After 62 years of rained-out field trips, Polk County finally unveils a nature center

Central Iowans would corner Richard Leopold after visiting the 67 county-run nature centers across Iowa.

“Why don’t we have that here?” they asked.

In the state’s most populated county, with 14,000 acres in 21 parks, wildlife areas and trails managed by Polk County Conservation, there was no nature center and no central gathering space, even for staff.

“Our conference room was in a converted garage,” said Leopold, the director of Polk County Conservation, which has been around since 1956.

That all ends this weekend. The grand opening for the $10.3 million Jester Park Nature Center is Sunday.

The new addition is really a campus on the western edge of Jester Park, connected to nearly 1,700 acres of a park along Saylorville Lake that includes a golf course, cabins, campground, hiking trails and children’s playscape.

The park has half a million visitors a year, but Leopold said that could double with the improvements.

The key is a nature center filled with modern interpretive displays and classrooms aimed at children and, for adults, a comfortable great room with 20-foot windows looking out to a terrace with a 15-foot fireplace. It’s all designed to educate and entertain visitors inside and steer them outside to the reconstructed prairies, wetlands and forest that surround the facility.

Before a quick tour, the obvious question is: “What took so long?”

The county had talked about this in some form for 30 years but lacked the money. When the Polk County Water and Land Legacy bond referendum passed to support $50 million in outdoor projects in 2012, $5 million was issued to the project, while grants and private fundraising in the past four years covered the rest.

The five naturalist educators never had a place to call home in leading thousands during school field trips and public programs. If there was even a threat of rain, field trips were called off.

“The naturalists are kind of like troubadours. They just pack their stuff on their back and go. They never had a base of operations. Now we can double programming with schools, scouts and church groups,” Leopold said.

He said it will be Iowa’s premier nature center when it opens to the public Aug. 15.

Pat Boddy said the idea was kicked into gear when author Richard Louv lectured in Des Moines after publication of his book “Last Child in the Woods,” which detailed a vast population of children divorced from nature.

“It’s going to be a special place for Polk County. People will get their eyes opened and their lungs filled and have opportunities to hike, test water, do archery and snowshoe,” said Boddy, who was a co-chair of the fundraising campaign.

It’s special to Bob Jester. The park is named after his grandfather, Lewis A. Jester, who bought it as a working farm and whose son and uncle later offered it to Polk County in 1954.

“As a kid I used to roam around in the woods,” he said. "We would canoe on the Des Moines River (before Saylorville reservoir existed), and there was nobody else out there. You were like a pioneer discovering the river. I think this is a great addition that will get the kids excited about the outdoors.”

Here is what you will see:

OUTSIDE: From the parking lot, the long, low-slung building in a prairie style may not look grand, but it’s sunk in the hillside. To the rear, it’s twice as tall with a wall of windows that face a prairie, a man-made stream with a series of drops and waterfalls that circle the building, and a wetland and forest. A trail was recently constructed by volunteers that leads past the wetland and forest to Discovery Pond, where visitors can grab a canoe and paddle. Outdoor art, including a metal bison by artist Steven W. Huffman, is planted among the prairie flowers.

RECREATION CENTER: A converted machinery garage sits to the east of the nature center and will include a camp store run by Pingora Outdoors, where rental canoes, fishing poles, snow shoes and skis are offered. It also includes an archery range, climbing wall and an outdoor skills classroom.

INSIDE: On the main floor is a great room filled with natural light with a fireplace. It can be a gathering space for outdoor programs, wine and cheese events or nature art exhibits.

“Upstairs is formal and nice. Down here is a free-for-all,” Leopold said.

The downstairs is filled with $500,000 of interpretive exhibits aimed at children. Three ecosystems — forest, wetland and prairie — are explored in stations where kids can discover information both by touch and through computers. Aquatic tanks will include fish, turtles and salamanders and other wetland critters. Three laboratories, one a wet lab, will be used for school groups to go out into nature and return to study what they found.

Stuffed owls in an old nature center is OK. But this center is designed to use technology and more active learning: “Here we can identify what it is and go out and see them out there in the wild.”

THE GATEWAY: A large outdoor terrace with a fireplace and a stone sitting wall in the building’s rear will be a place to watch birds and beckon folks to the outdoors.

The buildings are designed as a gateway to the park.

“An urban population wants it safe and convenient. The outdoors has been, to some, scary,” Leopold said. “Ankeny moms might not want to plunge deep into the woods, so this is a gateway — a gateway to the outdoors.”

Down the trail, where blazing star and rattlesnake master wildflowers are showing off in the prairie, and along the man-made river where kids can play and learn about water quality, Leopold sees a new place of discovery about to unfold.

Grand opening

It's from 1 to 5 p.m. Aug. 5. Live music, a scavenger hunt, canoeing, fishing, live animal programs, ice cream and archery are among the offerings. 12130 N.W. 128th St. Find details at Polk County Conservation.