Hey kids and grown-ups!
There is a new, fabulous, playground to the north of the Skinner Cabin, on Cheshire Avenue, about where Lincoln Street intersects. It’s a great place to take the kids. In addition to the usual playground equipment, there’s the award winning RiverPlay Discovery Village, that offers a number of activities for the kids, including (39):
- Take a ferry ride: Children can pretend to be settlers shuttling people and cargo across the playground’s “Willamette River” on a play replica of the ferry that Eugene Skinner operated.
- Play in the rain: Create the headwaters of the “Willamette River” at the Rain Circle, a water play feature located in Kalapuya Village. Children control the rain with a push of a button
- Discover a Kalapuya dwelling: Kids can play on this climbing structure, modeled after a Kalapuya summer dwelling.
- Rock Climb: On a replica of the basalt climbing columns at Skinner’s Butte, children can safely experience the thrill and challenge of rock climbing, as well as the view from the top.
- Be a pioneer: In Pioneer Village children can make believe they’re blacksmiths, school teachers, hotel patrons, and the town mayor, in this historical replica of 1865 Eugene.
- Dig for fossils: Dig in the sand and uncover “artifacts” that reveal evidence of Eugene’s history, from dinosaurs to pioneer settlements.
- Ride in a stagecoach: Head out West in a play replica of a stagecoach modeled after the real ones from Eugene.
The old playground, first built in the 1920’s, was located near where the 1950’s concrete whale basks. It even had a zoo and pony rides. The zoo was finally closed in the 1972, after a 50 year run. If you were here then, you can remember the zoo, pony rides, and playground from your childhood, and they were unique, fun, features, at least for a kid.
