Grover Cleveland Park's 100th Birthday Celebrated With A Bash Today

Grover Cleveland Park's 100th birthday will be celebrated with a bash this month. 

The Grover Cleveland Park Conservancy will host a community celebration in honor of Essex County’s Grover Cleveland Park’s centennial on Saturday, Sept. 21 from 1– 4 p.m. at the park. 

Activities include carnival booth and games, crafts, face painting, bubble fun, sack races and a scavenger hunt. The activities will be sponsored by A Party Pleasing Rental. 

The musical group The Five-O Trio and Friends will also play throughout the afternoon.

There will be demonstrations by the Turtle Back Zoo, the Sunset Lake Model Yacht Club, Hilltop Honey, and Guerrero Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, as well as a cider press.

Free refreshments will be provided courtesy of Stop & Shop and Gelotti’s homemade ice cream, sponsors of the 100th anniversary events. Barbecue items from Cloverleaf Tavern, another sponsor, will be available for purchase.

All activities and events will be at the fields by the pond and playground, rain or shine.

History

The park was named after Grover Cleveland, the 22nd and 24th president, who was born in Caldwell. The 41-acre site was selected in 1913 and acquired at a cost of $39,792.56. The park was completed in 1916.

The landscape firm founded by Frederick Law Olmsted was commissioned to develop a park plan designed to make a large portion of the area usable for recreation purposes. The setting is that of a formal design with lawns, well-spaced large trees, three acres of waterways, including Pine Brook Creek, which runs through the park feeding a small pond at the lower end. 

A small footbridge at the far end of the pond marks the location of a former sawmill, which at one time was used for grinding tanbark to make paper. The original park designs included tennis courts, baseball fields, playground facilities, sand court, wading pool and a shelter house to service these facilities and walks through a hemlock grove (near Runnymede Road) which was said to be the finest group of these stately trees in Essex County.