Santa Ana : Award-Winning Park to Be Dedicated Thursday

Carl Thornton Park, recently declared the best-designed neighborhood park in California, will be dedicated at 2 p.m. Thursday in a ceremony attended by the widow and daughter of the late city manager after whom the park is named.

Thornton was city manager from 1951 to 1972. His wife, Ruth, and daughter, Barbara, are flying in from Boston for the event, and several other relatives from various parts of California are expected to attend.

Earlier this month, the 30-acre park, on Segerstrom Avenue between Jefferson Elementary and McFadden Intermediate schools, received the California Parks and Recreation Society’s top award for environmental planning.

The coveted award was the third presented to Santa Ana by the Sacramento-based organization in five years. Centennial and Birch parks previously received the awards.

Thornton Park’s history goes back almost a quarter of a century when the city purchased a 35-acre parcel at Raitt Street and Segerstrom Avenue. Original plans called for Santa Ana Stadium to be built on the site.

Residences sprang up around the site after officials decided to build the stadium in the Civic Center area instead. Because of unstable subsoil conditions, the land had developed into a marsh and lay vacant for 10 years, used only as a landfill.

The park now features a two-acre lake stocked with fish. Its lower portion acts as a temporary retention basin for water, with controlled drainage into nearby storm drains.

The entire park has been graded, and turf, automatic sprinklers and a 30-space parking lot have been added, according to Ron Ono, a landscape architect and one of the park’s designers.