Mill Ends Park

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Mill Ends Park, the smallest park in the world

Mill Ends Park in Portland, Oregon is a small park that was created on St. Patrick's Day, 1948, to be a colony for leprechauns and a location for snail races. It is the smallest park in the world, according to the Guinness Book of Records, which first granted it this recognition in 1971. The "park" is a circle two feet (610 mm) across (with a total area of 452 in² (0.2916 m²) in a traffic median which in 1948 was intended to be the site for a light pole. When this failed to appear and weeds sprouted in the opening, Dick Fagan, a columnist for the Oregon Journal, planted flowers in the hole and named it after his column in the paper, "Mill Ends". (Fagan's office in the Journal building overlooked the median in the middle of the busy thoroughfare that ran in front of the building and was then known as SW Front Avenue.)

Fagan told the story of the park's origin as follows: He looked out the window and spotted a leprechaun digging in the hole. He ran down and grabbed the leprechaun, which meant that he had earned a wish. Fagan said he wished for a park of his own; but since he had not specified the size of the park in his wish, the leprechaun gave him the hole. Over the next two decades, Fagan often featured the park and its head leprechaun, named Patrick O'Toole, in his whimsical column.

Fagan died of cancer in 1969, but the park lived on, cared for by others. It was named an official city park in 1976. Mill Ends Park is located at SW Naito Parkway and SW Taylor in downtown Portland. As of February 2006, the park was temporarily relocated to Two World Trade Center Plaza in downtown Portland (about 80 feet from its old location) due to a major construction project on SW Naito Parkway. Portland Parks officials said it would be returned to a site about seven and half feet east of its original location following completion of the project, expected in July 2006.

The small circle has featured many unusual items through the decades, including a swimming pool for butterflies (complete with diving board), a horseshoe, a fragment of the Journal building and a miniature Ferris wheel (which was delivered by a regular-sized crane).

The park was moved to the Two World Trade Center in early 2006 until construction on the Big Pipe project is complete.^[1]

[edit] See also

Forest Park, a much-larger (about 60 million times) Portland park and forest reserve
Waldo Park, another small park consisting of a tree, located in nearby Salem
Roe River in Montana and D River in Oregon, both of which claim to be the shortest river in the world