The Pettibone Park Commission Records is a small collection documenting the financial administration of a popular La Crosse park. Unfortunately, the papers reveal little about Pettibone or the other civic leaders who administered the trust fund or of the activities that took place on the island over the years. Even the administrative documentation is incomplete, as there are only minutes for the period prior to 1941 while the financial records are complete only for the last years of the commission's existence. The collection is divided into three series: correspondence, minutes, and business and financial records.
The CORRESPONDENCE runs from 1900 to 1969, with the exception of one 1977 letter from a concerned citizen urging that the lease of the La Crosse Pettibone Boat Club not be renewed. Also included in this file are the incorporation papers and a deed.
The MINUTES, which also include annual reports and clippings, are chiefly from the period 1901 to 1931 and 1938 to 1941. After that the correspondence between H.K. Holley of the La Crosse Trust Company and John Pettibone contains some of the information previously recorded in the minutes. The annual reports and the correspondence deal with the landscaping of the park (including a three-page letter in 1902 from landscape architect Frank H. Nutter), construction of bridges and roads, installation of utilities, the building of cottages, and the leasing of some of the park.
The BUSINESS AND FINANCIAL RECORDS consist of leases and mortgages (all from the 1950s and primarily concerning the La Crosse Pettibone Boat Club), ledgers, reports, and tax returns. The ledgers consist of records of stock investments, 1901-1971, and operating expenses from 1900 to 1969. The latter series is contained in five different volumes, and the information recorded changes over time (the fifth and sixth books, for example, cover only receipts from park property rentals between 1955 and 1969). Other financial records are auditor's reports from the last three years of the commission's existence and tax returns from the last ten years of park operations.
