Kansas City Public Library: KCQ Rapid Response: Swope Park Edition

Kansas City MO

30 April, 2022

1:02 PM

Description

Press release from the Kansas City Public Library: April 28, 2022 "What's your KC Q" is a joint project of the Kansas City Public Library and The Kansas City Star. Readers submit questions, the public votes on which questions to answer, and our team of librarians and reporters dig deep to uncover the answers. Have a question you want to ask? Submit it now » by Kansas City Public Library Staff | [email protected] Spring has arrived, and winter-weary Kansas Citians have once again turned their attention to the great outdoors. The What's Your KCQ? team, a collaboration between the Kansas City Public Library and The Kansas City Star, have been inundated with questions about the crown jewel of the KC Parks system: Swope Park. To keep readers satisfied, we're taking on five inquiries for this week's rapid response edition. Planning for Swope Park's opening began shortly after real estate tycoon Thomas H. Swope donated the land for the park to the city in 1896. When the park opened, The Star declared the event a "general jollification and jubilee," and Mayor James M. Jones made the day a civic holiday. On June 25 of that year, an estimated 18,000 Kansas Citians made the trip to the 1,805-acre green space by wagon, carriage, buggy, bicycle, and train. Free trains departed from 2nd and Wyandotte streets at 9 a.m. and departed every 25 minutes packed over capacity. By 10:15 a.m., one line alone had ferried over 4,000 passengers to the park. By 3 p.m., event organizers realized it would be impossible to get everyone who'd made the trip back to the city and suspended returning trains. One Star reporter beheld the park and proclaimed, "Nature has written a poem across the county of Jackson." He had seen revelers walking through the park's lush, summertime landscape picking black-eyed susans and sumac, others casting lines in the Blue River, and still more picnicking and listening to hours' worth of speeches celebrating Swope's gift. Swope himself took part in the celebration, but did so anonymously, wandering the park grounds and quietly enjoying the spectacle of so many happy parkgoers. Historically, Swope Park has been a popular destination for summer water recreation. It has a swimming pool, lake, lagoon, and a section of the Blue River meandering through it that all seem natural. But did you know that just like the swimming pool, the lake and lagoon were both added to the land as new park amenities? Landscape architect and Kansas City parks planner George Kessler chose a natural basin in the park for the site of Lake of the Woods. A dam constructed across a branch of the Blue River created a 15-acre wide, 35-foot-deep reservoir in 1908. Work on the lagoon began the same year and was completed by spring 1910. Shortly after that, the addition of a boathouse drew visitors for boating and sailing, activities that were available until 1990 when park administrators decided to drain, dredge, and refill it to include in the zoo's Africa exhibit. During Kansas City's era of segregation, park rules dictated that Black residents could only gather at Shelter No. 5, located downwind of the zoo's animal waste. Shelter No. 5 and the surrounding area became known as "Watermelon Hill" — though the name was not used by park officials and rarely appeared in print. According to a presentation given by historian Joelouis Mattox in 2013, many Black residents refused to visit the park to avoid being associated with the racist stereotype. Other Black Kansas Citians, however, hosted large gatherings at Watermelon Hill. Mattox said Black parkgoers helped create the name because they frequently served watermelons iced in large tubs. Gatherings occasionally exceeded 1,000 people and provided Black Kansas Citians with a recreational space for barbeques, dominos, kite flying, and other picnic festivities. In 1954, the Swope Park pool was desegregated, and in 1963, the city council passed an ordinance outlawing racial discrimination in public facilities; the entirety of Swope Park was finally open to all for the first time in its history. And just as in the past, how Watermelon Hill is remembered today is a complex topic. Some view it as a cherished community gathering place, others as open mockery of Kansas City's Black community and a throwback to its Jim Crow days. This press release was produced by the Kansas City Public Library. The views expressed here are the author's own.