Dear editor, While attending the groundbreaking ceremony for the new Lehigh Portland Visitor Center at Lehigh State Park last week, I was flooded with memories of this beautiful place.  When I first moved to Iola…

“If it bleeds it leads,” is a time-tested, and unfortunate, truism in the news industry. Try as we might to cast the area in a positive light, the Register’s most-read stories for 2023 involved car…

It took the entire summer, but on Sept. 1, Iola Industries officially handed over an estimated 500 acres to the state of Kansas for the creation of LeHigh Portland State Park. The transition means the…

It’s been a week of celebration on top of catastrophe in Iola.  Late last Saturday I was never so happy as to hear the drone of our electricity come online in the south end of…

On a Wednesday morning at Grow at Eden child care center in Parsons, a little girl around the age of 2 tapped on a large window that separates her classroom from a conference room that…

Lehigh Portland State Park will become official on July 1, Linda Lanterman, director of Kansas State Parks, told Iola Industries members and their guests Tuesday evening.  Lanterman was the guest speaker at the annual meeting…

Mary Kay Heard’s Friday was a good Friday indeed. Heard, Iola Industries chairwoman, entered the Easter weekend with equal parts relief and elation following Thursday evening’s successful legislative votes to create the Lehigh Portland State…

TOPEKA — Months of work to establish a new state park in Allen County came to fruition Thursday when Kansas lawmakers overwhelmingly approved creation of Lehigh Portland State Park. The park will encompass 360 acres of…

While it’s yet to be known whether legislators will designate Lehigh Portland State Park as Kansas’ 29th state park, the information gathering process has been a fruitful history lesson.  Many locals were unaware the lake,…

My hopes for a state park here dimmed considerably Wednesday morning when I received an email from Rep. Bill Rhiley of Wellington with the subject line “Tomorrow’s vote on a David Toland state park for…