1. From just about any location in the city, you are within one-half mile of a park.
2. The City of Modesto has approximately 1,100 acres of land in the park system. That’s 76 total parks – five regional parks or trails, six community parks, 54 neighborhood parks, 11 miscellaneous parks or parklets.
3. Modesto’s first park, Graceada (ca. 1912), is home of the Mancini Bowl, which hosts the Moband summer concert series Thursday evenings in June and July and family movie nights in August and September, providing free entertainment all summer long to the community. Graceada Park is named after Grace Beard and Ada Wisecarver, the wives of the two park donors.
4. Most of our neighborhood parks have picnic areas which can be used on a first-come, first-serve basis without a fee but residents can rent picnic areas in our larger parks for your family barbecue or special event.
5. Some of the amenities in our park system include: shuffleboard, sand volleyball, disc golf, pétanque and horseshoe pits.
6. You can rent athletic fields in our larger parks for your sports leagues or tournaments. To see a complete list of the amenities by park and learn how to reserve a facility, go to www.modestogov.com/prnd.
7. We have a premier soccer complex in Modesto that is host to leagues and tournaments throughout the year. Mary E. Grogan Community Park houses a soccer complex which has seven lighted soccer fields. Over 165,000 people visited or used the soccer facility in 2015!
8. You can ride your bike from the Beardbrook Park to Carpenter Road along the Tuolumne River. The Tuolumne River Regional Park is also a riparian habitat where many wildlife species live.
9. Most parks have two playgrounds, one for 2- to 5-year-old children and one for 5- to 12-year-old children. Annually, we install approximately 2,500 cubic yards of certified playground chips to replenish the playground surfacing.
10. With the help of the Adopt-a-Park program, Neighborhood Environmental Action Team agreements and other projects we have had over 1,500 volunteers, who’ve donated more than 10,000 hours this year to clean up the parks. Thank you to all of our volunteers.
