Platte River Revival
The Platte River Revival is not just a one day event. It is an ongoing community effort. Check out what others are doing in the Casper area to make the North Platte River one of Wyoming's crown jewels!
Platte River Parkway Trust
At its annual Pathway Clean-up on Saturday, May 17, 2008, in partnership with the City of Casper’s Keep Casper Beautiful Great American Cleanup Campaign and the City of Casper Urban Forestry division, volunteers and Parkway Board Members planted 225 trees. With the plentiful moisture we've had this spring these trees are doing wonderfully. To further support these new trees, on Friday, June 13, 2008 a volunteer group of LDS youth from around the state of Wyoming placed cages around all the trees to protect them.
The Parkway would like to thank William Scott and the City of Casper Urban Forestry unit, all of the wonderful Spring Clean-up volunteers as well as the LDS youth group for their assitance in this effort to improve the river corridor.
BP:
Atop a hill overlooking Casper, Wyoming, two dozen antelope graze peacefully as the sun sets over the Rocky Mountain foothills. Ducks perch on gleaming chunks of ice, drifting downstream in the North Platte River. A pair of snow hares hop along on the riverbank, scouting for winter sustenance. A fox trots carelessly across a nearby field.
This pastoral view belies the area’s industrial history. Not long ago, this hilltop overlooked a blighted brownfield – the abandoned remains of the Casper Refinery, shut down by Amoco (a BP heritage company) in 1991. The landscape was littered with oil tanks, underneath which lay hundreds of miles of buried pipe. The soil and groundwater were contaminated with petroleum products. And the river, strewn with dangerous chunks of concrete, was unusable by boaters and swimmers.
Today, the 1,620-hectare (4,000-acre) former refinery site is home to a championship golf course, a prime commercial office park, a light industrial park, a thrilling whitewater park, and a peaceful bird sanctuary. The river is known for some of the best fly-fishing in the nation. On summer weekends, the park is populated with golfers, kayakers, rafters and fishermen.
The transformation from wasteland to wetland has been nothing short of miraculous.
For the complete article click here: BP - full magazine article
The City of Casper Parks Parks staff assisted the Platte River Parkway Trust in the planting and caging og 250 small cottonwood saplings along the pathway from Amoco Park to the Pepper Tank yard. Parks planted 22 large balled and burlapped trees in the Whitewater park area directly east and west of the pump house. Species were Amur maackia, Narrowleaf cottonwood, Hackberry, Autumn Purple ash, and Amur maple. They have also trimmed trees in that area as well as at the endowment plaza at crossroads to help improve existing tree health.
Is your company, group or organization doing something to improve the appearance of the North Platte River? Let us know by calling Jolene Martinez at (307) 235-8332.