a very rough newspaper with wholes. Paper was addressed to Dr. W. C. Scholty, Leon, Iowa, 23may58 in grandmother West's scrapbook Barry West Activity In Leon In 1915 Photo The above picture and article was written and sent to this paper by Talph Thompson of Maxwell, Iowa, a former resident of Leon. The view shown in the picture was taken from the west side of the present site of the Hime Implement Company, Looking West. The machinery, with the large boulder in row, is headed south on Idaho street. I reading one's hometown newspaper, many names we remember appear, but a tremendous number also appear that memory fails to recognize. This, too, where 50 years ago we felt we knew about everyone. But, in retrospect, some names seem to stand out because of what their lives meant to the community. Reading your columns, it apparent that Harvey Park fills quite a niche in the lives of Decatur county people and their friends, especially during the picnic and summer months. This leads us to two names, Judge Harvey and J. D. Brown, both having been gone a long time. Both served too, I believe, as captains in the war between the states. Mr. Harvey, of course, presented the park to Leon, and Mr. Brown, a very colorful figure for many years in the role of farming and livestock life of the county, offered park officials a large boulder from his farm, two and one-half miles north of town. It rests now in the park with a bronze plaque on it bearing the name of Judge Harvey as donor of the park. This, in a sort of clumsy manner, leads us to the picture I am sending and "how the boulder found its way into the Park." Ernie Hamilton, with a new Case steamer, and myself, with a new Nichols and Shepard 25-50 gas tractor, hitched tandem, pulled the rock on skids to the pavement on the main street out of town. Town authorities fearing the heavy steamer might damage the pavement, asked us to use the tractor to complete the trip and to use plank under the wheels. The man near the machine, I believe, was the late Charles Rumley. The man next to the camera and in the cab is my brother, Lester Thompson of Colorado, a wheat farmer in that (missing) whose wife's father's (missing) J. F. Hacker, appears on (missing) cornerstone of the court (missing a line). Up to this time I believe the gas tractor shown was the first heavy internal combustion traction engine to come into that territory since people were slow to accept the gas motor as a source of power for such jobs. Permit me to add , that with this tractor, the writer, with the help of a cousin, Home Machlan, now of Portland, Ore., went on and built many miles of original grade in both Clarke and Decatur counties of the old Jefferson Highway, now Highway 69. this work followed in two years following the rock job which was done in the spring of 1915. Starting as I did with mention of Judge Harvey and J. D. Brown, both war veterans, I fear it has been easy to give this letter to much "military coloring." forgive me if it seems so. But at the very moment we were placing the boulder in the Park, the nations of Europe who were to become our allies later were at grips with Kaiser Wilhelm. It was soon to develop into a struggle that in scope and intensity the world had not yet seen its equal. 1917 came and our own country was actively preparing to enter the first World War. We were to employ conscription for the first time in our history, In June a small number were called, but the draft came. The tractor we have been talking about quit building roads and many such projects were suspended. A short time later, a body of young men appeared on the west steps of the court house there, I believe there were 82 of them, several of them fathers. Pictures were taken and that evening the good people of Leon served the boys a most wonderful supper in Harvey Park. To me there is a bit of irony suggested at this point, because the meal was eaten near and around the big rock. The next morning early, an untrained and yet awkward bunch of men walked down the hill to board the Burlington. Camp Dodge was next and in a few hours they were members of the 88th division. Of one thing we can now be doubly sure, no one of the boys in the Park that evening dreamed that within two decades, their very own sons would be engaged in another war and with the same adversary. Too it would be one of such magnitude that their Daddy's job was small as compared to the one assigned to them. Ralph Thompson