Today, Weber Park at 42nd and Grimes offers everything for summer fun, from playground equipment and picnic grounds to tennis courts and baseball fields. But even when it was an empty lot, the land provided hours of entertainment for Morningside children.
When the neighborhood was platted in 1905, the land was nothing but marsh dotted with sandbars, but E. Dudley Parsons recalls that children played there “with great imagination and abandon. ‘Pirates and Treasure’…‘Cops and Robbers’… I think we must have invented every twist of plot imaginable.”
Ditch-digging equipment soon drained the marsh, but the youngsters created a play land from the soft peat left behind. “The ‘big kids’ cut underground clubrooms, big enough for bunks, and even carved a fireplace from the peat,” recalls Jack Reid, who grew up during the Depression.
Dry conditions and unauthorized campfires led to long-burning peat fires, whose fumes meant early dismissal at the adjacent Morningside School (a consequence that only encouraged children to play with matches, Reid speculates).
Major disaster was averted because Morningside’s lone police officer George Weber kept watch and encouraged children to participate in all kinds of athletics. In 1948, the lot was transformed into the village’s first park, and in 1950 it was named after the beloved Weber, who was then in his late 70s and still on patrol.
Today’s children flock to tennis courts and ball fields for organized activities, but as Morningside kids have throughout the past century, they also create their own fun in the wooded corners of the park.
“Growing Up in Edina: A Show and Tell Exhibit,” highlights children’s lives throughout Edina history and is on display at the Edina History Museum through October. For more information, visit edinahistoricalsociety.org or call 612.928.4577.
