Gull Point State Park
gets addition

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This article was written and posted on INHF's website in December 2001. 

Back in the leanest years of the Great Depression, local and summer residents around West Lake Okoboji raised funds to help create Gull Point State Park. Now a new generation has raised funds to expand that park.

The Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Commission approved a 30-acre addition to the park at their regular meeting on Thursday, Dec. 13. The Iowa DNR will contribute 25 percent of the acquisition budget for this parcel, while local residents raised the other 75 percent.

Gull Point State Park, which originally opened in 1935, is a 165-acre park located north of Emerson Bay on the west shore of West Lake Okoboji. The park contains trails, picnic areas, a sandy beach and lots of wildlife habitat. A lodge, which some said was the most beautiful erected by Civilian Conservation Corps labor in the nation, is still a popular site for weddings and other gatherings.

Recently an adjacent 30-acre parcel was platted for 11 house lots with more being planned. Concerned neighbors, led by summer resident Irving Jensen, Jr., sought an alternative to more development on the watershed. They approached the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation (INHF), a member-supported, nonprofit organization that protects natural lands. After consulting with the Iowa DNR, INHF agreed to purchase the parcel as a state park addition.

INHF agreed that if local residents could raise 75 percent of the acquisition budget in cash and pledges, it would buy the land and hold it until DNR could repay the balance. Jensen and other local residents worked hard to raise the funds, eventually recruiting 45 donors, many of them local or summer residents. They were aided by a $35,000 matching grant from The Messengers of Healing Winds Foundation.

“It took a lot of initiative and individual commitment to get this project off the ground,” said Mark Ackelson, INHF president. “We are very proud of the volunteers for reaching out to their neighbors and raising the funds faster than we thought possible. Without this private leadership, we would not have been able to add this important buffer to one of Iowa’s favorite state parks.”

Jensen notes the parcel borders the park’s nature area and is full of deer, fox, muskrats, birds and other species. It’s visible from existing park trails. Much of the addition is currently wetland, wet cropland or pasture. The DNR will be able to break the drainage tile and allow the land to return to natural wetlands, which will help filter and clean water entering the lake.

“Residents love the rural atmosphere that has so far allowed people and wildlife to co-exist fairly well,” said project treasurer, Tom Hart, a year-round West Okoboji resident. “But as more cement is poured, more large residences are built, more heavy boat and personal watercraft traffic is experienced, the results are easily seen in the water quality and the increasing difficulty of people, plants and animals to co-exist as in the past.”

Jensen adds that concerned residents in any part of the state can and should take similar action to protect their neighborhood’s natural values: “When you see an opportunity to protect something, you need to put together a consortium to get it done. Others can do this. It just takes people and local interest.”

A dedication for this addition is planned for sometime in 2002.

For more information about this story or other Foundation news, e-mail Cathy Engstrom, Director of Communications, or call (515) 288-1846.

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