Depot Park

Depot Park. . , Although never a city entity, this park was located on the east side of Sixth Street just south of the Northern Pacific Railroad tracks, also called NP Park as it was on Northern Pacific RR land. The first NP Depot was just to the north, where the concrete water tower now stands. It was a popular meeting place, later largely wooded, and apparently somewhat of a hangout for hobos so was sometimes called Hobo Park. From 1886-1887 there was a splendid 2-block long, 2-way toboggan slide here. Visualize now no NP freight depot and no Baehr Building and in their places two wooden toboggan slides where one would slide east to one end from 6th St. then climb the other one on 8th St. for the return trip! Between the two slides was an ice rink., One of the earliest bandstands stood here for a quarter century until the Parker Bandstand was built in Gregory Park in 1914. In this year the NPRR officially ordered the park open to the public., This was later the location of the Baehr Building , 1936, and the Brainerd Theater , 1938. The upper floor was destroyed by fire in 1964. It was demolished in February of 1999, and made into a parking lot.