Page:Report of the Park Board 1903.djvu/12

 

December 31, 1903.

Honorable George H. Williams, Chairman, Board of Park Commissioners, Portland, Oregon.

Dear Sir: We have the honor to submit our report upon existing parks and a proposed system of parks for the City of Portland.

In preparing our minds for this duty we were occupied more or less every day during three weeks in going about and examining various parts of the city and of the surrounding country and in conference with Colonel L. L. Hawkins and Mr. lon Lewis of the Park Commission, and other interested citizens, and we were taken upon a number of long and interesting drives by Colonel Hawkins, besides making various excursions by ourselves. We were provided with good maps and other printed information, and took numerous photographs as an aid to memory in the subsequent study and digestion of our observations and wrote out very full notes of what we saw and were told.  

1—Importance of Municipal Parks.
Leading writers and other authorities on modern municipal development agree that no city can be considered properly equipped without an adequate park system.

All agree that parks not only add to the beauty of a city and to the pleasure of living in it, but are exceedingly important factors in developing the healthfulness, morality, intelligence. and business prosperity of its residents. Indeed it is not too much to say that a liberal 