Photo by Deb Gau An archway built as part of a 2005 renovation project welcomes visitors to Liberty Park near the corner of East College Drive and West Marshall Street. Liberty Park was Marshall’s first city park — and it would become the first in a list of parks with patriotic names.

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MARSHALL — List out all of Marshall’s city parks, and you can see a definite pattern in their names.

There’s Liberty Park, Independence Park, Freedom, Justice, and Patriot parks, to name a few.

Marshall Parks and Recreation Superintendent Preston Stensrud said he’s not certain exactly where the tradition of giving city parks patriotic names comes from. But it’s one that goes back a long way, to Marshall’s first park.

“It’s kind of a cool theme to carry on, even if we don’t know how it started,” Stensrud said.

Liberty Park, located along East College Drive and the banks of the Redwood River, has had a couple of different names over its history. But the name “Liberty Park” has stuck around for more than 70 years, going by dates in archived newspaper stories.

The land where Liberty Park is now was once called “Whitney’s Grove,” said Lyon County Museum Director Jennifer Andries. The area got its name because it was part of land owned by Charles H. Whitney, an early settler of Marshall and the city’s first postmaster.

Today, a statue honoring Mary Whitney stands in Liberty Park. Mary Whitney was Charles Whitney’s wife, and the person who suggested the name “Marshall” for the new community.

Later on, Whitney’s Grove was simply called “City Park.” Marshall only had one municipal park up until 1926, when construction began on what is now Legion Field Park. At some point, City Park was renamed. By 1951, when a Marshall newspaper covered the dedication of the new city band shell, the name Liberty Park was in use.

Other Marshall parks built in later decades kept up the pattern of being named after patriotic concepts. Stensrud said that, as far as he knew, Freedom Park, Justice Park and Independence Park have all had patriotic names since they were built.

“That must have been kind of where it started,” Stensrud said.

City plans for construction work at Freedom Park, located near South Fourth Street, date back to the 1970s, Stensrud said. There were also plans for work at Justice Park near North Seventh Street in the early 1980s, and for Independence Park on East Lyon Street in the late 1980s.

As the city of Marshall continued to grow, more parks were added, including a former wayside rest along Minnesota Highway 23, a park along Windstar Street, a dog park near A Street, and an unnamed park area near Dublin Street. In 2014, the city held a contest to help rename some of these parks — and many local residents submitted patriotic names, Stensrud said.

“We had 106 suggestions, and a lot still carried that theme,” he said. “It’s kind of interesting that people wanted to continue that.”

Some of the name submissions included “Honor Park,” “Centennial Park,” “Constitution Park,” and “Gettysburg Park,” he said. A total of 17 people chose the name “Patriot Park,” which became Windstar Park’s official new name.

Wayside Rest Park along Highway 23 became Victory Park, and the park near Dublin Street became Allegiance Park. The dog park near A Street was named Loyalty Dog Park.

Some Marshall city parks have names that come from their own histories. Legion Field Park was built on 21 acres of land that was purchased by the Luther Irl Snapp Post of the American Legion, and then gifted to the city, according to local newspaper coverage from the 1920s and 1930s. The park became the site of athletic fields and Marshall’s city swimming pool.

Memorial Park, which was formally dedicated in 2011, gets its name from its purpose. The park, located at the corner of Main Street and College Drive, is the site of two memorials. One memorial honors the lives lost in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and the other honors members of the U.S. military.