Clifton Park is a public urban park located in the Belair-Edison neighborhood in the northeast section of Baltimore, Maryland. USA. It is roughly bordered by Erdman Avenue to the northeast, Sinclair Lane to the south, Harford Road to the northwest and Belair Road to the southeast.[1] The eighteen-hole Clifton Park Golf Course, the site of the annual Clifton Park Golf Tournament,[2] occupies the north side of the park.
The land on which Clifton Park sits was once farmland. In 1838, it was bought by Johns Hopkins for his estate, and developed with a lake and a large sculpture collection.[1] Later, in 1858, it was converted into an Italian villa. The mansion from when it was a farmland is now used as the pro shop at the golf course.[1]
On the land is the Clifton Park Valve House, an 8-sided house that was used in 1887 as a water transporter, with eight valves. It supplied water for the whole village and water for cropping.
St. Vincent de Paul Church Cemetery borders the golf course in the southeast section of the park. Still owned by the church, which is located about three miles southwest of the cemetery, it is a seven-acre burial ground for about 2,000 parishioners of Irish, German and Italian descent dating back to the mid-19th century. Heavily hit by vandalism during the 1960s, it was officially closed in the early 1980s and has since fallen into disrepair. Cleanup and maintenance of the cemetery began in mid-2010.[3][4]
Clifton Park became the central area where national guard troops were moved in and out of Baltimore during the riots of 1968. It was there that the troops camped out during their mission. They guarded the streets against looting during the day and slept at the park during the night hours. Dallas Arthur, a national guard troop, describes the situation as intense when he relates to roadblocks posted near Clifton Park.
Clifton Park once had a reservoir, named Lake Clifton Reservoir; this was drained in the early 1970s. On this site, Lake Clifton Eastern High School, now referred to as the Lake Clifton Campus, was built, which is the largest school in physical size in the Baltimore City Public School System. The school currently contains two smaller schools: Heritage High and REACH! Partnership School.
Clifton Park is also home to Real Food Farm, a 6-acre urban farm managed by Civic Works that was started in 2009. The farm aims to increase food access in the neighborhoods around the park, demonstrate the economic potential of urban farming, and provides experiential education opportunities to the students of Heritage, REACH, and other city schools.