Liberty Park ruins cleanups planned

Ten years after preservationists first started campaigning to save the historic ruins of old Liberty Park they are returning to the park site this Saturday for one of two spring cleanups.

Sometimes called Spokane’s Stonehenge, the ruins consist of a promenade with mortared basalt walls and pillars, pathways and a small concrete basin that served as a summer wading pool.

Members of the Spokane Preservation Advocates have scheduled a work party at the park, Third Avenue and Arthur Street, on Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m., weather permitting. They are scheduled to return for another session on June 16.

They will be joined by students and neighborhood volunteers.

The ruins are part of the original Liberty Park, which was deeded to the city in 1897 and later designed by the renowned Olmsted brothers of Massachusetts about 1907.

The ruins are easily visible from the eastbound lanes of Interstate 90 along the curve just west of the Hamilton Street exit. The site can be reached from Third Avenue and Arthur Street. Ruins are also visible from the intersection just beyond a stand of pines.

“At this point, we want to make it so people can appreciate what used to be there,” said Carolyn Jacobs, a neighborhood volunteer.

In its prime, Liberty Park was admired for its natural beauty and the vista looking eastward from the terraced bluff. In 1921, a swimming pool opened, but it, too, is gone.

The park once hosted ice skaters on a pond that was claimed for construction of Interstate 90 in the 1960s.

The freeway route bisected the park, leaving the promenade and wading pool stranded at the west end.

What wasn’t covered by freeway became overrun with vegetation, but volunteers have periodically sought to keep the overgrowth at bay. In 1997, the preservation advocates group held one of its first monthly work parties there.

The Olmsted brothers wrote the city’s first comprehensive park plan and were renowned throughout the country for their designs. Volunteers are planning a 100-year Olmsted commemoration in 2008.

The Olmsteds were sons of Frederick Olmsted, who designed Central Park in New York and the U.S. Capitol grounds. In Spokane, the brothers planned the Rockwood Boulevard neighborhood and Manito Park and urged the city to preserve the Spokane falls and gorge as a park.