Down, Dirty in Huntington Beach
If it’s summertime in Huntington Beach, you can be sure things are going to get dirty.
This, of course, has nothing to do with local politics, but rather with the annual opening of Adventure Playground, a 1.5-acre corner of Huntington Central Park best known for its mud slide and Huck Finn-style rafting pond.
“Kids are always being told to stay clean and keep out of anything dirty,” says Kim White, 23, director of the playground. “This is the only time they’re allowed to be dirty.”
Adventure Playground opened for the summer last week, and it will remain open Monday through Saturday until Aug. 28.
Each day, between 200 and 300 children will enjoy an experience different from the conventional city park of swings, slides and volleyball nets, according to White.
Here, a rope bridge crosses the pond at one side, and a tire swing bisects it at another. In another part of the part, children build forts with hammers, saws, nails and wood. In fact, Adventure Playground is more do-it-yourself place than conventional municipal playground, and that’s the intention.
“I grew up in the West Valley when it was a lot less built up than it is now,” says Bob Werth, the senior recreation supervisor who has worked for Huntington Beach for 17 years. “There was vacant land and kids played on their own. In most parts of Southern California, you can’t do that anymore.”
The inspiration for Adventure Playground didn’t come from the San Fernando Valley but from Copenhagen, Denmark. About 20 years ago, a landscape architect there discovered that children tend to ignore designed playgrounds in favor of play in vacant lots and construction sites.
His idea, which he called the Emdrump Junk Yard, led to similar installations throughout Europe.
Huntington Beach opened the first Adventure Playground in an abandoned sand quarry in 1974. It was successful but, because of flooding, had to be moved after several years. The current location has been used each summer since 1981.
Eight years ago, it was named the outstanding recreation program in the state by the California Parks and Recreation Society.
“We get people from all over Southern California,” Werth says. “Los Angeles, San Diego, everywhere in between. Most of our visitors are kids who are part of day camps or church groups, but up to 100 per day are walk-ins.”
Attempts have been made to keep it open year-round, but, as Werth said, “the City Council requires that the playground be self-supporting, and we tried to stay open about four years ago. You just don’t get enough kids to make it work. You have to have about 200 a day to break even.”
City residents pay $1 and non-residents and children in groups pay $2 to enter.
The manufactured pond, which is 18 inches deep and lined with cement, is the primary attraction. It is roughly 100 feet long by 40 feet wide but has no distinct shape. At any given time, 10 to 12 youngsters, two to a raft, might be attempting to guide wooden rafts across the surface using poles. As often as not, one seems to pull in one direction, the other the opposite way.
At one end of the pond, seated in a chair and holding a bullhorn, one of the playground’s six counselors keeps close watch.
Next to the pond and rope bridge is the tire swing, which even adult visitors might wish they could try out. A cable is threaded through a tire, mounted securely above the pond on two posts, 60 feet apart, one higher than the other. Children sit in a second tire, which hangs beneath the one on the cable. Gravity takes care of the rest.
Next to the pond, and made from dirt excavated when the pond was dug, is the 25-foot hill that holds the mud slide. Children climb railroad tie steps to reach the top, then they slide about 50 feet on a sheet of thick black plastic as a counselor hoses it down to keep the ride fast.
At the bottom is a sand-lined mud pit. Some younger children throw their arms into the air and scream as they splash into the mud. Older ones take on an air of nonchalance as they hit the mud, then jump to their feet to get back into the fast-moving line. Fortunately for automobile interiors, outdoor showers are nearby, and changing rooms allow the children to put on cleaner clothes before going home.
The fort-building area is probably the most unconventional in the playground. A number of 4-by-4 posts have been driven into the ground to provide platforms from which children can build and that ensure that the youngsters won’t damage the trees.
White, Wilson and the other counselors have 30 hammers and 20 saws to distribute to would-be builders, and the kids are shown how to use the tools. Children who seem too young for construction work are gently guided back to the water area.
Nails are acquired through a kind of barter system. Each child checking out a hammer gets four nails. Two old nails may be exchanged for one new one, and four items of trash (usually candy bar wrappers) will get the collector a new nail. That system helps keep the fort area free of dangerous old nails and of litter.
Children who are building a fort have an unlimited amount of time to build it or play on it. After a fort has not been used for three days, it is considered abandoned and thus fair game. Other youngsters can then remove wood from it or build their own additions to it.
“We always need wood,” Werth says. “Ideally, we’d love to be helped out by some building firm or contractor. We’re a nonprofit agency, of course, and we have a constant requirement for plywood, 2-by-4s, whatever. We’ll pick it up. That’s one of our ongoing problems.”
Some children might spend two to three hours at the playground, White says, whereas others “are here all day.”
Overnight camp-outs are planned for July 24 and Aug. 21.
“The kids bring sleeping bags and they sleep overnight,” Werth said. “They get to know each other better, and it promotes a lot of teamwork, the sense of working together.”