Niemackl Lake Park, 5 miles southeast of Herman, Minnesota, on State Highway 9, is the site of the Annual Herman Iron Pour. The pouring area is the gravel parking lot of the 260 acre park. The picnic shelter in the central area of the park serves as a workshop space for making molds in the days prior to Sunday's pour.

Many artists stay at the campground at the park. Facilities include primitive tent sites, water, electricity, and outhouses.

The central area of the park also includes the caretakers' residence, playground equipment, and a large granary with an attached stage.

For those of you who want to know more about the park, here is a brief history:


NIEMACKL LAKE PARK

article & illustration
by Michele Heiberg

The central wooded peninsula at Niemackl Lake Park has been a gathering place for people for over 11,000 years. The first people who gathered there left artifacts -- a Paleo-Indian incisor made of Knife River flint, Blackduck pottery from the terminal Woodland period, a cutting tool, probably from the Woodland period, net weights, and buffalo bones. The wooded "island" on the prairie, protected almost completely by a ring of lakes, sloughs, and channels from fires that once swept across the prairie, was a haven both for wildlife and people. It has come full cycle and is once more a gathering place for people seeking the quiet shelter of the wooded area the Dakota Indians called Moose Island.

For the Dakota Indians, who had the land to themselves before the 1860s, the island provided shelter, firewood, and food. The land was public then, owned by no one and by everyone.

Sometime before 1871, Frances Langlie, a man of both Indian and white blood, filed for homestead rights and became the land's first owner. That began more than 100 years of private ownership of the land that is now the park.

In 1872, he passed the land on to Engelbert Niemackl, one of this area's early white settlers. The land remained in the Niemackl family for 102 years.

Even during that century of private ownership, the land had much of the character of a public place. Several area residents remember it as a place where they gathered for picnics. The house built in 1898 was a showplace. It has since been restored and is the residence of the park's caretakers.

The land became officially public again in 1973, when the City of Herman, using money from the federal and state governments, bought the farm from William and Grace Niemackl. The City, through its volunteer park board, has been developing the land ever since.

The woods at the park is unique to the area in that it is a native stand of trees. Most of the groves in the area are planted "tree claims." The ancestral roots of the woods probably goes back to generations of trees that sprouted, grew, died, fell, decayed and re-merged with the earth to provide food for new trees.

The land among the trees was grazed by cattle during the years that the park was a farm, but that land has never been broken with a plow. Therefore, most of the plants that are in the park are also natural, native to that land.

The philosophy behind the development of the park has been to make the park accessible to people, but to disturb its natural state as little as possible.

There are walking trails that lead visitors through an oak woods, past the shore of two duck-filled sloughs and one lake, to an observation tower that lifts visitors to the level of the tree tops, past a marsh with nesting islands for geese, and through a farmyard with an old elevator-granary. Tucked in niches along the trails are picnic areas and tent camping sites.

The main asset of the park, however, is something that no person put there: its solitude. The park is above all a quiet place, a place to walk, sit, and refresh the soul.

Much of the beauty of the park depends on its setting in the middle of rich prairie farm land. The farm land provides opportunity: it provides income for local families, food for people throughout the world; it represents the world of everyday business. The park provides a place to rest and play, to refresh body and soul, and to spend a few hours among uncultivated nature.

The unofficial motto of the park, printed on the sign at the entrance to the parking lot, reflects the spirit of the park: "Treat kindly what you find here; and when you leave, take nothing with you from the park but the spirit of its natural beauty."