Playground

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.