Walking in Leopold's Footsteps Tours 

 

 

Because of Covid, we are open on a request basis.  Tours of the Leopold Boyhood Home and Starker-Leopold House and grounds can be scheduled by contacting any of the Alliance Board members. Allow 1 -2 hours.   Special arrangements can be made for large groups.

Longer tours of up to 6 hours are available that include visits to Leopold's childhood tramping sites and may include a Leopold program.  A great way to spend the day!  Lunch at a restaurant on the river or following in Leopold's footsteps with a picnic lunch.  Contact:  Steve Brower brower406@aol.com for details.

 

 

 

 

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"Thank you for giving us all such a wonderfully pleasant and educational day in Burlington.  It was such an unforgettable experience.  You chose perfect places for us to see, and your power point presentation provided the historical and biographical perspective (for) us to appreciate their great significance.  I particularly appreciated learning about Leopold's geological interest and then the story of Grandfather Starker's objections to Mr. Crapo's flowery terraces at Black Hawk Springs.  You really are making a great case for the importance of Leopold's family background and youth to his later thought and pioneering work in ecology, as well as his literary skills in promoting conservation and popularizing ecological thought."

"Almost all modern biographers try to relate their subjects' youth to their later work.  But this seems especially important with a nature writer, because of the lessons it should hold for other young people and their parents and teachers.  Biographies of great poets and presidents cannot seriously help us make our children and students into new Whitmans or Lincolns.  But (biographies) should, I think, help us realize the importance of youth in the development of a love of the natural world, our universal "great possession".  Thus it is enormously important to recover all that can be recovered about young Aldo's family and early indoor and outdoor education, the 'education of an ecologist'."            

 -- our friend and supporter, the late Robert Sayre, Professor of English and American Studies, University of Iowa and author of Recovering the Prairie 1999.  We are very thankful and proud to have the memory of Bob's enthusiasm carry us forward.

 

In recent years Burlington has already had visitors searching for Leopold's roots of wisdom from all three Iowa State Universities, Western Illinois University and several colleges. Leopold's international visitors come from far and wide, including Canada, Mexico, England, Ireland, Austria, France, Germany, Turkey, India, Nepal, China, Japan, Iran, Malaysia, South Africa, Nigeria and Guatemala.

" I just looked at the Leopold Landscape Alliance website, and please know that I admire your activities immensely.  Perhaps this magnificent house in Burlington will be a Leopold Museum one day.  In the Green Fire Film, the part that includes (the) front of this house is just very meaningful.   Now LLA will be very influential in revealing the importance of these unique landscapes in the evolution of Leopold's Land Ethic.  My personal conviction is that the Land Ethic will soon be very influential in conservation activities worldwide. "             

--Ufuk Ozdag, Ph.D, Dir. Land Ethic Center, Professor and Chair, Department of American Culture and Literature, Hacettepe University, Ankara, Turkey.