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 continues restoration work at Lily Pond 

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.

Come see “Amache Rose,” a film by Billy Kanaly

Join us for this special viewing!
Tuesday February 4 at 5:30 pm
Carla Madison Recreation Center
2401 E. Colfax Avenue
Free Parking behind the Center
In 1942, the United States Government established the concentration camp Camp Amache in the high desert of southeastern Colorado near the town of Granada. Japanese American citizens were confined there because of the paranoia and fear generated by Japan’s aggression during  World War II. These citizens were incarcerated at the camp until 1945. Today, the action is seen as one of the great tragedies of misjudgment in U.S. history.
Site of Camp Amache concentration camp
Credit: Denver Botanic Gardens Films
Housed in stark barracks, having been stripped of most of their belongings, the internees endured their imprisonment with courage, resiliency and by practicing the tradition of Wabi Sabi, the Japanese art of finding beauty in imperfections. The internees planted trees and gardens in the hostile high, dry, windy environment around them. They used discarded concrete for rock gardens. They used native cactus and rabbitbrush shrubs in their garden designs.
The Amache rose
Credit: Denver Botanic Gardens Films
The ”Amache Rose” film by Billy Kanaly tells the poignant story of a wild rose discovered at Amache that was not native to the area. It could never have grown there. An Amache prisoner on work release must have found the rose in another region and brought it back to Amache to be planted there. 80 years later, the rose has endured. Denver Botanic Gardens is caring for clippings of the rose in their greenhouse.
Billy Kanaly
Credit: Denver Botanic Gardens Films
“Amache Rose,” directed by Billy Kanaly is the first film produced by the new film department of Denver Botanic Gardens (DBG), Denver Botanic Films. It has been featured at film festivals across the country, including the Denver Film Festival.  Billy Kanaly is heading up Denver Botanic Gardens Films and its mission to connect people to plants through film.  A former performer for the Irish Dance Troupe Riverdance, Kanaly brings a range of creative perspectives to his role. He is committed to telling the abundance of unique stories that plants have to tell, not only how they grow but who grows them and why. The film “Amache Rose” is the unique story underlying the important connections between people and plants, how nature illuminates the human experience, and how humans rely on plants and nature to make sense of and complete their world.
Mike Bone, Curator of Steppe Collections at Denver Botanic Gardens inspects a rose at Amache
Credit: Denver Botanic Gardens Films

Please join us for this amazing, free in-person program. Billy Kanaly will show his film and talk about its production and how the Amache experience affected him. Survivors of Amache are among those interviewed in the documentary. Dr. Bonnie Clark, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Denver, whose work at Amache is a focus of the film, is also featured.

A City Park Friends and Neighbors Board meeting will follow the presentation and the public is invited to join in. As always, we look forward to hearing your insights and any questions you may have about City Park.
Amache Concentration Camp
Credit: Japanese American Museum (2015.100.172a)

Duck Lake is Quacking with Activity

Duck Lake is Quacking with Activity!

Let’s start with the new mural on the west wall of the Denver Zoo’s storage complex that borders Duck Lake. This area was City Park land set aside for the Denver Zoo’s gasification project, a plan to use animal waste and human trash to generate clean energy to power the zoo. The project was abandoned in 2015 due to concerns about costs and environmental issues but mainly technical failures. The system didn’t work.

Instead of reverting the area back to City Park natural uses for the public to enjoy, the Zoo retained the area for storage purposes. In 2017, the Denver Zoo sought to commission an artist or team of artists to create an original work of art on “the Zoo’s property.” Funds for the project came from the City of Denver’s Art Ordinance. Denver’s art ordinance, established in 1991, requires that 1% of the budget for capital improvement projects over $1 million be set aside for art.

A panel was selected. Based on the presentations, John Pugh, an Oregon-based artist renowned for his trompe-l’oeil murals that create the illusion of three-dimensional scenes, was selected for the commission. Pugh has completed “over 250 public and private commissions across the United States and internationally,” according to Rudi Cerri, Denver Arts & Venues Public Art Program Manager.   On his website, Art of John Pugh, https://artofjohnpugh.com/, Pugh describes his artistic mission:With a clear intention to create public art attractions, I strive to design each project to avoid becoming a commonplace mural. Often, this illusion includes creating an iconic, dynamic anomaly. The passerby is much more apt to engage with an uncommon architectural event while they unconsciously survey the urban landscape.

As an artist, I must create a “sense of place.” I research the area and its community, formulating concepts based on historical, environmental, and cultural viewpoints. If the mural can serve to educate about the culture and heritage of a place, it will deepen roots and create a pride of place.

Ultimately, the goal of any mural is to conjure fresh feelings and perceptions, evoking a sense of connectivity with the mural, within us, and with the world around us.
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