View Edit

Prospect Park is a neighborhood park in northeastern Ypsilanti, at the intersection of East Cross Street and North Prospect Street. The 9.5 acre park is the oldest in Ypsilanti's park system, originally dedicated as a cemetery in 1842. After 1864, when Highland Cemetery opened, the graves were (mostly?) moved there from Prospect. In 1891-93, a group of local women headed an effort to convert the then-neglected cemetery into a park.

The northern portion of the park has basketball courts, a skate park, and play equipment, and is used by the adjacent Adams Elementary School as a playground. The southern portion of the park is quieter, with picnic tables and mature trees.

Luna Lake, in the southwestern corner, once had a fountain; in 2008, the area was rehabilitated as a rain garden and wet meadow. The project coordinated 4 neighborhood associations and EMU campus group GREEN to plant 1,500 trees, shrubs, and flowers, and move 60 yards of mulch, under the oversight of neighborhood landscape architect Rachel Blistein, of Veris Landscape Design, and with the assistance of the Ypsilanti Fire and Public Works Departments.

According to neighborhood blogger Kurt A., the cannon on display in Prospect Park is a 10-inch Seacoast Parrot rifle, which apparently was shipped from Fort McClary, in Maine, to Ypsilanti around 1892-1902. This may have been by special act of Congress, as a gesture of thanks to the City for its role in the Civil War, though the gun would have been cast in 1865 and never seen use in war.

Sources

Edit tags