I am 60+ years old. I grew up believing that Portland Oregon’s Forest Park was the largest city owned park in the US of A. You failed to mention it. It’s over 5,000 acres. There are lots of parks within limits of other cities of a greater size but many are not municipally owned.
Welcome! It’s customary when you talk about a column that you provide a link to it, as many of the archived columns get dug up now and then. It’s as simple as cutting and pasting the URL in.
There you go! You’ll know next time and again, welcome to the boards!
I’ve been told that this parkis the largest city park in the country at 16,000 acres.
Oops edit: I didn’t read far enough. Over and out.
South Mountain Park in Phoenix Arizona is city owned and has been since the nineteen thirties is said to be the largest city park in the USA, although when I lived in Portland back in the seventies through the eighties and often hiked in it, they alleged it was the biggest city owned park, but South Mountain Park is many times bigger that Forest Park although Forest Park is the largest forested park having so many trees as opposed to South Mountain Park which is not only big in size, but has less trees and more cactus than Forest Park which has none as cactus can not live in the humid climate of Oregon.
I always thought Winter Park ski resort, which is not within the Denver City limits, but is still owned by Denver, deserves some kind of mention. It has over 3000 skiable acres. I have no idea what its total surface area is.
Looks like none of the posts are even close. Here’s a link to a list of the 100 Largest City Parks:
Ya, but most of those parks aren’t city owned parks; they’re all kinds including state and national parks.
(quote)Looks like none of the posts are even close. Here’s a link to a list of the 100 Largest City Parks:
South Mountain City Park that is within & owed by the City of Phoenix is its official name as it was called back in the thirties and forties when I was growing up in Arizona as being the single largest city park in the US. They may have changed the name to end as a “preserve,” but they had to have done it after 1955 as that was the last time I was there and it was still called South Mountain City Park. And most of those on the list are not within the city limits of the towns they are near or are not owned by any city, but are state or nationally owned parks.
I have to admit that my response was partially based on the fact that it took me all of 20 seconds to enter “largest city parks” into Google and click on the first listing.
I am also 61 years old and I find it incredibly lazy that the OP even started this thread without even devoting a minutes worth of effort to research his question.
Sorry for the digression!
Rock Creek Park (Washington, DC), which the column lists as the sixth-largest city park in the country, shouldn’t count. It’s a national park, not a city one, and it sources up in Frederick County, MD somewhere near Camp David. It may only be recognizable as a park as far north as Rockville (near the Grosvenor Metro), but even that is a healthy hike outside DC’s boundaries.