When the Presidio opens the newly constructed Tunnel Tops Park this Sunday, it will also unveil a new nature playground that for weeks has undergone rigorous testing by Bay Area kids.
The Presidio Trust invited students to test out the new playground and its structures constructed from natural materials in the weeks leading up to the park's opening.
The new Outpost is a playground where young people can climb boulders, scale fallen tree logs or happily play in the mud. It's a kid-centric piece of the new fourteen acre park built over twin traffic tunnels in the area's transition from a military base into public open space.
"We’re doing a test run and we’re bringing in groups of kids to test it out," said Michael Boland, the Presidio Trust's Chief Park Officer. "Learning they love to get dirty, that’s what we’re mostly learning."
To accommodate those needs for dirt and mud, the playground is equipped with troughs of water, ala Gold Rush era, where kids can splash around to their heart's content or pump water from an old fashion water pump. There are outdoor science workshops with objects from nature like pinecones.
"It feel like it’s a different experience," said eighth-grader Liam Kinguyen. "It’s not your traditional playground. It’s more outdoorsy."
There are massive logs carved into tunnels -- all made from trees that have fallen or were removed from the Presidio's grounds. There's a swing that moves from side to side rather than front and back and can hold several people.
"Everything is built of natural materials," Boland said. "Everything is meant to be touched, climbed on, wrestled with."
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The area also includes newly constructed buildings housing an art facility and a "field station" where visitors can examine animal bones or check out the tools of nature study. On a recent day Presido Adventure Guide Rajiv Natesan sat behind a desk in the station dissecting owl scat, under the watchful eye of a taxidermy owl.
"All this stuff you can feel it, and like see it," Natesan said. "Most museums and stuff it’d be behind a glass cage - you wouldn’t be able to feel the owl."
The new youth-oriented facilities are part of a campaign by the Presidio Trust to attract more young people from neighborhoods and Bay Area cities where they might not have opportunities to experience the great outdoors.
Inside the new art building, artist Favianna Rodriguez was busy cutting out colorful shapes to create a new ground mural in the Outpost Plaza. Rodriguez described her work bringing color to the park as a metaphor for the communities of color she hopes will now become part of the new park's story.
"I think it’s an amazing and beautiful park," Rodriguez said, "and I really want more communities from throughout the Bay Area to come and enjoy it."
With its heavy dose of nature-themes, adjoining vast vistas of the bay, the parks designers are hoping it will serve as a gateway for young people to explore other National Parks.
"This is how I think we build a culture that’s connected to the natural world and their national parks," said Damien Raffa, who bears the title, Presidio Trust Senior Park Experience Specialist.
On a recent day, the young focus group was busily buzzing through the park's new playground features. Two young girls scaled a boulder, a mop-haired kid shoveled wet sand into a bucket, and a group of students ran down a log, dodging in and out of its protruding branches.
Eighth-grader Soluna Ibarra-Tacdol took in the frenzied scene before clamoring to rejoin the group.
"I mean they get to see the city and see nature in an urban area," Ibarra-Tacdol said. "So it’s amazing."
