The Haunts of Washington Park

If your summer reading list includes historical tomes, be sure to read The Haunts of Washington Park, by local historian and eccentric extraordinaire, Phil Goodstein. You can pick up a copy at the Tattered Cover for about $20 or borrow a copy from the library for FREE.

The book is a great read about the development of our very favorite city park.

Wash Park was designed by the city's official landscape architect, Reinhart Schuetze, who also worked on Denver's Platt Park and Cheeseman Park. Work on Wash Park began in the winter of 1898-1899 with teams of horses pulling scrapers. Schuetze adopted the English landscape style for Washington Park, with focal points including a large meadow, Smith Lake (a former buffalo wallow) , and formal floral gardens which were to become the largest gardens of any park in the system. John Lang, the park's first superintendent, drove his horse and wagon to the mountains to obtain evergreen trees for the barren site, as well as chokecherry and currant bushes to plant along Franklin and Kentucky (which, by-the-by, was the park's original "Lovers Lane").

Goodstein's book, chock full of photos, traces the park's evolution through the decades, including its wild love-in days of the early 1970s and recounting the era's Happenings and riots between cops and hippies.

The book examines the fights over zoning in the surrounding neighborhoods, the ongoing community angst over scrapeoffs and McMansions, and chronicles the stories of the area’s churches and schools. It also has a chapter on the area's politicos, full of interesting tidbits and controversial characters such as Don Wyman (who was stabbed by John Carr in 1977 for fooling around with Carr’s wife).

Goodstein throws in a few ghost stories for good measure, such as the haunting of the South High School tower and the ghostly apparition of a young woman known as Miss B. Haven, who supposedly haunts the Smith Lake's Monkey Island (commonly known these days as Bird Island).

While Haunts focuses the Washington Park area, it also addresses much of the city's southern sector, including Belcaro, Bonnie Brae and the stretch of South Colorado Boulevard that was once home to the beloved Celebrity Sports Center (game arcades, an indoor swimming pool and 80 lanes of bowling!) and the Cooper Cinerama theater.

The Haunts of Washington Park is the second in Goodstein's planned trilogy of books on the history of South Denver, following last year's The Spirits of South Broadway and the yet-to-be-published The Ghosts of University Park, Platt Park and Beyond, slated to be published in 2010. We look forward to it!