Places To Play: Dalton Green Park
Monday, February 13th, 2023
As spring gets closer, we're starting to get more warm and sunny afternoons perfect to spend outside. There are many great places to enjoy the great outdoors in Dalton, including our wonderful city parks! Heading into the spring we'll be highlighting some of the great places for kids (or adults!) to play that you might not know about.
The playground at the Dalton Green Park was recently re-imagined and updated with a new playground structure and new mulch surface. The playground, adjacent to the Whitfield County Courthouse and the gazebo, was installed in late November 2022 but the Parks and Recreation Department isn't done with it yet.
Caption: The new playground at the Dalton Green Park adjacent to the Whitfield County Courthouse can be seen on a sunny day in February. New mulch has been installed for the playground surface along with new playground equipment to replace the structure that was in place since the 1980s.
"We still have plans for that park," said Caitilin Sharpe, director of the Parks and Recreation Department. "The playground we replaced was from the 1980s, it was very old. One thing that I always point out is that you can tell how old a playground is if you look at the surfacing... we still had pea gravel. So when I first started (as rec director) it was at the top of my list to just get this playground replaced with a similar structure in size, and then new surfacing. So you’ll see some pretty new mulch has been put out over there along with the playground. But that’s not all of our plans for that park, we aren’t done over there. We think we can still add in some fun elements at ground level to make it more enticing for kids to either play on the playground or to visit the park and just have lunch on the benches, and have small things to do."
The park is already off to a great restart. The new playground structure is bright and colorful and low to the ground. It includes slides and a climbing structure. Nearby, there are ground level sensory features that kids of different ability levels can access and enjoy.
"Those are low elements that anybody can have access to," Sharpe said. "Many of those are set up where you speak into it, and maybe someone across the playground can hear, or they make noises."
Caption: Sensory play features at ground level at the park are accessible for kids of different ability levels
With constant foot traffic to the county courthouse as well as people visiting neighboring restaurants or businesses, the Dalton Green Park is a great place for some of downtown Dalton's youngest visitors to spend some time playing, perhaps after their grownups have conducted business nearby.
"That’s why we plan to continue to add to It," Sharpe said. "We also included Dalton Green in the downtown disc golf course, one of the the disc golf baskets was installed there. So there are just small things that we’re adding to that park to give park visitors or just downtown visitors more reason to branch out, go across town, or downtown. It's one of those places where you can stop and hang out for a little bit."
"We also want to replace the benches over there. So, we have lots of plans, and that’s how all of our parks are. We have lots of plans in place and we are trying to slowly just chip away and make good budget decisions while we’re picking what we need to change out and what we don’t need to change out.
The Dalton Green Park is located at 117 N. Selvidge Street.
