Hickory Hill Park is a 190-acre natural area in northeast Iowa City that preserves forest, abandoned fields, reconstructed prairie, wetlands, and open parkland around Ralston Creek. It began in 1927 as land bought to expand Oakland Cemetery, but much of it was allowed to naturalize as cemetery growth remained slow. Additional land was added in 1952, and local citizens including Dee Norton helped secure its formal dedication as a park in 1968. Expanded further in the 1980s and again in 2008, it became one of the city’s largest protected landscapes and remains an important urban refuge for recreation and conservation despite development and ecological pressures.