McKinley Park Historical Information

McKinley Park was a 25-acre parcel donated to the city by Tacoma Land & Improvement Co., which built its First Addition of houses in what became the McKinley Hill neighborhood. Opened in April 1901, East Park was the city's easternmost park.

Soon after the park opened, President McKinley and his wife, Ida, were to visit Tacoma. But Ida, who was . . . epileptic, suffered a seizure while they were in San Francisco, and the McKinleys never came to Washington.

McKinley was enormously popular. A seven-term congressman from Marion, Ohio, who was twice elected that state's governor, had just been re-elected president in 1900. McKinley allowed the Republican convention to choose his running mate, since Vice President Garret A. 'Gus' Hobart had died in 1899 and was not replaced. The convention chose an energetic young New Yorker named Theodore Roosevelt.

McKinley's second term, which had begun auspiciously, came to a tragic end in September 1901. He was standing in a receiving line at the Buffalo Pan-American Exposition when a deranged anarchist shot him twice. He died eight days later and the 42-year-old Roosevelt became America's youngest president.

The country, which adored McKinley and knew nothing of Roosevelt's skill and style, plunged into grief. Infants, schools and streets across America were named for mcKinley. The continent's tallest mountain, 20,320-foot Mount Denali in Alaska, was renamed Mount McKinley.

Parks were named for McKinley in Buffalo, Brooklyn, Chicago, Sacramento, Reno, Lantana, Fla., and in his hometown of Marion. East Park in Tacoma was casually renamed.

A Norwegian immigrant named Martin Hoveland, who was foreman at Wright Park, took a landscaping crew to East Park on Sept. 15, 1901, the day after McKinley died. 'Boys,' Hoveland said in a story published in the old Tacoma Daily Ledger, 'from now on, this is McKinley Park.'

The Metropolitan Park District of Tacoma, its board appointed by the mayor, instantly approved of the change.

The city's first park of the 20th century received $7,482 in improvements, including a wading pool, a volleyball court, three teeter totters and 11 rock pillars. Four pillars survive, gateways to vistas of the Tide-flats and Commencement Bay.

McKinley Park's saplings were nourished by frequent drizzles and natural springs. The park's firs and hazelnuts matured beautifully.

The park received help from the federal Works Progress Administration (WPA) in the 1930s. WPA workers spelled out the park's name in rocks painted white on McKinley Hill. Illuminated at night, the sign could be seen from downtown Tacoma.

The WPA cleaned the wading pond. . . . the pond has been home to mallards, fussing in what would be arboreal silence except for I-5's whine.

The freeway diminished the park. Four acres rimming South 30th Street were sold to the State Highway Commission for $6,500 in 1961.

The local span of I-5 originally was called Tacoma Freeway. Opened in November 1965, the freeway ran 6.3 miles, cost $28 million, eliminated 18 stoplights, relocated 670 families, took eight years to build and walled off McKinley Park from the city.

(Prior to this) Neighborhood kids used to slide down the park's bluff on flattened cardboard boxes. Picking hazelnuts was an autumn rite. The park had horseshoe pits with metal stakes that sent out a shrill ringing on summer afternoons.

And down below, South 30th Street was a lover's lane built over pools fed by the spring. Couples found themselves stuck when their cars couldn't get out of the mud.

This information (except for paragraphs 3 and 4) was taken from a September 6, 2001 article in The News Tribune by Bart Ripp.

Last Updated: Mar 9, 2007 4:21 PM