March 17th 2022 : In Our Parks Newsletter
The Denver Park Trust, in partnership with Denver Parks and Recreation and Game Plan for a Healthy City, is bringing you a newsletter featuring stories, surveys, events and more in and about Denver’s parks.
Discover your parks.
Park spotlight: Paco Sanchez Park
Paco! The one word answer ten year olds give when asked what park they’d like to visit.
For the uninitiated, youngsters yearning for the latest (and greatest) in outdoor play are referring to Paco Sanchez Park, a 30 acre park along Lakewood Gulch just east of Knox Ct. that boasts a very cool adventure playground designed to challenge and engage park lovers of all ages and abilities with climbing nets, a spiral slide, a zip line swing, and much more. Additionally, the park features plenty of shade, picnic tables, restrooms, a small skatepark, and a basketball court.
The play features at the park are themed around music and radio in a nod to Francisco “Paco” Sanchez, the legendary media pioneer and social reform activist for whom the park is named. Paco Sanchez launched Denver’s first Spanish-language radio station, co-founded the Good Americans Organization to help provide Latinos with the financial assistance needed to purchase homes and create businesses, and served in the Colorado House of Representatives. For more on this amazing Denverite, see here and here
Adding a world class play structure didn’t come easy for Denver Parks and Recreation. First envisioned as a replacement for the aging Dustin Redd playground in City Park, the preferred location was shelved after objections by area residents. Thanks to the leadership of Denver Clerk & Recorder Paul Lopez, a City Council member at the time, the playground found a home in West Denver where it now ranks as one of Denver’s most popular parks drawing families from across the City.
Our park system, as envisioned by Mayor Speer in the early 1900’s, was based on pastoral splendor. Today parks look different with diverse offerings designed to serve a growing and changing population and achieve many of the goals laid out in Game Plan for a Healthy City, Denver Parks and Recreation’s 20-year strategic plan. Paco Sanchez is one example and others include the future pollinator garden at Sonny Lawson Park, the pump track at Montbello Central Park, and the native habitats at Heron Pond Park.