Title: Ijams book captures family, center history
Author: Amy McRary
Publisher: Knox News
Date: 5/16/10
Ijams Nature Center celebrates its beginnings, its growth and the family who gave the nonprofit its name and its start in a new book.
Center Executive Director Paul James has researched and written the book entitled simply "Ijams Nature Center." The 127-page volume is filled with photographs from the Ijams family as well as from the center's past and present. It's also filled with readable details and historical tidbits that point to a devoted love for research by James.
H.P. and Alice Ijams bought 20 acres of South Knoxville land in 1910 and turned it into a garden showplace and bird sanctuary. After their deaths, Ijams became a public park. This fall, the center will grow to 275 acres.
Visitors who enjoy the center's walks, educational programs and green space will learn a lot they probably haven't known about its history. Among the book's details is that H.P. and Alice Ijams weren't only dedicated conservationists. But they and their family were also involved in area Girl Scouting and in the early days of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
There's one chapter devoted to the family Christmas cards that H.P. Ijams, an artist and illustrator by profession, created for years. The chapters on the family offer a view of a family that loved each other and loved the outdoors.
Taken as a whole, "Ijams Nature Center" gives its readers an often fascinating look into the story behind the wildlife sanctuary and environmental education center that attracts 150,000 to 2000,000 people a year.
The book, published by Arcadia Publishing in its Images of America series, is available at the center's museum store or at www.ijams.org. The center is also selling a 16-set reproduction of some of H.P. Ijams' hand-drawn Christmas postcards.
Title: An outdoor treasure
Author: Staff Writer
Publisher: Everything Knoxville
Date: April 2010
Located five minutes from downtown Knoxville, Ijams Nature Center is a 175-acre wildlife sanctuary and environmental learning center for all people. Ijams provides community-wide connections and outdoor experiences through education, conservation, recreation and responsible environmental stewardship.
This year, Ijams celebrates the 100th anniversary of the Ijams Family legacy, which began 100 years ago when H.P. and Alice Ijams purchased 20 acres of land on the outskirts of Knoxville in 1910. Over the years, the Ijams family developed the land into a natural showplace known as the Bird Sanctuary, which attracted birders and nature lovers everywhere.
H.P. Ijams, a talented commercial artist and bird fanatic, spearheaded Knoxville's first ornithologist movement and hosted annual bird counts at the Ijams Bird Sanctuary for decades.
H.P. Ijams' wife, Alice, ran a commercial horticultural business. Her passion for education and conservation inspired the formation of numerous local garden clubs. Alice was also involved with the Knoxville Girl Scout Council, who has been coming to the Ijams place since 1923. The four Ijams daughters, all talented naturalists, were the first Girl Scouts to be educated at the Ijams Bird Sanctuary.
The story of the Ijams family will be told in a new history book, Ijams Nature Center, written by Ijams' Executive Director, Paul James. The book will be released on May 17 by Arcadia Publishing as part of its popular Images of America series and will feature 185 vintage photographs, drawings and maps from the Ijams family archives and other local sources. Coinciding with the book is the opening of a new permanent exhibit on the Ijams family at Ijams Nature Center. The exhibit will be open in time for a special Founder's Day event for the public on Saturday, May 22nd from 10:00 am-2:00 pm. Visit www.ijams.org for further details.
In 2001, Ijams acquired Mead's Quarry, a historic site that once produced Tennessee Marble used in local and national buildings and monuments, and is also featured in the new book. The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. is at least one famous building that features Tennessee marble extracted from numerous East Tennessee quarries such as Mead's. Although for many years Mead's Quarry existed as an abandoned dumpsite, now once restored, the property, with its clear-blue 25-acre lake, scenic vistas and looped trails, has become a visitor favorite and a genuine jewel in the crown of Knox County Parks.
