Some Topics
Why Should You Read A Book About A Local Park?
What’s So Special About Meadowbrook?
This regional park offers visitors a unique combination of features they won’t find anywhere else: prairie and savanna restorations, outdoor sculptures and other art, rentable organic garden plots, a restored dairy barn, a stream corridor of native trees and shrubs, a spectacular play structure, and five miles of paved and unpaved trails.
In Meadowbrook: A History, Roger Digges tells the story of how the Urbana Park District’s inspired and creative leaders used the district’s own funds, outside grants, donations, and volunteers to turn 130 acres of farmland into an iconic park with habitats and structures that draw a variety of wildlife and tens of thousands of people annually. In this book Roger also includes some of the experiences he and his spouse Cathy Digges have had at Meadowbrook Park for nearly two decades,
walking its trails, observing its wildlife, admiring its floral displays, even counting its migrating and nesting birds. He also suggests things that you can do at Meadowbrook during different seasons of the year.
[When the land which would become Meadowbrook was surveyed in 1821] To fulfill his contract, the deputy surveyor noted in his ledger the first words ever written about the future park: “Land this mile Rolling prairie, good soil.”
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About Roger
Roger Digges fell in love with the natural world and wildlife as a child, first exploring the hills, streams, and caves near his home in the Ozarks and later spending time enjoying the Rock River in and around Dixon, Illinois. He became interested in history in elementary school and as a senior in college wrote an undergraduate thesis on the decline and fall of the Weimar Republic. Although he left graduate school to enter seminary and pursue a thirty-year career as a Lutheran pastor, he never lost his passion for nature and history, often incorporating one or both in sermons and adult classes.
Roger and his wife Cathy Digges began walking regularly at Meadowbrook Park in 2006. This book includes a number of their encounters with wildlife during their thousands of early morning walks. After he retired from the ministry for health reasons in 2014, Roger began researching the history of Meadowbrook Park and later decided to write a book about what he had learned of Meadowbrook’s prehistory and its development by the Urbana Park District. During those years, he was a member of the Urbana Park District Advisory Committee (UPDAC) from 2016-2018, and has served as a Commissioner on the Urbana park board since 2018. Roger has been an avid birder for nearly four decades and currently is vice president of the Champaign County Audubon Society, for which he writes a monthly column “Bird of the Month.” He also is an East-Central Illinois Master Naturalist who has participated in various citizen-scientist projects as well as served on a number of boards and committees for the park district and other organizations. Meadowbrook: A History is his first book.
How To Get The Book
You can order the book through Amazon or purchase the book in person at the following locations: the Anita Purve Center gift shop and the Museum of the Grand Prairie gift shop.
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