{"id":15312,"date":"2014-08-17T13:47:18","date_gmt":"2014-08-17T18:47:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/?p=15312"},"modified":"2022-04-28T07:16:02","modified_gmt":"2022-04-28T12:16:02","slug":"my-smallest-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.howderfamily.com\/blog\/my-smallest-park\/","title":{"rendered":"My Smallest Park"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Twelve Mile Circle published a very rare guest post in March 2011 discussing Geo-Oddities of Portland, Oregon<\/a>. It featured several unusual items including the famous Mill Ends Park (map<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Notion<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Readers might be familiar with the spot. It’s garnered a lot of attention from mainstream sources over the years because of its diminutive size. Some say it might be the world’s smallest municipal park. However, naysayers question whether something the size of a flowerpot could truly qualify as a “park” or not. Even so it’s become something of a tourist attraction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Mills<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Regardless, the city of Portland considered Mill Ends a park<\/a> and who am I to argue:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“In 1946, Dick Fagan returned from World War II to resume his journalistic career with the Oregon Journal. His office, on the second floor above Front Street (now Naito Parkway), gave him a view of not only the busy street, but also an unused hole in the median where a light pole was to be placed. When no pole arrived to fill in this hole, weeds took over the space. Fagan decided to take matters into his own hands and to plant flowers. Fagan wrote a popular column called Mill Ends (rough, irregular pieces of lumber left over at lumber mills). He used this column to describe the park and the various ‘events’ that occurred there. Fagan billed the space as the ‘World’s Smallest Park.'”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

That was good enough for me. It was a park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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My Quest<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

I thought about Mill Ends park from time-to-time. That happened for no obvious reason other than this type of minutiae sticks in my mind. I wondered what the smallest park in my community might be. What is the most diminutive public space in the smallest self-governing county of the United States, Arlington County, Virginia? This overall quest also connected with one of the very earliest concepts discussed on 12MC, Unusual Goes Very Local<\/a> from June 2008. It posed the very simple notion that geo-oddities exist everywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This park idea remained on my notoriously every-growing spreadsheet of potential 12MC topics for several years. I never did anything with it, and never had the heart to delete it either. Then I stumbled upon a sliver of land a couple of weeks ago as I pursued my quixotic Bike Every Street in Arlington<\/a> project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nauck Garden<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
\"The<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Arlington County actually considered this triangle bound by residential streets (map<\/a>) a park. So they covered the mound with attractive landscaping and declared it Nauck Garden. I’d discovered my smallest park, or so I thought, although I didn’t want to celebrate too quickly until I could confirm it. Going online, I learned the county published a Public Spaces Inventory<\/a> with associated acreage. Unfortunately the file lacked a certain precision for my purpose although it helped me winnow the possibilities. It listed several sites including Nauck Garden as 0.1 acres.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This narrowed the candidates to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n