Friends of Donald Park, Inc

The area that Donald Park resides has seen many changes in both its environment as well as its inhabitants. Collected here are articles documenting the history of the land and the people who lived on and around the area now known as Donald park.
Natural History of Donald Park Submitted by Chuck DeMets Professor of Geology and Geophysics, U. W. Madison, Wisconsin Throughout the four seasons, the slow geologic processes of erosion and weathering silently sculpt the rolling hills and valleys of the Mt. Vernon countryside, as they have without interruption for the past 450 million years. Unlike much of the remainder of Dane County and Wisconsin, whose landscapes and soils were profoundly altered by continental ice sheets (glaciers) that periodically advanced south from the Hudson Bay region over the past 2.5 million years, Donald Park has been shaped by largely non glacial processes. More...	Settlement Donald County Park is comprised of land that was either donated or sold to the Dane County Parks department. The following is a brief history of the people who settled and worked the land before it was parkland. More..
Delma Donald Woodburn Delma Donald Woodburn was a major contributor to the creation of Donald Park. Brian Bigler of the Mount Horeb historical society interviewed her before her death and wrote a short biography of this special lady. More...	Historically Significant Sites Charles Gerhards, a member of the Friends group, has done extensive research into the early home sites within the Donald Park boundaries. He contacted John H. Broihahn, State Archeologist of the Wisconsin State Historical Society in October of 2002 about one such site in particular, the Foye cabin and they visited the site. Broihahn agreed that the Foye cabin site should be preserved and protected. Accordingly, he entered the site into the Archeological Site Inventory as the Foye Homestead site with state number DA-1188. More...