(Radio Iowa) – There’s been some major landscaping on a dam built nearly a century ago to form a lake for recreation in northwest Iowa. The dam on Mill Creek created what’s known as “Paullina Lake” and O’Brien County Conservation Board Director Mark Wilson says they recently discovered trees are not supposed to be growing on dams, because trees reduce the integrity of the structure.
“We learned that through an old report that we found that…at least trees on the dam were not supposed to be there,” Wilson said. “We left all the native trees — cottonwoods mostly, a few maple trees and things like that, but we removed invasive honeysuckle and buckthorn and mulberries. I think it’s going to end up being a very diverse area.” Wilson says they’re also working to restore natural habitat to parts of the adjacent 139 acre Mill State Creek Park. “Somewhere around 50 or more species of native prairie grasses and flowers,” Wilson says, “and we’ll also be planting a number of native shrubs.”
The O’Brien County Conservation Board took over management of the park in 1975. The dam that formed the lake was constructed in 1935 by 300 men employed by the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression. They also built a lodge and planted over 10-thousand trees in the park. Mill Creek State Park officially opened on in the fall of 1938 and a sand beach was formed on the edge of the lake three years later.
