International Peace Garden, History and Progress

              I N T E R N A T I O N A L P E A C E G A R D E N I N C O R P O R A T ED
History and Progress
AC E R T A I N citizen of Canada was returning i n 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 with nine hundred members in attendance. Mr. Moore's idea was
presented and enthusiastically received. An International Committee of fifty, half
Americans and half Canadians, was appointed to study the situation, and a com­mittee
of three, two Americans and one Canadian, Dr. Henry J. Moore, was
selected to investigate suitable locations. In 1931 Mr. J. W. Parmley, Ipswich,
South Dakota, chairman of a committee assigned to promote the Canal to Canada
highway, and M r . W . V . Udall, editor of the Boissevain Recorder, and chairman
of the Canadian section of the Canal to Canada highway, drew the attention of
the selection committee to the Turtle Mountain region, as a possible site for the
Garden. Dr. Moore's proposal was that the Garden be located where the peoples
of the two nations could mingle freely and become better acquainted. The St.
Lawrence River, the chain of Great Lakes, and the terrain west of the Lakes
were natural barriers to free intercourse east of the prairies.
Dr. Moore and Joseph R. Dunlop of South Euclid, Ohio, inspected the Turtle
Mountain district in early June, 1931. The State of North Dakota made possible
an aeroplane nip 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 Internationa] Peace Garden corporation for as long
as the Peace Garden continues, a block of adjacent land that measured when the
survey was finally 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
C F R B 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
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