# Weekends, # years
Calabazas Park Beautification
Calabazas Park is maintained by the City of San Jose that offers a wide selection of recreational activities such as a BMX track, basketball…
A park the neighborhood built twice
Calabazas Park opened in 1965 on a stretch of orchard land that the Calabazas Creek had flooded for as long as anyone could remember. The city laid down ballfields and horseshoe pits; the families who moved into the ranch houses along Blaney planted the sycamores that now shade the picnic tables. For thirty years it was the kind of park a neighborhood takes for granted — which is its own quiet compliment.
By the mid-2010s the wear was showing. The BMX track had washed into ruts, the pergola had lost half its slats, and the beds along the Rainbow Drive entrance had gone to hardpan and thistle. Parks staff kept the grass cut and the lights on, but the budget for everything past that had thinned to nothing.
Seventeen acres is more than any crew can hold on its own. It's exactly the right size for a neighborhood.
We came the first time in 2019 with 60 people and a truckload of mulch, mostly to see what was needed. We've been back three times since — for the horseshoe pits, for the creek-trail fence line, and last year for the playground resurfacing that families had been asking after for a decade. Each visit, more of the volunteers live within walking distance of the gate.
That's the part worth saying plainly: this stopped being a project a while ago. It's a standing appointment with a place, and with the people who use it every week after we've gone home.
Visiting
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