June 2024 | Vol. 34 Iss. 6
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MURRAY PARK CELEBRATES 100 YEARS WITH PARTY AND A NEW BOOK
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By Ella Joy Olsen | e.olsen@mycityjournals.com
M
urray Park will be turning 100 years old this summer, and the city is throwing a birthday bash! All are invited to the park on Saturday, June 15 from 4 to 10 p.m., and if you attend, you can even get yourself a party favor. A commemorative book titled “Murray Park Centennial - A Hundred Years of Fun” will be available for sale at the event, and later available at the Murray Museum and the Parks and Rec office. The 150 page (and counting) soft cover book is meant to, “show how the park has always drawn people from around the city together to enjoy a natural environment,” Rebecca Santa Cruz, former chairman of the Murray Historical Board, and who is now a part of the publication committee, said. “The park is such an asset to the community and the book will be a stroll down memory lane,” she continued. “It’s not a scholarly treatise, but a representation of and from the community itself.” There will be recounted memories from longtime residents, images from the old Murray Eagle, and likewise, from the photo albums of residents and their grandparents.
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The book is the continuation of a tradition starting with the publication of “Murray City, 1976” for the country’s bicentennial. It was followed by “A Murray City Centennial Album” and “Faces of Murray,” both published in 2003, for the 100-year anniversary of incorporation for Murray City. A teaser: historic photos of Murray Park This book promises more in-depth photo archives than prior commemorative books, because the old Murray Eagle is now fully digitized and available and searchable through the University of Utah. Here’s a teaser: Pool: “There have been four pools over the years,” Santa Cruz said. “But the original was filled with water piped directly from the Little Cottonwood Creek. The pool would be filled on Sunday, so cold you could barely swim on Monday, warm and nice by Saturday, then drained and refilled again on Sunday.” Murrayites didn’t get a pool with heated water until 1960. The photo of the shivering children in the first Murray Park pool was taken some time in the 1920s. In 1945, the Board of
Summer Arts in the Park
Continued page 04 The famous long slide of Murray Park, which was eventually removed. (Photo courtesy of the Murray Museum)
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AMES students going national