Memorial Park, Urban park in Houston, United States.
Memorial Park is an expansive urban park in Houston containing forests, meadows, and diverse recreational spaces spread throughout the city center. The grounds include an 18-hole golf course, tennis courts, swimming pools, a multi-mile exercise trail, and the Houston Arboretum with botanical exhibits.
The land was the site of Camp Logan, a U.S. Army training camp named after Illinois senator and Civil War general John A. Logan, from 1917 to 1923. In early 1924 Will and Mike Hogg bought 1,503 acres of the former camp and sold it to the city at cost. Houston took ownership in May 1924 and dedicated the land as a memorial park to soldiers who died in the war.
The Houston Arboretum and Nature Center occupies 155 acres inside the park, and its Nature Center building dates from 1967. The grounds are laid out as an arboretum and botanical garden where visitors walk among plantings of the region's ecosystems.
The park is easy to navigate on foot or by bike with multiple pathways connecting different areas. Early morning or late afternoon visits tend to be most comfortable, especially during warmer months.
The ashes of golfer Dave Marr (1933–1997), winner of the 1965 PGA Championship, were scattered over the Memorial Park course, where he learned to play. The park's Seymour Lieberman Exercise Trail, a 3-mile crushed granite path, records almost 3 million visits a year.
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