Twain Harte Meadows Park Grand Opening

After years of dreaming and planning together as a community, Twain Harte Community Services District (THCSD) is thrilled to announce the opening of Twain Harte Meadows Park (Meadows Park) on Saturday, August 10th. Since breaking ground in September, residents have watched the downtown 1-acre lot (formerly home to Twain Harte Inn, which burned down in 2002) be transformed from a dilapidated property into a beautiful park.   

THCSD’s General Manager, Tom Trott, expressed his enthusiasm stating, “We are at the tail-end of a long, but exciting 7-year journey to make a community dream come true. This dream has required much patience and hard work, but, in true Twain Harte fashion, we kept the dream alive and persevered to the end. It’s time to celebrate together and enjoy the fruit of our labor!”

Meadows Park is located in the heart of downtown Twain Harte on a parcel that was generously donated to THCSD in 2017 by Julie Cowell, a long-time resident who shared a dream with her late husband Robert Cowell to create a beautiful park area where families and friends could gather to enjoy our town’s unique mountain beauty. That dream became a community dream over the next two years as hundreds of residents collaborated in workshops to develop a design that best reflected Twain Harte. 

Determined to make Meadows Park more than a dream, THCSD staff worked relentlessly for three years to obtain the financial resources necessary to build it. THCSD was awarded two highly competitive grants from the State Department of Parks and Recreation (Proposition 68 Rural Recreation and Tourism Grant) and the State Water Resources Control Board (Proposition 1 Stormwater Grant). Combined, the two grants fully funded the $3 million Meadows Park project.

Board President, Gary Sipperley, proudly shared his thoughts on this achievement, stating: “The new Twain Harte Meadows Park could not have happened without the generous donation of the land by Julie Cowell, months of work by the THCSD staff and hundreds of hours of design input and labor from the Twain Harte community.”

He goes on to state, “In addition, General Manager Tom Trott has spent countless hours working with contractors, volunteers, and grant authorities to bring it to its completion. The new park will become a gathering place for our residents and visitors for generations to come. I am extremely proud of what it says about our little community and the Twain Harte Community Services District.”

Based on community design, Meadows Park enhances Twain Harte’s rustic mountain charm and serves as a beautiful reminder of the many reasons people choose to live in and visit Twain Harte. With a mountain meadow setting, the park offers plenty of opportunities to gather and play. It includes a rustic pavilion with a BBQ island large enough for community-sized gatherings, a natural water play area and stream, several smaller picnic/barbecue areas, a meadow, walking path, town Christmas Tree, and restrooms.

Meadows Park is also chalk-full of local history and interactive educational elements, reminding our residents where we came from and empowering our current and future generations to be good stewards of water and environment. The entire park is a demonstration site filled with simple landscaping techniques that capture and use rain and storm water to increase water supply reliability, create fire-safe landscapes, improve water quality, reduce erosion, and enhance habitat. Interactive learning labs located throughout the park teach residents and visitors how to implement these simple techniques on their own properties. An online park dashboard provides more detailed information and illustrates the amount of rain and stormwater that the park captured, cleaned and reused. The hope is that residents will implement these simple techniques and practices on a communitywide scale to make a communitywide impact and make Twain Harte a model for other communities.

THCSD will commemorate the grand opening of Meadows Park with a community celebration on Saturday, August 10th from 11:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. All are invited to join in the celebration. The grand opening will include a presentation, docent-led hands-on water and stormwater education throughout the park, live music, food, and fun.

The only element of Meadows Park that is yet to be completed is the town Christmas tree. THCSD opted to install the large Sequoia tree in the fall (after the summer heat has passed) to ensure a successful transplantation. THCSD plans to commemorate the installation of the town Christmas with a community tree lighting ceremony in late fall before the holiday season.

If you have questions regarding Meadows Park and the grand opening, please email THCSD at: info@twainhartecsd.com