Old fashioned playgrounds
An accidental journey into the history of the KitsapKids playground
Sometimes I come across a piece of media that slides something into focus for me, or fills in a gap in my knowledge. Last week, that happened when I watched a Phil Edwards video about old fashioned playgrounds.
I don’t have children but my niblings (nieces and nephews) love a good playground and every time they come to town, we do a playground tour of sorts. We check out every playground I can find. The playground at Stampede blvd near Olympic high school/Fairgrounds, AKA the KitsapKids playground, strikes me as pretty amazing. It’s cooler than any playground we ever had when I was in school. Built entirely out of wood, modeled like a castle with capped towers and fully fenced to prevent to small escapees, it’s a great place to let kids run wild.
I knew very little about this playground going in. I was too old for playgrounds by the time it was built and I lived clear across town. I have a vague memory that there used to be a log cabin over there that the high school kids would graffiti and drink at.
It turns out these playgrounds were a bit of a national phenomenon in the 90’s. An architect on the east coast started designing them and built a company around helping communities organize, fundraise and build these amazing playgrounds. Leathers and Associates is still building playgrounds to this day. Their portfolio is a fun browse.
Anyway, after watching this video I did some reading about our playground’s construction. The whole community-driven model for these playgrounds is mind-blowing and seems like something that just wouldn’t happen today. It was built very late compared to most of the leathers’ playgrounds of this era- I think that may have been part of what saved it while most wooden playgrounds were being torn down.
The video goes into more detail but I’ll sum it up quickly- A lot of old wood playgrounds were built with a type of treated lumber that contained arsenic. People started ringing alarm bells about this in the 90’s and a study was published in the early 00’s that showed playgrounds had higher than average arsenic levels. By 2003, we get regulations that say arsenic treated lumber should not be used in playgrounds. A lot of these Leathers playgrounds were torn down as a result.
So the KitsapKids playground, which goes up in 2002, is built in the middle of this panic. There was an article published in The Sun about the extra lengths the project had to go through to special order arsenic-free wood from North Carolina and how it arrived a day late, setting the timeline back. I wonder if that was a terrible realization for the planning of this playground. Just the fact that they had to write a special article addressing it probably says something about possible community panic.
Seems like we had to dodge some serious bullets to get this thing built and we’re lucky to still have it to this day when so many have been torn down.
I’ll link the articles I dug out below. This is one of those things that probably doesn’t seem like history to the people who lived it but the planning started in 2002- more than 20 years ago! There are probably adults now who played on this playground as kids and know nothing about the beautiful community effort that brought it into existence. Some great photos in these.
I also found a very recent article by David Nelson outlining possible changes to KitsapKids playground written in October ‘25, so 6 months ago. The article talks about moving the whole playground and then improving playgrounds, which makes me wonder if someone out there wants to tear it down and put in one of those shiny, hard plastic playgrounds.
Other Tangents
KitsapKids
While I was reading all about the playgrounds, I came across other mentions of KitsapKids, particularly KitsapKids.com. It looks like a grassroots effort on behalf of local parents to organize information about local activities and clubs for kids. That would have been much harder to do pre-internet. It still exists now, though I don’t see any mention of the playground on it (probably because ownership of the playground was transferred to Kitsap County after the playground was built).
They published a book in 1997 of fun things to do with kids on the Kitsap peninsula. It was still being talked about in 2006. I see different cover art floating about, so it may have been printed more than once. I wondered if it’s relevance manages to hold up all the way into 2026, so I ordered a used copy from ebay. We’ll see!
Log Cabin
I also went down a rabbit hole about the old log cabin I remember standing next to the playground but it deserves it’s own post!
Hope everyone is having the beginning of a great summer! Don’t forget, you can send your questions or episode suggestions to bremelore@gmail.com !
-D.