TEN-MILE ROSE GARDEN ONCE GRACED HIGHWAY 61 FROM CAPE GIRARDEAU TO JACKSON

The Ten-Mile Rose Garden was one of the famous attractions among people who lived in Southeast Missouri. It extended from Cape Girardeau to Jackson along Highway 61 from the 1930s to the 1980s.

The length of the road was almost 10 miles, thus the name "Ten-Mile Rose Garden."

"A garden club suggested the idea of the Rose Garden," said Frank Nickell, professor of history at Southeast Missouri State University. "The person who had theresponsibility to develop it was Dennis M. Scivally. He started the Rose Garden in the early 1930s. People who took care of the Rose Garden were people in the Work Projects Administration."

The WPA was a project of the government that employed people who had no jobs. This created jobs for them. People raised $10,000 to establish the Rose Garden. The government covered the cost of the garden and the salaries for the workers for a while. But soonr the federal government stopped the funding and the local county government started doing so.

Nine thousand rosebushes were planted by the State Highway Commission. In addition, the State Highway Commission helped to plant 1,317 evergreens and some 14,000 other specimens.

"The view of the Rose Garden was very nice," said Nickell. "There were many trees and roses on both sides of the two-lane road. Those trees made a virtual tunnel because the tops of the trees on both sides touched one another in places."

But this nice view did not last. Roses are flowers that cannot live for a long duration. In additionwhen World War II began in the 1940s, the workers went off to war and could not take care of the Rose Garden. And the local county could not afford it.

Since the workers could not take care of it, some people who lived close to the garden took care of it voluntarily. But the garden declined in the 1960s. The garden developed spots where some of the roses died. One reason the roses died was that the trees grew so big that the roses could not get sunlight. In the 1970s and the 1980s, the idea that the road had to be widened came up. Two lanes were not enough at that time because traffic was increasing.

People decided that the Rose Garden should be removed so that they could increase the roadway by two more lanes.