Park Purchased

Another project that the council was interested in was having a town park. After negotiations, the council decided to spend $9,000 to buy 22 acres as a park site. James Hall, the town's attorney, thought the price was too high. The owners -- Elberta E. Brady, Francis Brady, and Roscoe Brady--wanted the park named after Walter Doane. The council agreed and the town bought Doanes Park on November 14, 1958.The next year there was some discussion of buying five more acres to add to Doanes Park for $400 an acre. However, the matter was tabled.

Pleasant Hill needed a system for naming streets and numbering houses. The council must have felt that extending the names and numbers from Des Moines was not appropriate, so they asked

Anderson to come up with a system. On November 7, 1958, the council adopted Anderson,s suggested names for streets. Some of the street names were taken from people's suggestions. For example, Gertrude Hurd chose the name Oakwood Drive to replace the name Youngstown Road.

Other street names that were changed were: Boggstown Road to Pleasant Hill Boulevard, Pierick Road to South Pleasant Hill Boulevard (Pleasant Hill Boulevard was cut through from Oakwood to Parkridge in the summer of 1959), Runnells High Line to Parkridge Avenue, and Dean Avenue to Fairview Drive. Christy Lane underwent a spelling change to Christie and Shadyview Lane became Shadyview Boulevard. The plan called for having all of the north-south streets called boulevards and east-west streets called drives. From then on street names were left to the land developers as long as the name fit the plan.

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The city bought this fire engine, used, in 1959 as the first fire truck in town.