Hopkins, the WPA encouraged projects that contributed to the national wealth in the form of civic and infrastructural improvements.

Each of these civic improvements represents an increase in our national wealth, and in the day-to-day pleasure or comfort of many people. ... The Federal Government appealed to local officials everywhere to plan and put forward essential civic improvements and services which could employ their own local unemployed who were certified by local agencies as in need. Local officials rallied to this appeal, carefully planning widely varied, useful projects in their communities to meet the wide variety of skill and experience among the unemployed. The WPA paid the wages of the workers; local money paid most of the cost of materials. ... Literally thousands of local officials, of many political faiths, have praised the workmanship on these projects. Hundreds of thousands of WPA workers have returned to private industry, able to hold their old jobs because the Works Program kept them from going rusty and losing hope.

The targeted investment in public infrastructure served several simultaneous purposes, not the least of which was the pride it instilled on the part of workers whose labors and talents were valued as meaningful contributions to their community. Together with the delightfully proportioned amphitheater, the entry gates on the south end of the property, and the unusual sign at the north end of the park were all constructed as part of this project. The stone masonry was typical of WPA projects. WPA grant-supported projects required a substantial material contribution by local sponsors in this instance primarily in the form of fieldstones brought in from surrounding agricultural lands). The federal contribution was, then, targeted primarily to labor for unemployed person, generally working at the established rate of $10.40 per week.

Other incidental, extant features of the park, though historic, are not associated with the federal work relief initiatives and thus are not regarded as contributing features for the purposes of this nomination. The old school building located in the park was previously known as the Heimes School of Hobart (rural) School District No. 10. When it was replaced by a new building in 1932, the old Heimes School was bought by Frank P. Cook. On June 20, 1935, a special meeting of the Barnes County Pioneer Club was held to discuss the purchase of the building from Mr. Cook. Frank Cook, President of the Pioneers Club and one of the first pupils of the original Heimes School, offered the building to the club for the original purchase price of $51. It was agreed to purchase the building and move it to the park location. It cost $80 to have the building moved and an additional $5.21 for the privilege of crossing the Northern Pacific Railroad tracks. The Pioneer Club used the school building as their meeting place for years. (It now serves as warming house for the skating rink during the winter months.) Rex Beck of Buffalo donated the breaking plow to Pioneer Park in August of 1978. It was mounted in the area directly behind the amphitheater.

A sod house was constructed on park property, also under the direction of Frank Cook of the Pioneer Club. This construction took place in 1938. The sod house was later dismantled, and its location is unknown. In 1939, Mrs. Mina Stevens Olson, a member of the Pioneer Daughters donated a log cabin in memory of her parents, Steven and Maria Stevens, to stand in Pioneer Park as a symbol of the faith, courage and fortitude of the founders of this country. Steven Stevens, who built the log cabin himself, was an early pioneer who homesteaded south of Valley City on the Kathryn Road in 1878. The dedication was held on September 23, 1939, in conjunction with Valley City's Golden Jubilee Celebration. Unfortunately, the building was allowed to deteriorate and the city had it condemned. In order to save the building, Melvin Olson, son of Mina Olson, moved the cabin from the park to his property in 1958.