Prospect Park

By John Murphy

The National Football League draft finally ended Saturday and I had no other choice but to go out and exercise.

So I headed across the wash to the rich part of Redlands.

Cruise up Cajon Street between the stately palm trees and past the old Craftsman homes and you wind up at Prospect Park. It’s one of my favorite places.

Thanks to the citrus industry, Redlands was once known as the “city of millionaires.” Not surprisingly, all that moolah attracted politicians. Three US presidents – William McKinley in 1901, Theodore Roosevelt in 1903 and William Howard Taft in 1909 – visited Redlands and walked the winding trails of Prospect Park. Or maybe they just ate an orange and left. I don’t really know.

A century-plus later the place is still nice to walk through with paved paths, stone walls and some trees that are 120 years old. There’s also roses, poppies, marigolds and petunias and lots of bees buzzing around.

At the top of the hill in the middle of the park there are benches. They overlook the valley (see photo below) and it’s an ideal place to relax or meditate, if you’re into that kind of thing.

When my son Kyle was little, I brought him to the park. We’d have a contest to see who could spot a lizard first and the wager was always a candy bar or ice cream cone. Somehow I always lost, but that was OK.

We’d also hike down to the amphitheater in the park that houses the Redlands Theater Festival. I liked to mortify him by taking the stage and, no matter who was around, reciting a few lines of Shakespeare. He’d turn red and just shake his head.

The last stop on our tour was always the regal Kimberly Crest Mansion.

The quaint old place has chateauesque architecture and Italian-style gardens and is rather magnificent.

Seven or eight years ago you could ignore the no trespassing signs and step over a chain-link fence and go right onto the grounds of Kimberly Crest. Naturally, we took advantage of that. We’d take photos, check out the fountain and sometimes even throw a football around. But now they have a gate out front and the place is locked-up tight.

So on this day I decided to head back. It was getting dark and I didn’t want to overdo the whole exercise thing. Too much of anything is bad.