International Peace Garden, History and Progress

              INTERNATIONAL PEACE GARDEN, INCORPORATED
History
A CERTAIN citizen of Canada was returning in 1928 to the land of his adoption,
after attending a gathering of Gardeners held in Greenwich, Connecticut, and,
thinking of the warm welcome he had received and the interesting people he had
associated with, the thought came to him, " Why not have a Garden on the Inter­national
Boundary Line where the people of the two countries could share the
glories found in a lovely garden and the pleasures found in warm friendships?"
This man, Henry J. Moore of Islington, Ontario, had graduated from the famous
Kew Gardens of England and had taught at Cornell University and at the Ontario
Agricultural College.
A year later, the National Association of Gardeners of the United States met
in Toronto and approved Mr. Moore's idea. An International Committee of three
was appointed,— two Americans and one Canadian, to select a suitable spot where
the two nations could mingle freely without barriers. Largely through the efforts
of Mr. J. W. Parmley, Ipswich, South Dakota, and Mr. W. V. Udall, Boissevain,
Manitoba, chairmen of the Canal to Canada highway committees in their
respective countries, Dr. Moore and Joseph Dunlop of South Euclid, Ohio,
inspected the Turtle Mountain district in early June, 1931. The State of North
Dakota made possible an aeroplane trip over the area, and Dr. Moore described
the trip over the Mountains in these words:
" What a sight greeted the eye! Those undulating hills rising out of
the limitless prairies are filled with lakes and streams. On the south of
the unrecognizable boundary, wheat everywhere; and on the north, the
Manitoba Forest Reserve. What a place for a Garden!"
The State of North Dakota offered to provide 888 acres of land, about one-half
farm lands, the remainder tree covered and gently undulating. The Province
of Manitoba transferred to the International Peace Garden corporation for as long
as the Peace Garden continues, a block of adjacent land that measured when the
final survey was made, 1,451.3 acres. This was forest reserve, extremely undulat­ing,
with round topped hills crowned with paper birch, with poplar and oak - at
intermediate levels, and willow on the lower lands. Later in the year the commit­tee
of fifty met and reached a decision, which was almost unanimous, that the offer
of these properties be accepted.
Dr. Moore, in a radio address given Christmas night that same year over
CFRB in Toronto, made this statement:
" The Great Garden will be on the Canal to Canada highway, at a
point on the International Boundary between Dunseith, North Dakota,
and Boissevain, Manitoba, and sixty miles south of Brandon. The location
is almost the exact centre between the Atlantic and the Pacific and but
thirty miles north of the exact centre of the North American continent
which is at Rugby, North Dakota. The highway extends from a point
two hundred miles north of the boundary to the Panama Canal, and it is
to extend north to Churchill and south to Cape Horn. Upon this Main
Street of the Americas, which will be the longest north and south high­way
in the world, will travel millions of people in the days to come."
The Highway, it is hoped, will link this Garden of Peace with the monument,
Christ of the Andes, erected by the Argentine and Chilean governments on their
boundary in 1904.
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