Washington Park, known to locals as Wash Park, is Denver’s favorite big backyard: about 160 acres of lakes, flower gardens and shady paths southeast of downtown. Walk or run the loop, watch the sunset over Smith Lake from the 1913 boathouse and spread out a blanket on the largest meadow in the Denver park system.

The park grew up around one of Denver’s first big irrigation projects. In 1865 the city hired John Smith to build a ditch from the South Platte River, and Smith’s Ditch, later called City Ditch, was finished in 1867. Smith also created a lake where the ditch crossed a low spot on his land and used it as a reservoir and a source of winter ice. That lake became Smith Lake, the heart of the park. In 1899 the city named the new park Washington Park to mark the centennial of George Washington’s death, and city landscape architect Reinhard Schuetze drew a plan with two lakes and a great meadow between them. The Great Meadow was built from 1901 to 1907, and the southern lake, Grasmere Lake, was added in 1906 and named after a village in England’s Lake District. A bathhouse opened on Smith Lake in 1911, the year swimming began there, and architect Jules Jacques Benois Benedict designed the boathouse across the water, which opened in 1913. Washington Park is part of the Denver Park and Parkway System listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Today Wash Park is a place to slow down. Smith Lake has an urban feel, with the boathouse, playground and picnic areas along its shore, while Grasmere Lake to the south is quieter and more pastoral. A remnant of City Ditch still winds through the park, and the formal summer flower beds are among the largest in the Denver parks system. Look for the Eugene Field House at 715 S. Franklin St., the cottage where the “Children’s Poet” lived in the early 1880s. Margaret “Molly” Brown campaigned in 1927 to save it from demolition, and it was moved to the park in 1930. Just north of the house stands Mabel Landrum Torrey’s 1919 statue of Field’s poem “Wynken, Blynken, and Nod.” Bring a frisbee, a volleyball or your running shoes and you’ll fit right in.

Denver Parks and Recreation is improving the park through late 2026, with work on picnic areas, the tennis courts near the playground, aging asphalt paths and a section of City Ditch, including three new pedestrian bridges. See the Washington Park projects page for details, and expect some temporary detours.