Swope Park is a city park in

Kansas City, Missouri Kansas City (abbreviated KC or KCMO) is the largest city in Missouri by population and area. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the city had a population of 508,090 in 2020, making it the List of United States cities by populat ...

. At , it is the 51st-largest municipal park in the United States, and the largest park in Kansas City. It is named in honor of Colonel Thomas H. Swope, a

philanthropist Philanthropy is a form of altruism that consists of "private initiatives, for the public good, focusing on quality of life". Philanthropy contrasts with business initiatives, which are private initiatives for private good, focusing on material ...

who donated the land to the city in 1896. Most of the park is heavily wooded, and the developed area includes these major destinations: Starlight Theatre, an 8,000+ seat outdoor theater; the

Swope Soccer Village Swope Soccer Village is a soccer complex located within Swope Park in Kansas City, Missouri, first dedicated in 2007 with further renovations completed in 2014. The facility is a public-private partnership between the City of Kansas City's parks ...

sports complex; the

Kansas City Zoo The Kansas City Zoo is a zoo founded in 1909. It is located in Swope Park at 6800 Zoo Drive Kansas City, Missouri, in the United States. The zoo has a Friends of the Zoo program. It is home to more than 1,300 animals and is an accredited membe ...

; the Lakeside Nature Center, one of Missouri's largest

native species In biogeography, a native species is indigenous to a given region or ecosystem if its presence in that region is the result of only local natural evolution (though often popularised as "with no human intervention") during history. The term is e ...

rehabilitation facilities; and

Swope Memorial Golf Course Swope Memorial Golf Course is a golf course that was founded in 1934 and previously designed by golf course architect A. W. Tillinghast. It hosted the 1949 Kansas City Open Invitational, a PGA Tour event at the time and is the only golf course in t ...

. In 1949 the course hosted the

Kansas City Open Invitational The Kansas City Open Invitational, which played as the Kansas City Open for most of its history, was a golf tournament on the PGA Tour that was played in the greater Kansas City area in the late 1940s and 1950s. A total of four clubs hosted th ...

of the

PGA Tour The PGA Tour (stylized in all capital letters as PGA TOUR by its officials) is the organizer of professional golf tours in the United States and North America. It organizes most of the events on the flagship annual series of tournaments also ...

, and in 1953 it hosted the United Golf Association (UGA) National Championship, in which

Ann Gregory Ann Gregory (July 25, 1912 – February 5, 1990) was an African-American amateur golfer. Black newspapers had called her "The Queen of Negro Women's Golf." As stated in Arthur Ashe's book, ''Hard Road to Glory'', many observers called Gregory t ...

and

Charlie Sifford Charles Luther Sifford (June 2, 1922 – February 3, 2015) was an American professional golfer who was the first African American to play on the PGA Tour. He won the Greater Hartford Open in 1967 and the Los Angeles Open in 1969. He also won the ...

won the women's and men's divisions, respectively. Open seasonally, the Battle of Westport Museum & Visitor Center details the

Battle of Westport The Battle of Westport, sometimes referred to as the "Gettysburg of the West", was fought on October 23, 1864, in modern Kansas City, Missouri, during the American Civil War. Union forces under Major General Samuel R. Curtis decisively defeat ...

in 1864, the largest

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and t ...

battle fought west of the

Mississippi River The Mississippi River is the List of longest rivers of the United States (by main stem), second-longest river and chief river of the second-largest Drainage system (geomorphology), drainage system in North America, second only to the Hudson B ...

. Other venues include

baseball diamond A baseball field, also called a ball field or baseball diamond, is the field upon which the game of baseball is played. The term can also be used as a metonym for a baseball park. The term sandlot is sometimes used, although this usually refers ...

soccer field A football pitch (also known as soccer field) is the playing surface for the game of association football. Its dimensions and markings are defined by Law 1 of the Laws of the Game, "The Field of Play". The pitch is typically made of natural t ...

s, a

swimming pool A swimming pool, swimming bath, wading pool, paddling pool, or simply pool, is a structure designed to hold water to enable Human swimming, swimming or other leisure activities. Pools can be built into the ground (in-ground pools) or built ...

, the Go Ape Zipline & Adventure Park, and ten shelter houses. Swope Park is featured prominently in the fictional works of Robert A. Heinlein, who grew up in and around Kansas City.

References

External links

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Kansas City Zoo

Starlight Theatre

Lakeside Nature Center

Kansas City Community Gardens
{{Kansas City, Missouri Urban public parks Geography of Kansas City, Missouri Parks in the Kansas City metropolitan area Parks in Missouri Tourist attractions in Kansas City, Missouri