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The World's Tiniest City Park Just Got a Little More Official
Source: Atlas Obscura
...
According to Matt Ross of Portland Parks & Recreation, Portland is home to over 200 parks and natural areas. “The city was planned for having parks,” he says, but Mill Ends was more of an accident. In 1946, Dick Fagan, a writer with the Oregon Journal, surveyed the view from his second-story office window and noticed, on the median of the street below, a hole about two feet wide where a light post was supposed to be. The light pole never came. According to the Parks & Recreation website, when weeds started popping up instead, “Fagan decided to take matters into his own hands and to plant flowers.”
Fagan had a newpaper column named “Mill Ends,” a term for leftover wood scraps. He started covering the goings-on at the tiny verge, calling it Mill Ends Park. In his writing, he claimed leprechauns lived there. In real life, he hosted snail races, planted and tended a single tree, and “made it well known,” as one local fan put it.
After Fagan died in 1969, others kept the park’s spirit alive. On St. Patrick’s Day, 1976, it was added to the official roster of city parks. “It’s managed by the Parks bureau,” says Ross. “It has a regular maintenance schedule, with weeding and watering. Horticulturists attend to it.” (To mark this particular occasion, they planted some bright pink miniature roses.)
It still gets plenty of what Ross calls “community-assisted enhancements:” People have set up tiny swimming pools and sheep farms, and, in 2011, there was a bite-sized Occupy Wall Street protest. This past 4/20, someone planted some cannabis plants, which the city quickly yanked.
According to Matt Ross of Portland Parks & Recreation, Portland is home to over 200 parks and natural areas. “The city was planned for having parks,” he says, but Mill Ends was more of an accident. In 1946, Dick Fagan, a writer with the Oregon Journal, surveyed the view from his second-story office window and noticed, on the median of the street below, a hole about two feet wide where a light post was supposed to be. The light pole never came. According to the Parks & Recreation website, when weeds started popping up instead, “Fagan decided to take matters into his own hands and to plant flowers.”
Fagan had a newpaper column named “Mill Ends,” a term for leftover wood scraps. He started covering the goings-on at the tiny verge, calling it Mill Ends Park. In his writing, he claimed leprechauns lived there. In real life, he hosted snail races, planted and tended a single tree, and “made it well known,” as one local fan put it.
After Fagan died in 1969, others kept the park’s spirit alive. On St. Patrick’s Day, 1976, it was added to the official roster of city parks. “It’s managed by the Parks bureau,” says Ross. “It has a regular maintenance schedule, with weeding and watering. Horticulturists attend to it.” (To mark this particular occasion, they planted some bright pink miniature roses.)
It still gets plenty of what Ross calls “community-assisted enhancements:” People have set up tiny swimming pools and sheep farms, and, in 2011, there was a bite-sized Occupy Wall Street protest. This past 4/20, someone planted some cannabis plants, which the city quickly yanked.
Read more: https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/worlds-smallest-park-sign?utm_medium=atlas-page&utm_source=twitter
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