Jay C. Hormel Center rich in history

By Lee Bonorden (Contact) | Austin Daily Herald

Published Thursday, February 5, 2009

The Jay C. Hormel Nature Center wasn’t always Ruby Rupner Auditorium, the interpretive center, sugar shack, log cabin, pond, North Tower and hiking and cross country skiing trails.

It was quite a different Nature Center 3.8 billion years ago.

Alex Watson, naturalist intern at the nature center, described for Austin Izaak Walton League of America Chapter No. 10 Monday night the nature center’s earliest beginnings.

Watson has researched how the nature center was created as a special project.

His research began at the beginning, but it will also include an examination of the modern history of the Nature Center from 1971 to the present.

Watson plans to present his findings to local schools, service clubs and other organizations later, but Monday night, the Ikes heard it first.

The first part of Watson’s report is called “History of the Land” and that’s exactly what it is.

According to Watson, most people are familiar with Jay C. Hormel’s development of his estate (now Gerard of Minnesota and the Nature Center) into an arboretum of 200,000 trees or more.

Some may not realize that in the late-1960s, there were plans to turn the estate into a mall-like development off Interstate 90 at the east edge of the Austin city limits.

Environmentalists prevailed, and it was turned into an outdoor attraction beyond compare in Austin. There were Woodlands, native prairie, oak savannah and more.

“The land itself is timeless,” Watson told the Ikes members and guests.

From its original 123 acres to today’s 507, the Nature Center has always maintained a “very diverse habitat and ecosystem” above ground.

However, that favorite icon at the Nature Center — the “Big Rock” — hints there is more, much more in fact, than meets the eye.

According to Watson, the Nature Center’s Big Rock may have been imported to southern Minnesota from the Minnesota River Valley by the movement of glaciers 3.8 billion years ago.

The large, slow-moving mass of ice, formed from compacted layers of snow, slowly deformed and flowed in response to gravity and high pressure.

“The Cedar River was the edge of the glaciation movement in the area 22,000 years ago,” Watson said.

According to the naturalist intern, remains of the Columbian mammoth have been found in the Grand Meadow area of Mower County.

The glaciation movement “brought stuff with it to Mower County like fill and created bedrock,” which lies beneath the Nature Center.

Using the Mower County Soil Survey, Watson has studied the topography of Mower County.

His conclusions included that the glaciers brought debris with them.

“Before that, some 380 millions years ago, there was not only bedrock beneath the Nature Center, but also cephalopods, gastropods and other organic matter,” Watson said.

And as time progressed, the organic matter became ultimately the arboreal forest, prairie and hardwood forest that cover Minnesota.

The land over the last 12,000 years has been changed further by wildfires until it evolved into the oak savannah that exists today, according to Watson.

“More recently, Chauncey Leverich changed it even more when he and other settlers came to Mower County, cleared the land, and then built cabins and towns for settlement,” Watson said.

Historians call Leverich the man “who founded the city of Austin.”

The city was platted in 1856.

Watson’s painstaking research continues to supplement his “Jay C. Hormel Nature Center -- History of the Land” report. Always, there is new “old” information to study, according to the naturalist intern.

Larry Dolphin, director and naturalist at the Nature Center, is Watson’s supervisor.

“Alex is one of the young leaders we will hear a lot about in the future on environmental issues,” Dolphin predicted.

For more information about Watson’s research project, call the Nature Center at (507) 437-7519.

---

WOULD YOU LIKE TO SHARE THIS STORY?

---

Comments

Posted by notsuprised (anonymous) on February 6, 2009 at 11:31 a.m. (Suggest removal)

3.8 billion years ago...and Lee was there for that story too! :)

Post a comment (Terms of Use Policy)

(Requires free registration.)

Username:
Password: (Forgotten your password?)

Comment: