Oblate Park

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, some parks just sit there. Green grass, maybe a bench, maybe a water fountain if you're lucky.

But Oblate Park in Mission, Texas, that one's got a story layered underneath it like good soil. Cast your mind back to 1916. The City of Mission sat down with the Missionary Society of Oblate Fathers and worked out a lease agreement.

Ninety-nine years. That is not a handshake deal, friends. That is a commitment.

The purpose was plain and generous: create a public park for the use and benefit of all the citizens of Mission. And that's what they did. Now the park takes its name from those same Oblate Fathers, a society of Catholic priests who, six years before that lease was ever signed, had sold the very land that became the townsite of Mission itself.

So these were not strangers to this ground. They knew it well. Under the shade of whatever was growing there, Oblate Park became the kind of place a town reaches for on its best days.

Band concerts echoing out across the grass. Memorial Day celebrations drawing folks together to remember. Fourth of July festivities lighting up the season.

And as Mission grew, as a major addition to the city took shape around it, Oblate Park sat right at the center of that growth, the focus of social activity for a developing city finding its stride. Some places hold a community's memory the way a good jar holds honey. Oblate Park has been doing exactly that since 1916.

What the marker says

In 1916 the City of Mission entered into a 99-year lease agreement with the Missionary Society of Oblate Fathers for the purpose of creating a public park for the use and benefit of all its citizens. Named for this society of Catholic priests, which, six years earlier, had sold land for the townsite of Mission, Oblate Park has been the scene of many band concerts, Memorial Day celebrations, and Fourth of July festivities. As the center of an early major addition to Mission, it became the focus of social activity for the developing city. (1984)