Spend an Afternoon in Stanbery Park

One of the many popular features in Cincinnati’s Parks is an abundance of good sledding/tubing/snowboarding areas. Cincinnati’s hilly topography lends itself well to such activity, and one park in particular is legendary for this—Stanbery Park. Stanbery Park is located on Oxford Avenue just north of Corbly in Mt. Washington. The big sledding hill gets many visitors whenever there is a sizable snowfall.

The park is named for Brigadier General Sanford B. Stanbery, Hamilton County’s highest-ranking officer during World War I, whose Tudor Revival home became the caretaker’s residence after the city purchased 125 acres from his widow in 1938. The park’s approximately 1.75 miles of hiking trails is part of the U.S. Department of the Interior’s National Trail System, which extends beyond the park boundaries to the Little Miami Scenic River Park on Elstun Avenue. Steps are common along the trail, consistent with the park’s hilly topography. In the spring, you can find wildflowers such as trillium, Dutchmen’s breeches, many varieties of violets, Jack-in-the-pulpit, blood root, and celandine poppy. There are first-come-first-served picnic tables, an open shelter, and a softball field. A sculpture known as “the Boy and the Book,” by Arturo Ivone, is a life-sized bronze depicting a young man sitting on a tree stump with an open book on his lap. This sculpture is a World War I memorial commissioned by the Mt. Washington Civic Club and the American Legion Post 484. It originally stood in Campus Lane Park and was moved to Stanbery Park in 1940. 

Stanbery Park's Advisory Council sponsors an annual fundraiser in early November called the Pumpkin Chuck. The Pumpkin Chuck involves tossing pumpkins at the park's sledding hill with a trebuchet, a medieval catapult. This is a good way to dispose of your leftover Halloween pumpkins and raise money for the Park at the same time.

The Trebuchet in Action!