About This Park Okay, so there's Ventura Park, the city park, and Ventura Park, the school. They're neighbors. The school has two playgrounds, and the city park has several sections as well. While some schools in the David Douglas district have completely overhauled their playgrounds in the last decade, Ventura Park has not. Sure, a few of the structures are new, but the gymnast bars and monkey bars have been there for ages. The small, orangey structure with the curly-q slide has been there since about 1991. When I was in 6th grade, I went to that school one day a week for special classes. I used to love this little play structure. I loved the simplicity of it. The city park (which I didn't get many pictures of on this trip, as there were too many kids climbing around on it -- another time, perhaps) has semi-new equipment, but it also had a group of wooden climbing posts that looked like they'd been there a long time. At least, I thought they were climbing posts at first. I came across an internet forum of Ventura Park alumni discussing their old playground's features, and learned that the metal pipes once sprayed water! So these poles were water fountains! It makes sense, now that I think about it. In the photos, the metal spikes look too skinny/flimsy to climb, and since the lowest ones are situated pretty high, it's as if they wanted to discourage climbing (though I'm sure a few tried it.) Only a short while after I took these photos in mid-2007, the wooden poles were taken out for good. Location: SE 117th Ave., between Stark and Burnside

The photos above were taken 8/20/2007.
The photos below were taken 8/14/2009, just after some new equipment had been added.










Photos (c)2006-2010