City Park Living Land & CPFAN Annual Meeting

Please join us on Tuesday, April 1 for the City Park Friends and Neighbor’s (CPFAN) Annual Meeting at 5:30 pm at the Carla Madison Recreation Center, 2401 E. Colfax Avenue. Parking is available behind the Center off of 16th Avenue and then turning south into the lot. The meeting will be held in the Multi-Purpose Room just off the lobby.

After the short meeting where CPFAN members will vote on nominees for the 2025-26 CPFAN Board, there will be a presentation by Denver Parks and Recreation (DPR) staff and a member of the Native American community who are involved with the City Park Living Land Project. Scott Gilmore is Deputy Director of Special Projects and Mountain Parks. Gordon Robertson is Director of Planning, Design and Construction. Kristina Maldonado-Bad Hand is a Sicangu Lakota and Cherokee artist who is a Resident Artist at the RedLine Contemporary Art Center and the owner of Bad Hand Illustrations. All three speakers are very enthusiastic about this new City Park project that will “celebrate and educate City Park visitors about environmental resiliency and the native and indigenous people, animals and land of Denver,” according to the project’s literature.

“The project has three main components: to convert the existing turf grass in the South Meadow to a more naturalized native meadow similar to what might have been here before the park; utilize the Lily Pond area to establish native and traditional medicinal plantings, utilizing means and methods suggested by native and indigenous community members and groups. Finally, the project will convert the former eastern playground into a gathering and picnic space for everyone that celebrates and honors the native and indigenous community and may be reserved on occasion.”

The design element of this project will engage the indigenous community and members of the public. Workshops to gather community feedback are in the works. This is a Capital Improvements funded project.

Light refreshments will be served. We look forward to seeing you as we learn about this exciting new project in City Park.

HistoriCorps at Lily Pond, 2024

HistoriCorps is a non-profit organization whose mission is to foster a preservation ethic by engaging volunteers in saving historic places. Last summer a team from HistoriCorps spent a week restoring the stonework around the seven seed beds at City Park’s Lily Pond. The Lily Pond is located directly east of Ferril Lake. The Lily Pond was created by city planner Saco DeBoer in 1924 and became a favorite spot for visitors to City Park who strolled along the pond’s perimeter in their long dresses, dapper suits and stylish hats as they admired the floating water lilies. DeBoer also created the Box Canyon, now a feature of the Nature Play playground.

Over the years, the Lily Pond lost its lilies due to their high maintenance needs in Denver’s dry climate and the seed beds reverted to weeds and an occasional hardy native plant. The stonework around the seed beds, dating to 1924, also deteriorated. Volunteers and team leaders from HistoriCorps, in partnership with Denver Parks and Recreation, are returning to the Lily Pond to continue their restoration work applying traditional preservation skills such as flagstone and mixed stone repointing and retaining wall repairs.