The success of Mead's Quarry has facilitated further land expansion at Ijams with the addition of the Ross Marble Quarry, which Ijams is slated to open in November. The new 100-acre property features unparalleled scenic views, including natural rock formations and abandoned blocks of Tennessee Marble form rock bridges and keyholes that punctuate the landscape. An unforgettable experience, the Ross Marble Quarry echoes the rugged terrain of the Big South, and adds yet another dimension to Ijams' natural areas.
For outdoor lovers seeking a more close-to home destination, Ijams Nature Center offers a genuine alternative to driving to the Smoky Mountains. With new exhibits and plenty of nature programs for all ages, Ijams really is much more than one of Knoxville's best kept secrets. Ijams is a historical, cultural and natural treasure.
Title: Birdlife: H.P. Ijams's bird boxes attracted warblers
Author: Marcia Davis
Publisher: Knox News
Date: 5/30/2010
Two vintage photographs in the new book "Ijams Nature Center" (Arcadia Publishing) by Ijams Executive Director Paul James, picture vertical tubular nest boxes for birds. Mounted on poles and installed over or near water, the boxes attracted prothonotary warblers - Tennessee's only cavity-nesting warblers.
They were two of more than 100 nest boxes built and installed in the 1930s by the late H. P. Ijams on family land on the banks of the Tennessee River in South Knoxville's Island Home community. H.P. was a commercial artist. As a leader in the local bird-watching community, he was one of the founders in 1924 of what is now the Knoxville Chapter of the Tennessee Ornithological Society.
In the new book's history of the Ijams family and the development of Ijams Nature Center, James states "One of H.P. Ijams's birding successes was attracting prothonotary warblers to nest frequently in a bird box by his screen porch overlooking a small lily pond behind the house."
In 1937, H.P. wrote in the Tennessee Ornithological Society journal "The Migrant" of his success in attracting three prothonotary nesting pairs to bird boxes near his home. H.P. stated "None of the nests were closer than 500 feet to the Tennessee River which flows nearby." During the previous 20 years, H.P. found only one prothonotary nest on his property and it was destroyed by high water. He attributed his success in 1937 to the fact that a fisherman had put up a crude nest box near a fishing shack on the river bank the year before and attracted a pair of prothonotaries that raised two broods.
H.P. and his wife, Alice, who was a serious gardener, had several ponds on their property where H.P. could place a nest box over water by sinking the pole in a shallow pond. Prothonotaries could nest over standing water - or nearby on a wooded shoreline - without risk of being too close to the fluctuating water levels of the large river.
If more people who live near slow-moving water near woodlands would follow in H. P. Ijams's footsteps by providing suitable nest boxes and preserving habitat for these flaming golden gems of the bird world, prothonotary warblers might have a brighter future.
Migrants return and lay eggs from mid-April until mid-July in abandoned woodpecker holes and bird houses. Prothonotaries prefer to nest near or over standing water bordered by woodlands or in wooded swamps. There's probably lots of good habitat along area lakes and rivers with quiet coves, wooded islands and wooded shorelines - if the warblers can find natural cavities or nest boxes.
H.P. designed his own unique nest boxes made of two telescoping tubes that pull apart. The adjustable, removable inside tube containing the nest made it easy to open the box for monitoring, change the cavity depth for different species and close off the entrance hole to trap non-native starlings or house sparrows. Boxes were numbered and locations mapped on the Ijams's property. H.P. kept records of species that used each box, nesting periods, eggs laid, eggs hatched and young that successfully fledged.
The new Ijams Family Legacy Exhibit at Ijams Nature Center contains a replica of H.P.'s patented nest box based on patent application drawings and specifications. Ijams family bird memorabilia and photographs featured in the exhibit and in the book relate to the early history of bird-watching, bird-watchers and the Tennessee Ornithological Society in East Tennessee.
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the original purchase of the Ijams family land, which the family shared for many decades with the public as a bird sanctuary, gardening showplace, site for scouting activities and meeting place for bird-watchers and naturalists. The land is now the heart of Ijams Nature Center where visitors and staff continue the Ijams family traditions of nature study, gardening, conservation and environmental education.
