McKinley Park in East Sacramento

McKinley park is in Sacramento, but it’s right off the freeway and such a cool park with unique play equipment making it worth the 25 minute drive. It’s convenient location just off the freeway also makes a great “stopping over” point to break up the drive to Ikea, the airport, or other out of town destinations. In the spring the trees overlooking the duck pond next to the playground are covered in beautiful pink blossoms.

For a long time McKinley park used to have quite a resemblance to Castle Park. Then in 2012, a third of the playground burned down due to arson. The community rallied support to rebuild the playground, and a year later, completely demoed the old playground and rebuilt it from the ground up with a huge volunteer labor force. The new playground still has a similar architecture, but built out of splinter-free synthetic materials that look (for the most part) like wood, featuring design elements suggested by the community, resulting in a very unique fun playground, up to date on all the latest safety and accessibility standards.

The play area overlooks a scenic duck pond. Signs say you aren’t supposed to feed the ducks though, as human food is basically junk food for ducks. The play area is fenced around all but the entrance/exit points, so kids are unlikely to accidentally run into the pond (though outside the play area on the walking trails, watch out for goose poop!). The turf in the play area is a mix of woodchips, with wheelchair/stroller friendly rubber turf trails running through the park.

The toddler play structure is closest to the entrance and has a train theme on the side of it, and has long ramps great for exploring. There are rockers ranging from single person rockers all the way up to a four-person spring-loaded teeter totter. The play structure was very engaging and my 2 year old was content to play there for quite some time before i tried to pry him away from that to explore the rest of the playground.

One of the play features that is perhaps most unique at this park is it has a large merry-go-round. Not quite the same as the ones I remember from childhood, but closer to it than any other playground I’ve yet been to in the area, it has room for quite a few kids at once and has spider-nets as well as individual spinning “cages” for passengers to ride on. It’s quite heavy to push, which makes it a little slower than the old fashioned kind (as I think it has to be to meet modern playground safety codes), but still completely delighted my kids, who had never seen more than a spinning seat play feature at other playgrounds.

There is also a sand-pit that is quite well-contained.

And an outer-space themed rock-climbing wall.

Big play structure, with ADA ramps affording my toddler easy access to the slides.

Toddler and Accessible Swings:

Picnic Area:

More pictures:

Location

Parking

The park does not have a dedicated parking lot. There is, however, free street parking all around the park. When we went, mid-morning on a weekday, we were able to park right out in front, but at busy times there may be more walking involved to get from parking spot to the play structure.