After undergoing numerous renovations in the last year, Warner Park will again be on public display today for a grand reopening from 4 to 6 p.m.

People are invited to examine all the new amenities and look back at the park’s different eras.

Greta Hayes, the city’s assistant director of parks, said old newspaper articles and pictures will be on display and 96-year-old Marie Sheffield Smartt, who grew up across the street from the park, will be present to reminisce.

Among the copies is a photograph is from 1906 when the facility was known as Olympia Park. A Sunday article from the Chattanooga Times, dated Sept. 14, 1913, invites people to come see a head-on collision between two train engines running at 30 mph on Tuesday afternoon. Grandstand seats were $1. Standing room was 50 cents.

According to another news article, a renovation took place before opening day in late April 1907. The park then had 375 benches and 50 swings, along with a miniature railroad called the “Sunset Limited” and engineered by R.F. Kennedy. The track was more than a mile long.

There was a free concert every Sunday afternoon during the season. Also new that year were box ball alleys, a Japanese bowling alley and a penny arcade. A shooting gallery and flying swing already were there. Big news was that 400 pairs of new skates were bought for the newly overhauled skating rink.

The facility was renamed Warner Park in 1912 in honor of Major J.H. Warner. He was once commissioner of public utilities, grounds and buildings and was reported to have been instrumental in helping transform the park into a 43-acre playground.

Chicago’s Myron H. West, president of the American Park Builders, was reported in June 1912 as saying that no other city in the United States has a tract as large as Warner Park for a municipal playground, which he saw firsthand.

“I will think none the less of Olympia because of the name,” Warner said at the time, according to a story written by local newspaper reporter Bob Weatherly in May of 1952.

A former vaudeville theater was converted into an assembly hall for basketball, folk dancing, theatricals, indoor baseball and gymnastics in 1912. A swimming pool was a proposal then.

With the help of the Philadelphia Toboggan Co., in 1928, a roller coaster replaced an “antiquated structure which was unpopular after an accident occurred on the track a few weeks before the park closed last fall,” as reported by a news source.

Local reporter Sue Mills Loop wrote in April 1941 that the park’s petting zone had recently received animals from as far away as South America and India. R.M. “Bob” Cooke was commissioner of utilities, grounds and buildings at the time, and four of the park’s ballfields would bear his name until the latest renovation.

Over the years the park has had such features as a merry-go-round, seesaws, slides, sandboxes, croquet, a half-mile racetrack, a restaurant and comfort station, a greenhouse, rose garden, dancing pavilions, a bandstand and picnic grounds. It was once news that Artesian Wells were located at each end.

Youth fastpitch became the rage starting in the 1980s, and the recent reconditioning was done with rejuvenating that. Warner Park was home to the TSSAA state softball tournament from 1989 to 2002. The Southern and Southeastern conferences have held their postseason tournaments at Warner Park.

The Amateur Softball Association’s state tournament for 18- to 8-under age groups is this weekend. Games are scheduled to begin after today’s ceremony.

“Warner Park has been in need of an upgrade and renovation to meet the needs and interests of the 21st century,” Parks and Recreation administrator Larry Zehnder said in a recent news release. “Now with the zoo’s new entrance and expansion plans, the new state-of-the-art softball facilities, extensive environmental features and landscape improvements, we have a wonderful park that will bring citizens and visitors for great sports play and family recreation again.”

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