Charles
Goodwin SauersCharles Goodwin “Cap” Sauers (1894–1970) received the Pugsley Bronze Medal in 1930. He was one of the most colorful figures in the parks field of his era. He graduated from high school in Lawrenceburg, Indiana in 1911 and from Purdue University in 1915 with a B.S. in Agriculture (Horticulture). With this degree, he received a foundation in forestry, forest botany, and landscape gardening. He was a member of the Extension staff at Purdue in 1915-1916 where he gained some practical experience in landscape gardening, after which he attended Harvard University in 1916 and 1917 for graduate study in landscape and park design, plant materials, and topographical map making. Towards the end of his Harvard course, World War I commenced, and Sauers entered officer training and graduated with a captain’s commission in the field artillery. He served from 1917 to 1919.
A combination man-of-the-soil and academician, he was recruited by Richard Lieber (Pugsley Medal 1931) to be his assistant when the state of Indiana established its pioneering Department of Conservation in 1919. He was recommended to Lieber by Professor C.G. Woodbury and Dean Stanley Coulter, both of Purdue. Lieber had lobbied strongly for the department to be established and was duly appointed its director when it came to fruition. Lieber’s extensive responsibilities as director of the Department of Conservation included supervising the Divisions of Geology, Entomology, Forestry, Lands and Water, and Fish and Game. Lieber was an effective, powerful advocate for parks and conservation, but he had no professional training in the field, so he sought a young man with professional training and administrative ability to be “Assistant to the Director.”
Sauers brought a broad perspective and professional knowledge of conservation methods to the new agency. Lieber assigned him to the Division of Lands and Waters where his responsibilities were to look after the parks in general; to handle administrative matters related to the parks; and to help conduct investigations in cooperation with the state auditor regarding state lands. He also worked in the Division of Forestry. He became Lieber’s right-hand-man from 1919 to 1929. Their influence on each others thinking on parks, conservation, and the work of the department was profound. In many ways Lieber and Sauers were much alike. Each loved good books, the out-of-doors, and was devoted to the conservation movement. Sauers authored several of the early pamphlets, which described the history, development and facilities of Indiana’s state parks. He, too, possessed an appreciation of things historic as well as an acquaintance with history. As with Lieber’s prose, so in Sauers’ speeches and reports there are frequent allusions to the historic. For example, in giving his recommendation for landscaping the 1848 log cabin at Turkey Run State Park, Sauers observed: “The flower beds now placed in the lawn have no place in the natural scheme. To remove them and at the same time not bring upon one’s head the clout of feminine disapproval requires a Metternich.” That Sauers was not to be completely outdone by Lieber’s famous use of wit to put across an idea, is seen in another of his recommendations in the same report: “The barn is to be moved to the eastern side of the meadow where the farmstead is to be located. That is most urgent for at present the first sight to greet the visitor is the ramshackle barn, ably supported in its incongruity by a manure heap.”
In 1929, Sauers left his Indiana position to become general superintendent of Cook County Forest Preserve District. In 1929, the District’s holdings totaled approximately 31,000 acres which had been acquired since its establishment in 1915 and the county’s population was 4 million. Although emphasis is placed on the term “forest”, commercial forestry practices were not permitted. In reality, the district is an outer forested sanctuary and naturalistic reservation system similar in function and operation to other county and metropolitan naturalistic park systems in the country. When Sauers arrived at the District, he found that the Board of Forest Preserve Commissioners had been concerned chiefly with acquisition of wooded lands and with promotion of their use by people without much consideration of orderly developments to accommodate them. Meanwhile the automobile had come into general use. Overrun by picnickers and campers, the preserves were suffering seriously. Public resentment was rife.
In January, 1927, the Board had appointed an advisory committee of nine prestigious citizens to suggest how the county’s remaining forests could be preserved. They were requested to make a thorough survey of all existing properties and how they were being used; designate other lands which should be acquired; recommend a program for the development and public uses of present and future preserves; and submit a report of their findings. Two years later, the Advisory Committee submitted a comprehensive report, A Recommended Plan for the Forest Preserves of Cook County, which restated the letter and spirit of the forest preserve law, made recommendations as to the allotment of space for the various uses possible under the statute, and illustrated with a set of preliminary general plans the development of the several areas. The committee recommended that 75% of the total preserve area should be retained under forest cover or be reforested.
