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United States Department of the Interior <br />National Park Service <br />National Register of Historic Places <br />Continuation Sheet <br />Section number Q Page H <br />North Liberty Park St. Joseph County IN <br />the 1930s, using local labor and materials readily at hand, in <br />this case, the ubiquitous fieldstone of northern Indiana. As <br />described in the associated property type "New Deal work projects <br />related to parks and recreation," North Liberty Park is eligible <br />for the National Register under Criterion A in the areas of <br />recreation and social history because it is associated with the <br />New Deal's work programs and recreational development in the <br />1930s. It is also eligible under Criterion C because the site as <br />a whole, and its individual resources; the bathhouse, the <br />bandstand, the stone planter, the fieldstone walls and steps, et <br />al., are representative of the work and style of architecture and <br />park site development typical of the WPA in St. Joseph County. <br />The park meets the standards of integrity as set forth in the <br />mi}ltiple property nomination "New Deal Work Projects in St. Joseph <br />County." The resources are representative of and associated with <br />typical WPA workmanship, specifically, the fieldstone <br />construction. <br />The land that became North Liberty Park had been part of a farm <br />originally owned by Daniel R. McKenzie. His Italianate farmhouse <br />still stands at the northeast edge of the park just outside the <br />boundary. A barn once stood to the south on what is now park <br />land. McKenzie, in partnership with Henry Bowen, ran a grist mill <br />in the 1870s and 1880s that stood north of the house. It had <br />closed by the turn of the century. David Hay purchased the house <br />and farm in 1902, and it was from the Hay family that the city <br />acquired the land for the park in about 1934. <br />A Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) camp was established south of <br />South Bend on New Road in 1935. Set up primarily to handle public <br />drainage projects, the company of young men at CCC Camp D-3 ("D" <br />for "drainage") worked mostly digging ditches in the county's <br />marshy areas and occasionally building small dams to help control <br />flooding. Potato Creek had a long history of flooding; evidence <br />suggests that CCC boys from Camp D-3 constructed the dam in Potato <br />Creek that created the pool soon used for swimming. <br />President Roosevelt established the WPA in 1935, and Indiana was <br />quick to get projects underway that summer, including work on the <br />development of North Liberty's new park. A second project was <br />undertaken in 1937 to further develop the park. WPA workers <br />