William R. Smith Park, the block Centerville also calls Founders

Both names are in use. The city calls it William R. Smith (Founders) Park at 300 North 100 East, and you will hear locals use either one for the same block. The Freedom Festival schedule even lists Founder's Family Fun Night at William R. Smith Park. So if someone gives you directions using one name, they mean the same park either way.

He was the first president of Centerville's cooperative store, built on the corner of Main and Center Streets in 1869 and stocked from the cooperative mercantile in Salt Lake City. The co-op stayed open more than seventy years and closed in 1940, and the building on that corner today went up in 1903. The park that carries his name is a five-minute walk from that corner.

At 300 North 100 East, inside the original town grid and about two blocks from City Hall at 250 North Main Street. It is under a five-minute walk from City Hall and under a minute to drive. The park has about forty parking stalls, with the City Hall lot next door as overflow, which is how a park this size can hold a city event. From I-15 exit 319, take Parrish Lane east to Main Street, turn south, then turn east at 300 North.

No. The park has barbecue grills, drinking fountains, pavilions, a playground and plenty of shade trees, and that is the full list. There is no splash pad and no permanent amphitheater. The concerts on the evening of July 3 run off a temporary stage set up on the lawn. If you want a park with a water feature in Centerville, the city does not have one.

A marker titled Memorial to Centerville Pioneers, listed as Sons of Utah Pioneers marker number 66, with text credited to Vestil Harrison of the Centerville Historical Society. It covers the town's settlement, early building methods, water systems and infrastructure into the mid-1900s. Centerville's markers come from two different groups, so note that this is a Sons of Utah Pioneers marker, while the one at the 1866 stagecoach building on Center Street is a Daughters of Utah Pioneers marker, number 120, raised in 1948.

The monument begins its story in 1848, while the city's own history says Centerville was first settled in 1847 by Thomas Grover. Both are defensible: Grover arrived in the fall of 1847 to pasture cattle, and the Deuel brothers, Aaron Cherry, Nathan Porter, Samuel Parrish and others arrived in 1848 and turned it into a settlement. It is worth knowing both dates come up so neither surprises you.

The published rate is twenty-five dollars for a resident and fifty dollars for a non-resident, flat across the whole park system. The east pavilion at William R. Smith Park holds about a hundred people. Field rentals run ten dollars an hour without lights and twenty-five with lights at Community Park. The city reviews these prices every year, so confirm the current amount before you book.

From April 15 to October 15. Full restrooms and running water are only available through that stretch, while the parks themselves are open every day of the year from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. So for roughly half the year the gates are open and the plumbing is not, which matters if you are planning a March birthday or a November get-together around a city pavilion.

Seven, and the one with the trailheads is Freedom Hills Park at 2150 North 150 East. It has two trailheads, one for walkers and one for horses, along with twenty-nine regular parking stalls and seven pull-through stalls for trucks and trailers, a nine-hole disc golf course, a veterans memorial, a pavilion for about seventy, grills, fountains, paved jogging paths and a playground. The city's trail map gives the Freedom Hills trailhead access as 2250 North Park Hills Drive.