Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 210, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 September 1915 — Small Town’s Beauty. [ARTICLE]

Small Town’s Beauty.

AusUn, Minn., with a population of about 8,600, has the usual activities of a little western town. Five divisions of the C„ M. & St. P. railroad center there for repair shop facilities. It has a large packing house, Its own electric light and water works, worth $300,000; a good-sized cement plant, brick and tile works, etc. But this prosperous community is especially notable for its “city beautiful” idea. Not content with Its parks of forty-five, fifteen and five acres, it has established a floral decorative scheme. The well-paved streets are arranged on a floral plan. The wide parkings of one street are beautiful at one season with a profusion of the wild crab tree’s bloom; another presents a ribbon of color from geraniums; another street presents a line of catalpas, snowy with blossoms, and so on. The workmen at the shops and railroad station at their own expense annually employ a landscape gardener, and the bare, dusty patches of waste ground thereabouts have been transformed. Bpires, phlox, llßes of all kinds and flowering shrubbery, as well as manuals, are used.