Denver’s largest urban park will get a little more fun in 2024.
The city breaks ground Tuesday on a $7.9 million, 4-acre outdoor play and education area that restores native plants and a historic waterway to City Park. Set in the southwest corner of the Denver Museum of Nature & Science complex, will host a 20-foot sculpture of a bighorn sheep, swings, slides and family-friendly seating and lounging areas.
Nature Play was designed after more than five years of input from thousands of community members, according to the museum, and should be complete in late 2024. The Denver office of is the landscape architect on the project.
When it was created in 1882, City Park was a “treeless wasteland,” according to the museum, but was eventually filled in with vegetation and trees that were watered by a human-made waterway constructed in 1953. It was designed as part of the Denver Botanical Gardens City Park landscape, according to Jacqueline Altreuter, director of strategic Planning at Denver Museum of Nature & Science.
“The Gardens were moved to their current York Street location in the late 1950s, but this landscape element — and many trees that were planted as part of the Gardens, like the pinetum to the South of the Museum — remained,” Altreuter wrote via email.
The water flow was turned off about 15 years ago due to the system’s deterioration, Altreuter added, and Nature Play will restore the flow of water by by creating new infrastructure, fed by the historic Denver Ditch. The water will be diverted as it enters the park for irrigation, meandering down the channel before entering the lake system, she said.
The restoration will highlight “the diversity of Colorado’s ecosystems through natural features and play experiences,” officials wrote.
Nature Play also will add new pathways, “embedded sculptural play elements that feature animals found throughout Colorado’s diverse ecosystem,” and native plants that support pollinators and represent local ecosystems. A 20-foot-tall Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep sculpture/playground will burnish City Park’s refreshed play areas, including a curved wooden tower and undulating sculptures on the west side of the park.
This project will feature a $70,000 art installation created by an artist selected through Denver Arts & Venues 1% for Arts program, according to DMNS.
