100 Done...

100 parks are now under my belt. Here are a couple of fun facts I’ve discovered so far:

1. Discovery Park is Seattle’s biggest at more than 500 acres.

2. The smallest are the nine parks that the Parks Department says are 0.00 acres. Hmmm.

3. Fourteen parks are bigger than 100 acres. A few of these that are lesser known include Puget Park (West Seattle), Magnolia Tidelands Park (near Interbay) and the West Duwamish Greenbelt (between West Seattle and Georgetown).

4. There are more than 150 parks smaller than 1 acre, including many that are the size of a small square of lawn. And contain nothing more than lawn.

5. Seattle’s oldest park is Denny Park on the edge of downtown.

6. The newest park is… well, it’s hard to say. The Parks Department opens new parks all the time. So many in fact, that it’s difficult to keep my list up to date.

7. The Parks Department oversees four golf courses and a cemetery.

8. Several of our city parks are named after Seattle sister cities, including Kobe, Japan, Tashkent, Uzbekistan and Be’er Sheva, Israel. A few of our sister cities have reciprocated. It’s cool to think there is a “Seattle Park” in different places around the globe.

9. Seattle has an astounding amount of waterfront property open to the public. According to the city’s Web site, some 24 miles are public shoreline.

10. And, actually Seattle has an astounding amount of public land period. 6,200 acres of land in Seattle are parks. That’s 11 percent of all the land in Seattle. We are lucky indeed.