Meet the man who shaped Linn County parks and trails for the last 45 years

TODDVILLE — Randy Burke held in his hand a decades-old photo of his younger self pounding a stake at Pinicon Ridge Park, setting the rods to verify the width of a road and make some adjustments for a Linn County Conservation project.

“That’s a long time ago,” Burke, the county’s outdoor recreation planner and licensed landscape architect, said as he looked at the picture while he was at the Wickiup Hill Learning Center.

When Burke started working with Linn County Conservation 45 years ago on July 24, 1979, he started as a temporary planning aide before being permanently hired. The county was looking for somebody to put utility maps together. At that time, staff drew with pencils on paper instead of using the technology they rely on today.

In 1981, Burke became design technician. He’s held the same outdoor recreation planner position he has today since 1986 and is now paid about $95,000 a year.

“I’m not big on change,” said Burke, an Iowa State University alum from Fairfield.

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Motivated to ‘provide recreation opportunities’

In a career spanning decades, Burke has had his hands on just about any development in Linn County parks since the 1980s and built a sparse trail system into one that connects municipalities spanning multiple Iowa counties. Burke still would like to see several projects through, so he has no plans to retire anytime soon.

He started working on site plans for parking lots and soon got involved with the Cedar Valley Nature Trail, helping a landscape architect write a master plan for project. He started doing research for the project and has been involved in the endeavor ever since.

The historic 52-mile trail stretches from Hiawatha to Evansdale and links to other Eastern Iowa trails. The Linn and Black Hawk county conservation boards are working on a joint project that’s slated to wrap up in the coming months that will pave the trail in its entirety. Parts of the trail were surfaced only with crushed limestone and dirt through Black Hawk, Buchanan and Benton counties.

“It’s rewarding,” Burke said. “When we started it, I never would have guessed it would take us 45 years to get it all paved. For a while, we weren’t even sure we were going to pave it.”

Burke rattled off other projects he’s proud to have played a role in bringing to fruition. He helped secure funding to create what is now the Wickiup Hill Learning Center, which connects people with the outdoors and develops an awareness of nature.

He assisted efforts to lock in funds to build the Mary Lundby Bridge at Pinicon Ridge Park, honoring longtime state Sen. Mary Lundby of Marion, who died in 2008. The bridge spans the Wapsipinicon River to connect the park's campground on the river's east bank to the main park area on the west side.

Burke has twice replaced Morgan Creek Park’s aging day use facilities. The latest improvements saw the addition of a new shelter, restroom and playground. There is a heavily used soft-surface playground with approximately 25-feet climbing towers and two stainless steel slides. The last step of adding a new lodge is in the works.

“I just want people to have fun, enjoy and have a good recreation experience,” Burke said. “That’s what I’m trying to do is provide recreation opportunities for people.”

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Fairfield roots fueled love of nature

Having grown up on a farm near Fairfield, Burke said he spent some summers during college doing concrete work and working for what is now Alliant Energy, driving trucks to set poles for the utility.

Living in rural Iowa, he enjoyed wide-open fields and spent a lot of time in nature but had few friends. “It was just me, myself and I,” he said. “The three of us argued a lot together.”

He spent much of his time wandering a savannah with massive oak trees and visiting a fishing pond behind his house, admiring the natural landscape essentially in his backyard.

“That had a lot to do with what I like to do,” Burke said, “just looking how nature does things and, ‘I like that landform. I like how that cow path or horse path winds around and how they keep at a certain elevation and how they travel around.’”

When he’s not soaking in the natural world, Burke taps into his passion for music.

At ISU, he played drums in a band and still tries to get his friends together for one last fling, but typically settles for going to concerts. A “product of the ‘60s and ‘70s,” Burke said he planned to go to seven more shows for the remainder of 2024 including REO Speedwagon and Judas Priest. He’s known to play Uriah Heep in his office when he’s concentrating on a big project.

Burke has ‘seen it all’ in 45 years

Lisa Burch, a civil engineer with Cedar Rapids-based YTT Design Solutions who designs trails, parks and recreation facilities for the county conservation department, said it’s common for Burke to easily recall knowledge from projects completed decades ago.

“He’s got it all right there in his head,” Burch said. “He’s always in a good mood, always very friendly and works with everyone.”

She also said he’s been invaluable in being efficient and economical with county conservation projects, finding straightforward, simple but innovative solutions.

For example, she said he’ll be the first to come up with an idea like reusing old bridge timbers from a project that was taken down on a new pedestrian bridge. He’s reused an old rail car to help build a pedestrian bridge on a trail, avoiding sending it to the landfill.

“He’s going to remember everything about that project you’re working on,” Burch said.

Tom Peffer, president of the Linn County Trails Association, said Burke is down to earth, practical, focused, persistent and easy to get along with as he collaborates with the association.

“He’s really focused on the trail user and trying to make the trails safe and sustainable, as easy to maintain as you can,” Peffer said. “He puts in really good trails — two layers of asphalt and rock underneath. He does a great job dealing with farmers and people who have to use or cross the trail.”

Around the time Burke started, Peffer said there was no trail network besides a gravel trail out of Hiawatha going north and the Sac and Fox Trail along the Cedar River and Indian Creek. But Burke has been around for the whole trail system’s development.

“If anybody’s had an impact on the conservation county side of that, it’s him,” Peffer said. “He was there in the beginning of the Cedar Valley Nature Trail. He was there in the beginning of the Grant Wood Trail, and those are the two biggest trails we have right now … He has seen it all.”

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