Raymond C. Morrison

Morrison's best-known project was built in a hard year. He and landscape architect S. Herbert Hare began the lagoon and arboretum in 1929, and Hare and Hare drew the terraced rose garden plan in 1930. Construction started in February 1933 through a partnership with Tarrant County and a Reconstruction Finance Corporation relief committee. More than 450 men, most of them unskilled, were trained on the job by masons and carpenters. Palo Pinto sandstone replaced the planned brick, and the garden was dedicated on October 15, 1933.

What the plaque says

Raymond C. Morrison Raymond C. Morrison was born on Sep. 13, 1900 in Alworth, Illinois, to Phillip Huntley and Edith Adella (Cleveland) Morrison. On Jun. 9, 1924, he graduated from the New York State College of Forestry at Syracuse University. Morrison married Helen Estelle Steele on Feb. 28, 1924, and they had two children. Morrison is noted for being Fort Worth's first city forester, beginning Jan. 1926. His most prominent works were an arboretum and a nationally-recognized municipal rose garden in Rock Springs Park, which later became Fort Worth Botanic Garden in 1934. He resigned in Dec. 1938 to form a landscape architecture firm with Eugene Carter. Morrison was named director of Holland's Southern Institute for Town Service in Jul. 1939 which was initiated as a way to address issues pointed out in the National Emergency Council's report on the South's economic conditions. In Mar. 1941, Morrison became federal coordinator with the Federal Security Agency's Office of Coordinator for Health, Welfare, and Related Defense Activities. In 1947, he focused on his own business ventures including a soil company and turkey ranch. In 1951, he became the southwest regional representative for community services with the U.S. Air Force. During his term as chairman of the Educational Committee of the American Institute of Park Executives, he co-authored the book Let's Go to the Park with Myrtle E. Huff. Morrison was also known for his public speaking, photography, magazine and journal articles, and the various community groups he started. He was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and died of pneumonia on Apr. 12, 1989. His ashes were spread at the Fort Worth Botanic Garden. 175 Years of Texas Independence 1836 - 2011

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame — 0.6 mi
  A hall of fame begun in Hereford in 1975 to honor rodeo women, widened in 1977 to Western heritage, and housed in Fort Worth's Cultural District since 2002.
• Kimbell Art Museum — 1.0 mi
  Louis Kahn's cycloid-vaulted museum of 1972, built from Kay Kimbell's bequest and joined in 2013 by Renzo Piano's pavilion for the exhibitions the Kahn galleries could not hold.
• Tarrant County Courthouse — 2.4 mi
  A pink-granite courthouse of 1895 on the bluff where the Army set up Fort Worth in 1849, in a county named for the man who led the 1841 attack on the Native villages of Village Creek.
• Fort Worth Stockyards — 3.9 mi
  The brick-street cattle market where Armour and Swift built packing plants in 1902, now a National Register district with a Coliseum, a museum and a longhorn drive twice a day.

More markers nearby

• Mary Daggett Lake — steps away
• Herbert M. Hinckley — 0.8 mi
• Fort Worth Zoological Park — 0.9 mi
• Texas Log Cabins — 1.0 mi