A tale of two Leverich Parks and two milestonesSubscriber Exclusive

A gift to the city

During its meeting on April 21, 1924, the members of the Vancouver City Council were in for a surprise.

Appearing before them that night was Anna Leverich, an 80-year-old longtime resident of the city, and her attorney, Charles Hall.

Leverich was there to hand over the title to a 42-acre parcel just within the northern boundary of the city limits.

As part of the deal presented to the council, Leverich would receive $500 from the city every year on Jan. 15 for the rest of her natural life.

The Columbian reported the only stipulations attached to the gift were “that the land shall be used always as a city park or for similar purposes, and that it will be known as Leverich Park.”

The parcel was a nearly square shape bordered on the south by 39th Street, on the west by Pacific Highway and on the east by city limits, which at that time extended north from the terminus of J Street.

Much of the land from the gift was originally owned by Edson M. Rowley, a successful real estate broker who was the city’s largest taxpayer when he died of a stroke in 1919.

Since Rowley’s passing, the city had been in negotiations with his estate to acquire some of the land for use as a city park.

At the same time, Leverich had been acquiring land from the estate, saying she loved the beauty of the tract and wanted it preserved. Her son-in-law, John Elwell, was one of the administrators of the Rowley estate.

Who was Anna Leverich?

Anna Leverich was born Anna Howard on Jan. 15, 1844, in Iowa to William and Jane Howard. Her mother died in 1851, and her father remarried later that year.

In 1852, the family traveled west over the plains “behind an ox team,” according to The Columbian. One of the Howard children died before the family reached Oregon. The family wintered in The Dalles, Ore., and later moved to Molalla, Ore., before settling in Monroe, Ore., in the Willamette Valley. Anna Leverich married Benjamin Leverich in 1863 in Albany, Ore.

In the early 1870s, Benjamin and Anna Leverich moved to Clark County. Benjamin Leverich worked as a carpenter, wheelwright and cabinetmaker within the headquarters of the Vancouver Barracks. He also served as a postmaster in Battle Ground and later as a justice of the peace in Vancouver.

In 1875, the Leveriches adopted a 3-year-old girl named Ida Russell, whose mother had died. The adoption was made possible by a special act of the Washington Territorial Legislature drawn up by the girl’s father, David L. Russell, who was a legislator. (Washington was not admitted as a state until 1889.) In 1889, Ida Leverich married John Elwell.

In 1903, with Benjamin Leverich in poor health, Anna Leverich moved with her husband to Cloverdale, Calif., in Sonoma County, north of Santa Rosa. Benjamin Leverich died in Cloverdale on Feb. 18, 1908, at age 74.

Shortly afterward, Anna Leverich returned to their Vancouver home on West 11th Street, where she remained active in various civic and charitable organizations.

After donating the land for the park, Anna Leverich moved to Corvallis, Ore., to be near her brother, George Howard. She died of cancer on Jan. 28, 1930. Ida Elwell raced to be by her mother’s side, but an ice storm slowed her train from Vancouver to Corvallis, and Elwell arrived shortly after her mother’s passing.

In the years after Leverich’s death, the park began to change dramatically, most notably with the construction of a stadium that was the vision of longtime Vancouver Mayor John P. Kiggins.

Developing the park

Within a week of the donation from Leverich in 1924, the city began clearing paths and removing dead trees from the property, using inmates from the city jail to perform the work.

On March 2, 1926, The Columbian reported that the park “is covered with a fine stand of young fir and other evergreen trees. The land is partially rough and through the lower end of the park Burnt Bridge Creek meanders along its crooked course through the shade of the deep woods.

“On a three-acre tract, located within a big bend of the creek, the large timber and underbrush has been cleared. … Tables and comfort stations have been constructed. Camp kitchens constructed of brick will be erected and there is water piped from the city mains. The creek at this point is shallow and its bottom is sandy, just the sort of a stream in which children love to wade on hot summer days.”

In the fall of 1926, a local historical group raised funds to have the Covington House disassembled from its location in Orchards, moved to a plot on the east side of Leverich Park and reconstructed there. It has stood there for nearly a century.

Beginning in 1930, Mayor Kiggins began allocating $1,000 a year from the city budget to improve the park.

