Over the summer, while scanning copies of ordinances to put onto the city website, I found some letters regarding the city park that were very interesting. The assumption has always been that the land for the park was donated by the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy railroad. The park land was donated to the city with requirements that the city keep the park fenced and maintained. In 1914, the city wanted to do some updates to the park such as trimming trees and building some buildings, so the city clerk, W. L. Perkins, wrote to the railroad to ask if this was acceptable. The person who received his letter, W. Card, who then forwarded it to I. J. Moon, the train master at St. Joseph, to investigate as the railroad had no records of this donation. Mr. Moon obtained the original deed and discovered that the railroad had not, in fact, donated the land to the city.
The land was given to the city by Mr. Charles E. Perkins and his wife, Edith Perkins, in 1899. Mr. Perkins was the vice president of the C B & Q railroad and had personally purchased the land where Ridgeway now sits and had the property platted for the new city. Per tax records published in the Bethany paper, he owned most of those lots for several years until they were eventually all sold. The deed for the park did require the park be kept up or the land would revert back to the original owners. As the city still owns the park, the plans from 1914 were acceptable and hopefully the Perkins family would approve the latest round of improvements by the community betterment association.
