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Exhibit recalls first park naturalist
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Norma Roden, special events coordinator at Mill Creek Parks' Fellowside Riverside Gardens, shows off a photograph of Ernest Vickers, the park's first naturalist. Vickers' black-and-white photos are on display at the gardens' D.D. and Velma Davis Education and Visitor Center in "Ernest Vickers Retrospective." VIckers, also a botanist, took photographic images from the late-19th centuries that feature well-known park landmarks and nature scenes.
Vicker Photo
Video
By Denise Dick
‘Remembering Ernest Vickers’ will take hikers on one of his favorite park trails.
YOUNGSTOWN — A new display at Mill Creek MetroParks’ Fellows Riverside Gardens depicts life in the Mahoning Valley in the late-19th and early-20th centuries.
“Ernest Vickers Retrospective” begins today and runs through Feb. 22 in the Weller Gallery inside the D.D. and Velma Davis Education and Visitor Center.
“It’s a collection of black-and-white photographs,” said Norma Roden, gardens special events coordinator. “During the 1800s, amateur photography was the thing to do, and Ernest Vickers was particularly good at it.”
Vickers, who was born in 1869, died in 1960. A botanist, Vickers served as Mill Creek Park’s first naturalist beginning in 1929 and stepping down in 1947 when his son, Lindley, took over the job.
The photographs show park sites including Lanterman’s Mill, a boat on Lake Newport and Pioneer Pavilion.
“It does showcase the beauty of Mill Creek Park over the years,” Roden said.
Other landmarks and events from around the Valley are seen in other photos — a train station in Ellsworth, Salem City Hall and the Mahoning River in Berlin Center. Park founder Volney Rogers is prominently shown in a few. Others show the Vickers’ family — his wife, Lottie Spaulding Vickers, and son, Lindley — gathered for holidays.
The photographs are on loan from the Mahoning Valley Historical Society.
Jessica Trickett, MVHS collections manager, said the photos in the exhibition are some of more than 500 donated to the society in 1972.
“Many of them are on glass-plate negatives,” she said. “Some are printed. They show the late-19th century and the early-20th century.”
The photographs are part of MVHS archives and may be viewed at the Wick Avenue facility from 1 to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.
Roden said the gardens tries to feature the work of local artists whenever possible.
A special hike, “Remembering Ernest Vickers,” begins at 2 p.m. Feb. 8. Hikers will meet at Fellows Riverside Gardens, and after a tour of the exhibit, they will embark on a two-mile hike of Old Tree Trail, a Vickers favorite. The hike will be led by Bill Whitehouse, who knew both Ernest and Lindley Vickers.
As naturalist, Vickers led groups of people on nature hikes through the park beginning in the 1930s.
Vickers enjoyed nature outside of the park too. In 1912, he moved to Bird Acres, an old farmhouse near Berlin Center surrounded by more than 275 plants, many trees and shrubs, park history shows.
denise_dick@vindy.com