By May 1933, in a flat portion of the park at the bottom of a descent from where the Covington House was rebuilt, men working for the county welfare board had cleared the area to construct playing fields surrounded by a natural amphitheater. The work on the fields was completed by summer, and on Aug. 19, 1933, a dedication of “Kiggins Bowl at Leverich Park” featured speeches from Kiggins and City Councilman George Stoner.

But the Kiggins Bowl celebrated that night was not the stadium that hosts high school sports events today. It only referred to the area in the park where the playing fields were constructed.

The stadium would come a few years later, when the city applied for a $99,000 Works Progress Administration grant for the construction of a stadium and tennis courts, with the city paying an additional $18,000 toward the project.

Construction began in early 1937, shortly after Kiggins started his ninth term as mayor. Plagued by delays and cost overages, construction wasn’t finished until 1939. It cost $200,000, with the city contributing about $50,000.

By then, Kiggins had been voted out of office and his successor, Al Stanley, resented his predecessor’s name being connected to the stadium. For many years, the facility was known simply at Leverich Park Stadium.

Big changes in 1950s

By the 1940s, the 42 acres of Leverich Park could be broken into three tiers — the upper part by Pacific Highway (today’s Main Street), a middle section that held the stadium and surrounding playing fields, and below that, picnic areas and forested trails along meandering Burnt Bridge Creek.

After World War II, plans began for a freeway through Vancouver. In 1947, the plans called for the freeway to “skirt the eastern and northern edges of Leverich Park.”

But after state surveyors finished their work, the path of the freeway was routed right through the eastern third of the park, eliminating the forested picnic areas along the creek as well as the tennis courts at 39th and I streets.

In late 1951, even as the first of about 60 homes in the path of the freeway construction were being removed, the state and city were still haggling over the price of the part of Leverich Park that would be lost. The state was offering $32,000. The city wanted $100,000.

While the state had the authority of eminent domain to take the land for the freeway, officials wanted to come to a “friendly resolution” with the city. That became more challenging when a group of “park protectors” began attending city council meetings, advocating for an alternate route to the freeway that would keep Leverich Park intact.

In February 1952, the state Highway Department announced that as part of its deal with the city, the state would purchase land and finance development of a “replacement park” east of where the freeway would be built.

After the city approved the deal, work began on the section of the freeway through the park, which included “construction of a new channel change for Burnt Bridge Creek to clear the limits of the freeway embankment through the lower level of Leverich Park.”

Grading work on the replacement park began late in 1953. On July 2, 1954, a ribbon cutting officially opened the new Leverich Park to the public. The Columbian reported that nearly 100 people attended as Mayor Robert S. McCall cut the ribbon that spanned the main pathway to the park.

This summer, the new Leverich Park will turn 70 years old.

Years since the split

In the eyes of many, the freeway construction of the 1950s split Leverich Park in two.

However, the city stopped referring to the remaining 30 acres of the original park land as Leverich Park.

In 1947, the Vancouver School District took over maintenance of Kiggins Bowl — by now the name had been formally adopted by the city — as local high school teams started playing football and baseball games there.

In 1964, the school district and the city entered into a lease-swap agreement in which the city would lease the land where Kiggins Bowl was to the school district, and in turn, the school district would lease land on 13th Street between Broadway and C Street, where the city would construct a new city hall.

The 50-year lease swap agreement lasted less than 30 years. In 1993, the city and school district agreed to trade the land. The school district took ownership of the 20 acres around Kiggins Bowl in exchange for 8 acres around the Marshall Center, as well as 13 acres south of Mill Plain Boulevard near the old Vancouver Library on Fort Vancouver Way. The school district then built Discovery Middle School around the southern edges of Kiggins Bowl.

So whether it is the clamoring of students through the halls of Discovery Middle School, the cheering fans under the Friday night lights at Kiggins Bowl or the roar of cars racing up and down Interstate 5, it is doubtful Anna Leverich would recognize the peaceful tract of forested land she gave to the city of Vancouver a century ago.

But there is no doubt that the foresight and generosity of a woman who called Vancouver home for nearly 50 years changed the landscape of the city forever.