Groveport Messenger - February 12th, 2023

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Groveport’s first city park
Groveport is a town rich with park land
with several municipal parks as well as nearby
Metro Parks.
Editor’s Notebook
February 12, 2023 - GROVEPORT MESSENGER - PAGE 7
Rick
Palsgrove
But do you know
which was the first
park to be built in
Groveport?
I believe the first
park constructed in town is Blacklick Park,
located at 770 Blacklick St. (at the east end of
the street). For many years it was the only
park in Groveport. I’ve often heard, but never
been able to confirm, that the park was built
during the Great Depression in the 1930s as
part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New
Deal Works Progress Administration (WPA)
program.
By the mid-1930s Roosevelt’s WPA
began to have an impact on Groveport. The
WPA helped build the village’s water system
and water plant in 1936; laid concrete
sidewalks throughout the village in 1935;
washed and painted the walls and ceilings
of Groveport School; and built several outhouses
in the village and area farms.
One plum WPA project slated for
Groveport did not come to pass as records
show the construction of a public library
was proposed for Groveport in 1935, but
rescinded with no explanation in 1937.
But in combing through old WPA
records I found no mention of Blacklick
Park.
Records in the Groveport Municipal
Building as well as the Groveport Heritage
Museum also do not reveal much on the
park’s origins.
Though its birth year remains a mystery,
that is a minor curiosity because
Blacklick Park has played its role as a
pleasant neighborhood park well.
Blacklick Park’s original footprint was
three acres, but if you include the nearby
natural wooded areas and the old Scioto
Valley Traction Line trail that extends to
historic Ohio and Erie Canal Lock 22 it fills
about 21 acres. The trail also connects the
park to Groveport Park. The well preserved
remnants of the Ohio and Erie Canal are
visible and run along the length of the
park.
The park’s historic significance is noted in
a Ohio Historical Marker that explains how
in the 1800s the park’s original core site was
once home to a canal boatyard where canal
boats were built and repaired. The marker
also mentions how the electric interurban
railway - the Scioto Valley Traction Line - ran
on Blacklick Street and then along the canal
from 1904 to the 1930s.
I recall the first time I visited the park as
a little kid in the 1960s. My older sister took
me and some neighborhood kids on a walk
through town to the park on a fine summer’s
day for a picnic of baloney sandwiches, potato
chips, and Kool-Aid. Back then there were
wooden picnic tables scattered about among
the tall trees. I remember that embedded in
Messenger photo by Rick Palsgrove
Groveport’s Blacklick Park located at the
east end of Blacklick Street.
the picnic tables was a metal emblem that
read, “Groveport Lions Club,” most likely
because the club provided the tables. There
were playground swings and a tall metal
slide to play on as well as space among the
trees to play “tag.”
I also recall the original flag pole there
encircled by a now long gone narrow driveway.
The concrete base of the flagpole was
emblazoned with “4H,” as the local 4H Club
must have erected it as a project.
That old flagpole is still there, but it fell
into disuse in later years and a flag had not
regularly flown from it for some time. On
Memorial Day in 2008, the late Mack Harris,
a United States Air Force veteran who lived
near the park, took note of the lack of a flag
flying from the pole and decided to do something
about it. He walked over to the park
with an American flag he normally flew on
the front of his home and raised it on the old
flagpole in Blacklick Park.
“It was the right thing to do,” said Harris,
in a 2008 interview. “That flagpole on this
important day (Memorial Day) was now
dressed up with a flag. A flag raised in a public
park has substance to it. It provides a focal
point.”
Harris noted that, when he walked into
the park that Memorial Day morning in 2008
to raise the flag, there was a group of people
already in the park talking, laughing, and
enjoying the holiday.
“They saw me walk to the pole with the
flag and when I raised it there was a hush in
the park,” said Harris. “The people in the
park knew and recognized the importance of
the flag being raised.”
Harris said the old flagpole was a bit wobbly,
but, despite its age, he said the pole’s
rope, pulley, and cleat worked perfectly when
he raised the flag.
In a recent years a new flagpole was erected
by the city in the park and it serves as a
testament to Harris’ efforts.
Today the park still has great trees and
open spaces as well as more playground
equipment, a small basketball court, a shelter
house, and benches. It remains a nice,
quiet spot to listen to the birds sing, hear the
wind rustle the leaves, feel the warmth of
sunbeams filtering through the trees, and see
the flag flying on its new pole.
Rick Palsgrove is editor of the Groveport
Messenger.