What became Confederate Memorial Park had once been a potato field farmed by employees, and to a lesser extent residents, of the Confederate Home. The Confederate Home Board asked the state legislature to set aside 92 acres of the home’s farm that were no longer needed for food production as a memorial park dedicated to the valor of the Confederate soldier, and both houses unanimously passed the enabling legislation. Hillard Brewster, a landscape engineer from the State Penal Board, volunteered his time to help create the park. The Higginsville area responded strongly: on Feb. 28, 1925, stores closed, schools dismissed, and after a parade through the town, bands of men and boys, joined by farmers, went on farm wagons to dig up large trees from surrounding timber, with property owners allowing it everywhere. Some hundred trees were brought into the park and planted on that rainy, gloomy, cold day, while women of the community prepared hot coffee and wieners. Two generations after the Civil War, the park still evoked a powerful community reaction, and Confederate Memorial State Historic Site preserves it as a continuing memorial to Missourians and soldiers from other states who served in the cause of the southern Confederacy.