Your guide to activities and fun things to do with your preschoolers, toddlers and kids in kansas city, KS

This Land is our Land: Swope Park

by Jenny Meade

June 15, 2009

The actual topic of This Land is Our Land is supposed to be about taking your preschoolers to national parks. there's only one small problem with that - The only National Park we have in Kansas City is the Harry S. Truman home, and it's not really a park, it's a house. And I'm pretty sure all the doorways and chairs are tied off with velvet rope, not exactly the sort of place you want to take a preschooler. You know, unless you just like to be miserable.

What we do have, instead, is Swope Park. It might surprise you to know that Swope Park is not a National Park, it is a Municipal Park, otherwise known as a city park, even thouogh it is almost 2000 acres.  I have heard via word of mouth that Swope Park is the second or third largest city park in the country, behind Central Park in NYC, of course, although Wikipedia lists Swope Park as 29th in the country, and I can't seem to find anything to corroborate either way.

Aside from being the home of the Kansas City Zoo, The Lakeside Nature Center and Starlight Theatre, here are some other interesting tidbits on Swope Park: 

• Did you know that two of the fountains in Swope Park are switching to running on solar power? Seriously, How awesome is that?
• Swope Park used to host sleepaway camps for kids, and now operates a Cub Scout day camp on the lower end, at a campus called 40 acres and a mule.
• The Kansas City Wizards soccer team trains there
• many of the original 1907 structures and buildings are still standing.