Creating Southside’s First Park
Flagstaff’s Southside neighborhood has endured a century of flooding and has not a single public park.
The Rio de Flag and Clay Avenue Wash were rerouted about 1900. Solid blue lines show the resulting flow channels through the Southside Neighborhood. The red line is a block of Ellery Avenue alongside a City-owned stream channel, with a strip of City land on the south side of Ellery Avenue (orange line). It is the best – perhaps only – opportunity for a park in Southside.
Shortly after white settlers created Flagstaff in 1876, Native Americans, African Americans, and Mexicans started moving to Flagstaff to work in the lumber industry and other jobs. They were strongly discouraged from settling in the main town (north of the rail line that lies on the southside of Route 66), so they were confined to the area “south of the tracks.” Starting about 1896, private landowners – without any state, county, or federal permits – rerouted the Rio de Flag through the Southside Neighborhood. They built a narrow, 2,800-foot trench in a broad floodplain. This trench intensified flooding in parts of downtown and almost all of Southside. Flood risks make it hard for Southside residents to maintain homes or invest in new housing. Many residents cannot afford flood insurance because the blue areas (~1400 structures in Southside) are within the 100-year floodplain designated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
At Ellery Ave, looking upstream from the west end of the Park.
In 2019, the City agreed to hire the Army Corps of Engineers to put the Rio de Flag into a 2-mile long concrete tube from Frances Short Pond to Warner’s Nursery. This will greatly reduce flood risk. However, the terrain in Southside is so flat that summer monsoon storms or spring snowmelt will cause floods in Southside even after the concrete tube reduces flows from upstream. In 2017, Friends of the Rio de Flag received an EPA Environmental Justice grant to partner with the Southside community on education and planning for the future of their river. The City of Flagstaff has worked with Southside organizations, with cooperation from the Friends of the Rio de Flag, to create the Southside Neighborhood Plan. The Plan addresses affordable housing, local flood control, and infrastructure improvements, and includes measures to ensure the voices of Southside residents are heard in the planning process.
The Rio along Ellery Ave
The Rio de Flag along Ellery Avenue offers the very best – perhaps the only – site for a public park in Southside. The Rio de Flag runs on City property along the north side of Ellery Avenue from WC Riles Drive to Verde St and the City owns a strip of land on the south side of Ellery Avenue (see map above). Because the City land has few native trees, no sidewalk, and no park facilities (not even a bench), it is a blank slate for a new park. Perhaps the City could remove pavement from the City’s half-block of Ellery Avenue to make the park bigger and better. First a plan must be developed by local residents, the City of Flagstaff, Southside Community Association, Murdoch Community Center, and two African-American churches within a block of the site. The Friends of the Rio de Flag is eager to be a key player. The Rio de Flag Watershed Plan allows us to apply for Bureau of Reclamation grants to do the planning and then to implement it. Several City staff persons are keenly interested in making this happen, but they need help. Let’s do it!
