A restoration a century in the making

Held as the center of recreation in Creston for over a century, McKinley Lake has had its ups and downs. From the source of the city’s ice in the 1870s to an unfortunate sewage situation in the 1920s, the lake has continued the hold the attention of Creston residents.

Today, Creston is close to completing more than 20 years of work to clean up McKinley Lake and local waterways. However, it’s been along road to get here.

McKinley Lake got its start under a different name in 1874 with the creation of Spencer Lake by the Creston Ice Company. The lake was created in order to supply water and ice to both the city and the railroad. John Hall and Herbert M. Spencer, owners of Creston Ice Company, also owned the land around the lake. They spent the next 10 years turning the area into a park.

While there were many amenities for residents to enjoy at the park, the lake was at the center of it all. According to George Ide’s 1908 “History of Union County Iowa,” “the lake afforded facilities for boating and swimming in summer and skating in winter and was a favorite resort for pleasure and recreation.”

The park was free to attend but quickly became a financial burden. In 1885, the CNA’s predecessor, The Daily Advertiser, wrote about the closing of the park.

“For two years, the park has been open to the public for drives, the enjoyment of the beautiful lake, grove, zoological garden, etc., for which the company thus providing the public with a beautiful place of amusement and recreation has received no pecuniary remuneration except the small revenue derived from boat hire and refreshments sold at their stand. Now it is plainly visible to the casual observer that the company providing this beautiful report for the city cannot afford to continue it without more revenue, and have therefore closed it up.”

The newspaper suggested charging season tickets of admission to the park to keep the park running. This was done for a while but closed some time after 1889. Around this time, Summit Lake was built and the dam holding water in Park Lake was opened, draining the lake.

In 1901, the city of Creston took matters into its own hands. The city bought 30 acres of what was once the park and renamed it McKinley Park. However, the old lake stayed empty, serving as pastureland until 1919 when the community voted to rebuild the lake.

The Creston Chamber of Commerce talks about the building of the new lake in their history of McKinley Lake, with sand being shipped in for a beach and the addition of a diving tower and slide. Creston citizens would reminisce about boating in the lake or skating above during winter. However, at some point in the following decades, the beach had to be closed down.

“Unfortunately many homes surrounding the lakes had been built without the benefit of a sewage system. People started getting ill so swimming was discontinued and the beach was closed,” the website says.

While area houses eventually began to gain sewage systems, a major cleanup of the lake and connected water systems wasn’t approached until 1998 when the Iowa DNR began working with the Iowa Farm Bureau, the Izaak Walton League, the Iowa Environmental Council, Natural Resources Conservation Service and the University of Iowa Hygienic Laboratory joined to create IOWATER. This cooperative worked to monitor and clean Iowa’s waterways, providing training and testing equipment when necessary.

In 2006, both McKinley Lake and Hurley Creek, the waterway leading into the lake, were tested every two to three weeks to assess water quality. Creston Parks and Rec President John Kawa said Hurley Creek’s cleaning had to come first.

“We talked to our engineer at the time,” Kawa said. “They told us, you can’t do nothing with McKinley Lake until you clean the park up and until you clean Hurley Creek up. There’s nobody going to even talk to you from the DNR, they won’t even consider this. That’s when we got all started on this.”

According to engineer Matt Nieswender, previous tests showed storm water polluted by septic systems was getting into Hurley Creek. The city of Creston has gotten most homeowners with septic systems onto city sewer and in 2006 had been working on digging out the creek.

“There is still a lot that has to be done,” Nieswender said. “A 2004 sample of five areas of the watershed area done by the state showed levels of e-coli far beyond what would be safe for swimming.”

In October 2007, the city was notified it would receive $117,500 in grant money from the Watershed Improvement Review Board. By May 2012, much of the project had been completed.

“We are pretty much done with cleaning up Hurley Creek,” Kawa said at a city council meeting that year. “Next, we move on to the north side of Adams Street, by Taylor Park, where that little swamp is. We will put in a four-tiered pond layout that will filter the water as it goes into McKinley Lake.”

The water comes into the first pond, which is the deepest of the four ponds.

“Each pond will get more shallow as they get closer to McKinley Lake,” Kawa said. “This will help with the filtration process and make the water more clean with every step. There will also be rock filtration systems and plant filtration systems. All of these things will allow the water to be 75% clean when it goes into McKinley Lake.”

All this work was accomplished, with the community finally able to focus on McKinley Lake in 2020. The main issue in bringing the lake back to its former glory was the dredging, or cleaning the lake bed by removing sediment, vegetation and rubble.

After work between the Iowa DNR and city of Creston, the restoration of McKinley Lake finally went to vote in 2021 for a general obligation capital loan not to exceed $2 million. This was first voted on in 2019, with the bond failing by 56 votes. However, the bond passed in 2021 with 66% of the votes.

The city began working with Houston Engineering on the project, which started quickly moving forward in 2024. The draining of the lake began in August, though that has had issues because of the rain and sediment in the lake.

In November, city council approved three contracts to continue moving forward with the project. The first contract was with the Iowa DNR regarding reimbursement to Creston for the work done to restore the lake.

A second contract was approved with Houston Engineering regarding construction on the lake, including lake dredging, low-level draining and other improvements.

The final contract was regarding the restoration of the lake. Clearfield-based JNC Construction had the lowest bid at $2.7 million. Their work includes the cleaning and reconstruction of the lake, as well as working on jetties, more fish habitat and ADA parking.

Construction work began in December, with crew taking advantage of the cold weather to get work done. However, as soon as the snow started melting, the removal of dirt and sediment became much harder. As of March, the JNC Construction had to pause work, both to empty water out of the lake and to finish a previously planned project outside of Creston.

A new water pump has been purchased with the ability to pump out 2.1 million gallons of water a day. The crew will be on another project for the few weeks, but once they’re back, Creston Park Director Rusty Zimmerman said it’s full steam ahead.

“It looks like they’re just keeping to that corner… that’s the deepest part of that whole way, so once they get that done, once they move towards the bridge, they go from 13 feet and they’re going down to 2 [feet],” Zimmerman said. “They’re working the heaviest area right now to try to get it done. Pray for a very dry spring and summer.”

Zimmerman said JNC Construction plans to be done with the dredging by March 2026, with the refilling of the lake completed midsummer. The Iowa DNR will then fill the lake with fish.

The city is excited to welcome citizens back to the lake that has been a part of Creston life for so long.

“It will bring something back to the community for recreation as far as fishing and the quality of the runoff for the lakes and streams down below,” Zimmerman said. “In general it’s just a better thing to have the good quality in the lake so the aquatic life and nature that everybody likes to watch is a lot better off for it.”