SEQUIM — As the search continues for a new City Hall site, at least one woman has looked to a spot on the main street, a piece of land the city already owns and that has been groomed and greened into a showplace.
“I don’t know why Pioneer Park hasn’t been considered” as a potential City Hall location, activist Judy Larson said at a recent City Council meeting.
There are 62 live reasons — and about 12 others — says Liz Phelps, a member of the Sequim Prairie Garden Club.
The 62-member club has been caring for Pioneer Memorial Park, 387 E. Washington St., since 1948, when it “rescued the park from the blackberry-infested mess it had become,” Phelps said.
Long before that, the park was a cemetery where many of Sequim’s earlier residents were buried.
The cemetery closed in 1914, and during the first half of the 20th century, most of the human remains were moved to cemeteries in Blyn, Sequim and Dungeness, said Sequim historian June Robinson.
After the garden club took over, the 2.5-acre park began its transformation into the evergreen-shaded and rhododendron-dotted refuge it is today.
