Central Utah's Price is known to many for its collection of dinosaur bones and rich history of mining — and by this weekend, it will have a unique new playground to reflect those two sources of city pride.
Visitors to the Basso Dino-Mine Adventure Park will be able to enter the playground through a mine portal and then crawl into the mouth of a Tyrannosaurus rex and slide down its tail, climb up the side of a man-made volcano or cool off on a hot day by pushing a button on a large rocket.
"It's not your typical little playground set," said Gary Sonntag, Price public works director. "I think it's going to be a great thing."
Billed as a playground for all of Carbon County, the approximately one-acre park is being funded by a large grant and donations from all over the county.
The idea for the estimated $200,000 park came just over a year ago when Susan Polster pulled off U.S. 89 with her grandson and then happened upon a park in Fruit Heights.
The park there features an 8-foot-tall entrance through a castle facade that encloses a pirate ship, lookout tower and dragon-tube slide, among other features. Polster watched her grandson Ashton Polster, then 18 months old, play in the park for hours over the course of two visits.
"I thought, we've got to do this in Price," said Polster, a journalism professor at the College of Eastern Utah in Price.
Polster and Price City Council member Jeanne McEvoy began fund-raising efforts and have netted nearly $225,000. At 6:30 p.m. Saturday the park will hold a grand opening to celebrate the more than 2,000 volunteers from around the county who donated time, money, materials and elbow grease to make it all happen.
"It is a community-built playground, through and through," McEvoy said.
Price entrepreneur Tony Basso donated $35,000 and was given naming rights to the park. Another $75,000 came from a grant through the Recreation Transportation Special Service District, which makes mineral-lease funds available to applicants from throughout Carbon County for various recreation and transportation needs.
Businesses, civic groups and individuals raised an additional $85,000 by selling bricks, pieces of picket fence, plaques, benches and tables that will have donor names engraved on them.
The park will become part of the 22-acre Terrace Hills Park in northeastern Price, near Carbon High School and the Price Cemetery.
The architects for the park were from Leathers & Associates, an Ithaca, N.Y., firm that specializes in custom-designed, community-built playgrounds. The same group designed parks in Cedar City, Pleasant Grove, West Jordan and the one in Fruit Heights, with each park having its own theme.
E-mail: sspeckman@desnews.com