It seems like Almost Yesterday that the landscape of Cape Girardeau featured a number of special places where residents could relax and enjoy a pleasant change of scenery. In the middle of the nineteenth century Franck’s Gardens on the hill along Jackson Road, now Broadway, was such a place. A product of the German migration to the region in the 1850s, this park-like beer garden was one of the social centers and “beauty spots” of the community for approximately four decades. Named for John A.