The Forest Preserve Commissioners then directed their Advisory Committee to find an expert “of national reputation and large vision.” A new kind of man was needed for the tasks and they found him in Sauers who soon earned universal respect in Cook County for his integrity, courage, and ability. Within a volatile political climate he doggedly managed to create a devoted organization notable for its achievements and for its services to the public. Sauers was at Cook County Forest Preserve District as its chief administrator for 35 years. The 1929 report was the blueprint used to develop the park system. When he retired, acquisition of lands was approaching 60,000 acres within a county of more than 5 million people, over 15 million visits were recorded, and the system had become world famous. There was no other aggregation of publicly owned native landscapes in the U.S. that was so large and so easily accessible for recreational uses by such masses of people. Sauers was unrelenting in his efforts to acquire new lands observing:
Land acquisition programs should run concurrently with development and maintenance programs. Courage and means to buy land, years in advance of need, are essential. Delayed acquisition is either so costly as to be inadequate or often altogether impossible. There are many instances where acquisition is sacrificed to development and a decade later the fault plagues the administration.
His tenure at Cook County was marked not only by increased in acreages, but also by fierce resistance to the efforts of other governmental entities at all levels to usurp Cook County lands for a multitude of other uses. In a 1955 letter to the Secretary of the Interior acknowledging his recognition of Interior’s Conservation Service Award, Sauers wrote:
All manner of individuals, officials, boards and corporations now find park lands the easy out for the problems created by the increased tempo of population and economic growth. They daily propose to sacrifice the good sense and effort by which the park lands were secured, despite the intense need for these lands as parks…Those of us in the metropolitan scene spend much of our time in preventing hard won holdings from being destroyed and misappropriated.
These urgent petitions were for public purposes such as schools, college campuses, federal laboratories, athletic fields, parking lots, armories, highways, utility pipelines, pumping stations and sewage treatment works. Sauers was adamant that “such demands are best met by well-founded, farseeing and justified policy which holds the lands for their original purpose.” He went on to state:
There must be policies, well made and well kept. Such policies maintain the sense of direction for they are oriented by, and stem from, the purpose for which the particular park or system was founded. Policies insure a land acquisition program that is well planned and properly executed; that such lands are held and not dissipated by allocation to various and sundry other purposes than for which acquired; that the development program is confined to the purposes originally announced; that special privilege to individuals and organizations be denied and all citizens are treated equally; that political and popular opportunism is disregarded; that every effort is made to improve the quality of use; that through policies well made and well kept, economy of operation and development is secured.
At Cook County Forest Preserve District Sauers and his wife resided in a sprawling house on 15 acres that some described as a park in itself. They grew their own vegetables and his large library of cookbooks was testimony to his love of the culinary art. His habit was to retire to bed before 9 pm each evening and to rise at 4 am, spending his early waking hours reading novels, biographies, and “egghead” magazines. A 1946 profile of him stated, “Note the books! Yes, whenever Cap works he has books. He reads lots of ‘em. Catch him at a lunch counter and he’s got a book. Find him on a bus, streetcar or on the ‘El’ and he’s reading a book. Maybe that’s why he’s so wise an administrator.” He was a distinctive figure. A tall gangling man, typically wearing a broad-rimmed hat, colorful vest, bow tie, and heavy tweeds. Much of his time was spent out in the field inspecting his domain—the sprawling nature belt that rings the city of Chicago.
He was a long-time Board Member of the National Conference on State Parks (and prominent in its formation in 1921) and of the American Institute of Park Executives for many years. Sauers was a member of the Advisory Board on National Parks Historic Sites, Buildings and Monuments from 1941 to 1952, serving as chairman in 1951 and 1952, and later became a member and chairman of the Conservation Advisory Board of the State of Illinois.
- Sources:
- Robert A. Frederick (1960) Colonel Richard Lieber conservationist and park builder. The Indiana Years. PhD Dissertation Bloomington, Indiana: University of Indiana, Department of History.
- Assorted papers provided by Cook County Forest Preserve District.