PARK PLACE

By DEVIN HEILMAN

Staff Writer 

COEUR d’ALENE — Coeur d'Alene City Park wasn’t always just a park. It’s been home to a baseball field, a train depot, a shooting range and a dance pavilion.

Its 40 acres (now 16) stretched from the lake waterfront north to Garden Avenue, east to First Street and overlapped with the southeast corner of the Fort Sherman Military Reservation.

"The park has changed dramatically over the years,” said landscape architect Jon Mueller as he stood Wednesday on the southwest corner of Lakeside Avenue and First. "The easternmost line is the right-of-way of First Street. Imagine all this, undeveloped, with beautiful shady ponderosa pines, which I remember as a kid."

He also recalls the cooling canopy of the park's black cottonwoods on summer days, and the rush of field trips at the end of the school year.

"One of the very first field days we had was to come to this park," Mueller said. "We had asphalt and dirt (at Central School). There was no green. To come down to a place like this, it just assaults your senses as a little kid."

This lifetime appreciation for City Park — which Jon will always know as Blackwell Park — plus his long career as a landscape architect have led Mueller to chronicle the evolution of the park in his new book, "Private Park, Public Park: A Story of Coeur d'Alene and Its First Park."

"I always thought it would be cool to do a history of the park, that somebody ought to do it," Mueller said. "There are a lot of parts of the story that need to be told."

From the geographic formations that made Coeur d'Alene a lakeside paradise through the Fort Sherman days, railroad years, creation of Playland Pier to modern times, Mueller delves into how City Park has played, and still plays, a vital role in the community.

"Initially, when it came onboard, it was called Blackwell Park because of F.A. Blackwell. He was the mover and the shaker," Mueller said. "He was our Duane Hagadone or Bob Templin, whatever name you want to use. He was the driving force; he and the city developed this 20 acres but he also developed the 20-acre parcel that sat right next to it as depot grounds and a private park, so it just blended together and you couldn’t tell. That’s why we have the title of the book, ‘Private Park, Public Park.’”

Mueller said he found many fascinating facts about the park in his research, including the tidbit that 250 different kinds of deciduous shade trees were planted around 1904 when the park was forming. Three trees in particular help set City Park apart from others.

"These are three American chestnuts and they're extremely rare because there was a blight that attacked them nationwide and pretty much killed them all," Mueller said, looking up at the tall chestnuts near the northwest corner of the park. "We have newer ones that were planted more recently, but these guys are remarkable. They're these epic witness trees to what happened here."

The stories, the history, the impact and the evolution are detailed in "Private Park, Public Park," along with historic photos, maps and images that help readers understand where and how things once were in Coeur d'Alene City Park.

Hardback copies of the book will be available for $49.95 next week in the Museum of North Idaho or by contacting Mueller at joe.nathan54@hotmailcom. He plans to have copies in local bookstores and online after June 10 at www.delaneycreek.com.

"It's intended to be a keepsake that hopefully people will want, to give them an idea of what actually went on down here," Mueller said. "When you see it and understand the scope and scale, it's pretty amazing."