History
Land for the park was acquired in 1893 in accordance with a grand parks and boulevards schema for Omaha planned by Horace Cleveland in 1891. The Fontenelle Boulevard was also part of this plan. Despite the support of prominent Omahans like Harold Gifford Sr., there were immediate protests from city residents who felt the park land was located too far from the city. Due to lack of funds and criticism, it remained essentially prairie grass for another decade until city growth expanding northwest from Downtown Omaha created demand for improvement.
In 1911 the park was graded, loads were built and the golf course was laid out. By 1916 it was one of the most popular and best patronized parks in the city.
Omaha hosted the American Legion World Series in 1939 at Fontenelle Park, where local favorites Creighton Prep won the championship over a team from Berwyn, Illinois. In 1947 John Rosenblatt explored the park as the possible location for the city's new Triple A minor league baseball team. However, neighborhood opposition forced the city to look elsewhere, and the stadium ended up in Deer Park, where it eventually hosted the Omaha Royals and was named Rosenblatt Stadium in honor of its advocate.
In 1998 a major rehabilitation of the park was completed that included a renovation of the park’s lagoon, a new playground, ball field improvements and installation of improved walkways. The park pavilion was also fully renovated.
Read more about this topic: Fontenelle Park
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“It is true that this man was nothing but an elemental force in motion, directed and rendered more effective by extreme cunning and by a relentless tactical clairvoyance .... Hitler was history in its purest form.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“I feel as tall as you.”
—Ellis Meredith, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 14, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“The history of any nation follows an undulatory course. In the trough of the wave we find more or less complete anarchy; but the crest is not more or less complete Utopia, but only, at best, a tolerably humane, partially free and fairly just society that invariably carries within itself the seeds of its own decadence.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)