Hardmeyer - City Magazine

| FEATURE
Custer Park, City’s First Park,
Likely Turning 100
Annie Simonson, now 41
and living in Seattle, has
fond, childhood memories
of Custer Park, on the
western edge of downtown Bismarck.
At four acres, it is a small park,
but, “For me, it was huge,” says
Simonson, who was home visiting
at her parents’ park-side home this
summer. “We called it our own
backyard.”
She remembers hanging
out in the park back then with
neighborhood kids, some who
donned white helmets at night
because of buzzing beetles and divebombing
bats. And the north section
of the park turned into a fine baseball
diamond for small-sized ballplayers,
Simonson recalls.
This gem of inner-city greenery is
considered Bismarck’s first municipal
park, possibly turning a century old
this year.
Custer Park’s history stems from
an addition being platted back about
1909 or 1910. “The two blocks where
Custer park now stands were deemed
too low for residential purposes and
were sold to the Civic Club for $600 for
park purposes,” the Bismarck Tribune
reported in 1937. Most of the trees were planted
“without charge” by the Oscar H. Will Company
in 1912.
The Civic Club, representing several women’s
organizations, made improvements in the park
before it was donated to the city prior to the
creation of the Bismarck Park District.
At some point, it was named in honor of
Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer, who led
By Stan Stelter
Custer Park's Soaring Eagle
his Seventh Cavalry from Fort Lincoln south
of Mandan to defeat at the Battle of the Little
Bighorn in Mont. in 1876. Custer’s reputation
as an “immortal Indian fighter,” as the Tribune
reported in 1937, has suffered in decades since
with more scrutiny of his actions as a military
leader.
Nevertheless, Custer Park officially became
part of the Bismarck Park District system when
the district was created in 1927.
20 thecitymag.com