O’Brien County, Iowa (RI) – There’s been some major landscaping on a dam built nearly a century ago to form a lake for recreation in northwest Iowa. The dam on Mill Creek created what’s known as “Paullina Lake” and O’Brien County Conservation Board Director Mark Wilson says they recently discovered trees are not supposed to be growing on dams, because trees reduce the integrity of the structure.
Wilson says they’re also working to restore natural habitat to parts of the adjacent 139 acre Mill State Creek Park.
The O’Brien County Conservation Board took over management of the park in 1975. The dam that formed the lake was constructed in 1935 by 300 men employed by the Works Progress Administration during the Great Depression. They also built a lodge and planted over 10-thousand trees in the park. Mill Creek State Park officially opened on in the fall of 1938 and a sand beach was formed on the edge of the lake three years later.
