When Oak Grove Park was new, it was on the edge of Springfield, barely inside city limits, with new construction going up all around. Today it’s a leafy oasis, anchoring an established neighborhood, and home to Springfield-Greene County Park Board programs for kids and adults.
Oak Grove Park was established in 1958, when the Springfield Park Board purchased three acres and a building that had been used as Schweitzer Memorial Methodist Church. (Both organizations’ names have since changed.) Schweitzer’s congregation built a new church on a piece of land on East Sunshine, the church’s present location.
Oak Grove Park easily lives up to its name, with numerous mature oak trees. But it was probably named after the roadway it adjoined, Oak Grove Lane (now Oak Grove Avenue). Just a couple of blocks north was Oak Grove School, now home to the Junior League of Springfield.
Park records show the church building was initially used as a community center, but later torn down.
Former Parks Director Dan Kinney said the Park Board passed a bond in the early 1960s, allowing purchase of another seven acres at Oak Grove, creating the current park boundaries, as well as construction of both the Oak Grove Community Center and the Tom Watkins Community Center, in northwest Springfield. Both buildings have been in continuous operation now for more than 50 years. Oak Grove includes a community room with tables, chairs and kitchenette; and a gymnasium with regulation and drop-down basketball goals, volleyball poles and nets, a climbing wall and ping-pong table.
Over the decades, Oak Grove Community Center has housed dances, sports leagues, exercise classes, day camps, after-school programs, holiday events and more.
The community center has also served the neighborhood since the beginning–with rentals once available for as low as $7.
Oak Grove has served as an election precinct for decades, weathering a tough period in the late 1980s when popular Jazzercise classes in the gym left voters without a place to park.
Kinney recalled that in the early 1970s, the far end of the Oak Grove Park had been developed into a thriving, but unauthorized, strawberry patch.
“When I came here to work for (then-Parks Director) Jim Ewing, one of the first issues I had to settle was some neighbors had grown a strawberry patch on the park property, and I had to go clear that out,” said Kinney. “I’d say it was 20’ by 40’–it was a nice little patch.”
Springfield’s first nine-hole disc golf course was added to Oak Grove in the 1970s, due to rising popularity of the sport.
“Oak Grove was just the only place that seemed to be available, and the disc golf people had already picked it out, because they liked the obstacles of the trees,” Kinney recalled. “We held disc golf tournaments there and people came from all around.”
A second disc golf course was later added at Tom Watkins Park. Both continue to be very popular today. In decent weather, Oak Grove is busy with disc golfers any time of day.
The park also includes a playground, picnic tables, basketball court and outdoor lights.
Recently Oak Grove Community Center has become home to the Oak Grove Neighborhood Association, officially incorporated in 2005 to represent businesses and residents within the boundaries of Grand, Sunshine, Glenstone and Ingram Mill. The organization meets quarterly, publishes a newsletter and manages a Facebook account. Annual dues are $10/household.
Oak Grove Park and Community Center are as busy as ever today, hosting classes ranging from archery to yoga, with dog obedience, dance classes and martial arts in between. Oak Grove is also a hub for SPARC, serving as a pick-up and drop-off spot for SPARC summer camps, and snow day and holiday break programs during the school year.
Want to know more about what’s happening at Oak Grove? Visit ParkBoard.org, or contact the center at 417-891-1635.