Perkerson Park turned out to be my favorite park that I visited. The park is absolutely huge, and has many things to do. The park is very fully encapsulated by surrounding neighborhoods, which I assume is where most of the visitors come from. The full frisbee golf course, multiple softball fields, outstanding playgrounds, useful recreation buildings, nice utilities, and beautiful scenery all make this park worth the visit. While D.H. Stanton had a great feel to it, Perkerson does as well, but with a better feeling of nature and scenery. Plentiful trees and the beautiful stream make it a very woodsy park. On the day I visited, the park was mostly empty. However, it was easy for me to imagine the families and groups of people that most likely come and visit this park, and use it for various activities. I believe parks like this one make a great addition to the connectivity and innovation that the Beltline hopes to accelerate, and that they are very beneficial additions to neighborhoods and cities. Some of downtown Atlanta’s parks are less than appealing, and tend to either be underused, under kept, bland, or all of the above. Perkerson Park, however, proves how a city park should be. A city is a city, and that means the environment has very little trees, nature, water, etc. A park’s job is to create an appealing environment for citizens to enjoy, as well as provide a location for people to partake in activities that there may be no space for in the city. Perkerson Park perfectly defines this kind of park, and that’s why it belongs on the trail of the Beltline.

https://youtu.be/dKz2cR8TgvA

The video above shows a short clip of one of the most prominent sounds I experienced at Perkerson Park. 

These images show the stream itself, and an example of one of the multiple bridges placed throughout the park that allow park visitors and frisbee golf players to cross over the stream.

I have always loved the sight and sound of running streams, and this park brought me back to my childhood some. Both the immense amount of trees and the stream brought a very nature-oriented feel to this park.

One thing that stood out to me in this park were three humungous pavilions/buildings that appeared to be meant for special events and other recreational activities. The first two images show the building, which I did not get to take a picture of the interior, but it looked very nicely built and appeared to have a basement. The third and fourth images show different pavilion type structures with plenty of seating, trash cans, and grills. The fourth image, if looked at closely, also shows a few men I witnessed filming what appeared to be a music video. The amount of opportunity in this park is very clear with these structures and the environment they are in. The park is undoubtedly an attractive place for the surrounding neighborhoods, families, and communities.

One of the most peculiar aspects of the park was the seemingly hidden full set of softball/baseball fields. Through my online research, I saw that one of the attractions for Perkserson Park were the softball fields, but I truly could not find a way to access them. I discovered there was an entirely other entrance to the park from a different neighborhood after several minutes of searching. The fields were beautiful and made me want to play some softball like I did with my family when I was a kid. There were signs about the place about different teams, answering the question of why these fields even existed. Compared to the D.H. Stanton softball field, these fields appeared to be built for competitive and recreational use, with scoreboards, high fencing, and nice dugouts, towers, and lights. The fields proved to be yet another amazing attraction in Perkerson Park.

Perkerson Park’s playground may have defeated D. H. Stanton’s in regards to both size and quality. The first two images show two different playground sets with various sets of monkey bars, slides, and activities. On the weekday afternoon that I visited the park, the playgrounds were entirely empty. However, it’s easy to imagine groups of children playing around on the swings and the monkey bars after school in this neighborhood park. The park did an awesome job of making the park feel both kid-friendly and attractive to adults with the large pavilions and full frisbee golf course.

The structure of Perkerson Park is created around a full frisbee golf course. The individual holes are well hidden among the parks plentiful forestry and running streams. It took several minutes of exploring for me to even realize there was a frisbee golf course at all. The holes are marked by patches of turf used as tees, as pictured in the fourth image. As I walked around, a group of frisbee golfers casually played a match. They seemed to have visited the park often. The entire course consists of 18 holes placed throughout the park. It was undoubtedly an interesting addition to an urban park such as Perkerson.