The History Of Beachfront Park

The History of Beachfront Park

 

Written by the Media Pathway Participants for the Youth Training Academy. The article appeared in The Del Norte Triplicate Saturday, August 5th, 2017.

Jay Gensaw, Jacob Simmons, Loretta Elayer, Jackleen Gensaw, Mariah Howell, Gabi Ramirez, Darian Scott, Monique Camarena, Kara Koepke, Becca Williams, Spencer Byrne, Ian Meredth, Altezza Proctor, Julie Flores

 

Beachfront Park has been a focal point of Crescent City for over half a century. Throughout those years, the Park has evolved alongside the city, reflecting not only the wishes of the community but the identity of the town as well.

Starting in 1962, plans were laid out by the City to convert the dunes and beach adjacent to Front Street into a municipal park. So how was the land used before the advent of the park? According to local historian Sharon McKinney, it was used for many the same activities it’s still used for.

“It was used exactly the same way it’s used now,” McKinney explains, “Fourth of July celebrations, family picnics, birthday parties, all that same sort of thing happened, except it happened on sand.”

In early 1964 construction began on the pool; and things were coming along nicely until the tsunami in March of that same year. While the destruction of downtown shifted the timeline, it did not change the overall vision for the park.

“Well, after the tsunami, the corps of engineers came and with great bulldozers pushed all the broken buildings down to the edge of the park-or park now-and built the 16 foot seawall,” McKinney Says. “And if you look carefully when you walk around there, you’ll see pieces of rebar sticking out of old foundations and pieces of tile flooring and all kinds of old stuff. So there they were, with this lovely Seawall and so they filled it in with silt and planted the trees and the grass and built it the way it is now.”

 

Piece by piece, over the next thirty years, many landmarks were added to the park, giving it a distinctive personality, such as Chips, the teddy bear, the Gazebo, and Billy Boone Square. The early 90s saw the addition of two of the most beloved features of the park. In 1992, the North Coast Marine Mammal Center was built, and continues to rescue and treat injured and distressed sea mammals. The next year saw the creation of the much loved Kidtown. 

“It was wonderful,” McKinney recalls. “It took a whole year to plan. We got all the pieces together, people together and then they built it in 72 hours. It was absolutely amazing. I had the best job. They would bring, people would bring food for the workers and I would run over to the gate and get a plate of hot cinnamon rolls and run around and give them to the workers and pretend like I baked them. It was a very good job. We fed them well, a lot of local businesses provided drinks and food and stuff for the workers. But it was like watching an anthill, I mean everybody showed up and everybody had a job and voila, we had Kidtown.”

Like Kidtown, the appeal of many of Beachfront Park’s attractions has spanned generations. When one of them wears out, as the Hollow Log did after decades decay, it makes the paper.    

Present-day Beachfront Park remains a popular gathering spot for locals and tourists alike. The biggest annual event occurring in the Park continues to be the Fourth of July, organized by The Crescent City Del Norte Chamber of Commerce. Executive Director of the Chamber, Jeff Parmer, explains how big a job putting on the Fourth of July is.

“Well, we start setting up on the 2nd,” Parmer says. “The city does a great job with getting the park prepared and then we start marking vendor’s spots on the 2nd. They start showing up on the 3rd. So July 3rd, leading up to the deck party which starts at 5, just involves a lot of work in the park getting ready for the event itself and then we have the deck party from 5-8 right here on the lawn.”

 

Another that brings many people to Beach Front Park is the Sea Cruise Classic Car show in October.

“This will be the 26th annual and it’s a great event for the community because of when it happens. It’s always Columbus Day Weekend, we’re willing to roll the dice with the weather because usually about 80% of the time it is nice.”

This Labor Day, the Park will host Crescent City’s first ever sanctioned BBQ contest!

“This year, our BBQ contest, The Redwood Coast Grills Gone Wild, is a Kansas City BBQ sanctioned event,” Parmer says. “The winner is a qualifier to go to Nationals in Kansas City; and we have over $9,500 in prize money.”

 

In addition to these annual events, there’s one attraction in the Park that draws people every day the weather allows: The only waterfront 24-hole Disc Golf Course on the West Coast. But for Parmer, the importance of Beach Front Park lies beyond the outdoor activities and events it hosts.

“Well, it’s very valuable,” Parmer laughs. “Because of not just the outdoor activities and Kidtown, but other events that not just the Chamber puts on in the park. There's a lot of different events that happen within the park by different organizations. If you’ve seen the master plan for beach front park, it’s really exciting because in the future, hopefully, we would have like an amphitheater and we would also have a marketplace area, which I think would be really good.”

The Beachfront Park Master Plan entails large-scale additions and renovations to the Park and Front Street that will improve the quality of life for residents and foster economic development. Kymmie Scott, Administrative Analyst, City Clerk and Public Information Officer for the City of Crescent City, explains the two year process behind drafting the Master Plan.

“The city held a series of community meetings,” Scott explains. “And questioned people, what they wanted to see in the park. I got back a whole lot of data from that, and between working with the staff at the city and the consultant, sort of started drafting some master plans. And that went through a series of revisions through the planning commission and then to the city council and the final master plan was adopted in 2013.”

The changes incorporated in the Master Plan are more than simply cosmetic, they’re structural.

“The final plan, I believe there’s 36 elements to the final plan” Scott says. “The big ones include the amphitheater, there's plans for a large amphitheater, the dog park which is getting ready to break ground next week actually and some of the landscaping and tree planting has already been done on that. We are also getting ready to start the Coastal Access Project which, especially for you guys around your age probably know you have to climb over all these rocks done here to get down to the beach and this is not only gonna provide a pathway down to the beach, but is even going to provide some ADA access down to the beach.”

 

While the planned improvements sound impressive, they come with a cost the City can’t cover all at once.

“So you expand things out over years, the cost of things changes, but the city’s working really hard to do things in phases and we’re always on the lookout for grants and funding possibilities and so we’ve tried to jump on those possibilities as we can and sort of phase things in.”

While the City estimates the Plan could take ten years to fully implement, Scott feels the time and money required will be well-spent.

“We feel like beach front park is really the gem for the community,” Scott says. “It's a beautiful asset, and the more that people are here and using it…it's the quality of life for the citizens that live here, but it's also the people that are driving through. Y’know, when they see this, they stop and they check it out. People create good memories here on both sides, our visitors and our citizens.”

 From childhood soccer games to hanging with friends under a canopy of fireworks to walking a dog by the shore, the story of beachfront park is one we all share. And sharing stories is key to the very idea of community. As local historian Sharon Mckinney says, “I think in order to own living in a place if you have to know the stories…and there’s a story.”