For those interested in local history, the St. Joseph parks and recreation department has a special Christmas treat.

Starting in 1911, the department has put together and kept a collection of notebooks containing clippings about the city parks and park activities from the St. Joseph News-Press, the St. Joseph Gazette and other newspapers, said Lucinda Weaver, a parks employee.

There are 31 notebooks in this collection.

The notebooks contained the information that allowed the department to apply for and receive the honor of being listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1995, Ms. Weaver said.

The notebooks were cleaned up with volunteer help from St. Joseph's Pony Express and Westward Ho chapters of Questors. The city obtained a grant to have the notebooks microfilmed in its effort to preserve them.

Since the notebooks belong to local taxpayers, the staff wanted to make the records more accessible, Ms. Weaver said.

Thanks to the generosity of an anonymous donor, the notebooks have been scanned and placed on compact disc and digital video disc, Ms. Weaver said. And when they were scanned, the words were read by a digital optical scanner so the users could search for any subject.

Each disc also has a 12-page informational booklet that shows some of the pictures readers will find in the notebook, and basic information about the city parks and the Parkway System.

The disc can be bought for $20 at the parks department's administrative office, the Joyce Raye Patterson Senior Citizens Center, the Remington Nature Center of St. Joseph and the Bode Ice Arena.

The profits will be used to buy deacidification supplies to use for the preservation of the original notebooks, said Jane Nelson, the department's notebook preservationist.

Each week, Property of the Past writer Marshall White features a building or an item of St. Joseph history. If you have a home, building, special collection or an interesting piece of history, contact him at marshall@npgco.com.

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Pick your favorite park, try to find out when it became a park and write two paragraphs about why you like it. Be sure to describe the recreational activities that anyone can participate in at your favorite park.