Kidd Springs Park

Kidd Springs Park — a spring-fed lake, a rescued Japanese garden and a two-ton lantern from the 1933 World’s Fair

Kidd Springs is a working neighborhood park of a little over thirty-one acres in North Oak Cliff, a short walk from the Bishop Arts District — ball fields, courts, a pool, a recreation center — with one entirely unexpected thing folded into it. Behind a gate at one edge lies a Japanese garden, dedicated in 1970, holding three seventeenth-century Edo-period artifacts and a stone lantern some ten feet tall and weighing two tons that the Japanese government sent to the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago. The garden was vandalized, forgotten, allowed to decay through the 2000s, researched back into public consciousness by an artist, and reopened in 2023 after a restoration costing about a million dollars. The park’s own story starts even earlier, with a spring in a hillside and a log laid across it by a boy who wanted somewhere to swim.

Highlights

• The Japanese garden — dedicated in 1970, designed by the Dallas firm Lambert’s Landscape Company, funded by a 1969 gift from Dr. and Mrs. Jack Edwards, and reopened in 2023 with new bridges, restored water features and paved accessible paths.
• The World’s Fair lantern — roughly ten feet tall and two tons in weight, sent by the Japanese government to the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago and now standing in an Oak Cliff park with almost nothing to explain it.
• Three Edo-period artifacts — seventeenth-century pieces from the collection of Oklahoma heiress Ethel Buell, offered to the Dallas park department by her daughter after Buell’s death in 1964.
• The spring-fed lake — the park’s centerpiece, fished from the bank; the original spring now lies outside the park boundary and its water is piped in.
• The butterfly garden — established in 2006, a small pollinator planting that has become one of the most-used corners of the park.
• The crepe myrtle plantings — put in during 2003, and the reason the park’s paths carry summer color when little else in Dallas does.

What’s inside

This is a full-service municipal park rather than a scenic one, and its density of facilities is the point: almost everything a neighborhood needs sits inside one boundary, with the Japanese garden as the quiet exception at its edge.

• The Japanese garden, with bridges, water features, stone artifacts and pagoda-inspired path lighting installed in the 2023 restoration.
• The recreation center, built in 1965, with a gymnasium, fitness room, meeting rooms and a kitchen, running programs from parent-and-baby classes to senior activities.
• A swimming pool dating from 1958, when most of the older pool was filled in, alongside the modern aquatic center.
• Tennis and pickleball courts, a basketball court, a volleyball court, plus soccer and softball fields.
• The lake with bank fishing, an observation platform and trails.
• A playground and the butterfly garden.

What to do and who it’s for

• Garden and design visitors — the restored Japanese garden is a small, serious piece of landscape with genuine historic objects in it, and it costs nothing to see.
• Neighborhood families — pool, playground, courts and year-round recreation center programming within walking distance of much of North Oak Cliff.
• Racket sports players — tennis and pickleball courts in a district where public courts are in short supply.
• Anglers — a quiet spring-fed lake with bank access and an observation platform.
• League teams — soccer and softball fields carrying regular organized play.
• Bishop Arts visitors — an easy, green counterweight to a few hours of shopping and eating a short walk away.

Getting there and practicalities

Kidd Springs sits in North Oak Cliff, close enough to the Bishop Arts District to combine the two in one outing on foot. The free Dallas Streetcar’s southern terminus is at Bishop Arts, which puts the park within a comfortable walk of a no-cost ride from downtown; on the DART rail network, Tyler/Vernon Station on the Red and Blue lines is the nearest stop, roughly a mile off, and several bus routes serve the area. Entry to the park and the Japanese garden is free. Dallas city code closes public parks between 11 p.m. and 5 a.m.; the recreation center keeps its own posted hours, running mornings to evenings Monday through Thursday, a short afternoon block on Friday and a Saturday morning, closed Sundays and major holidays. The Japanese garden is gated and its opening hours are shorter than the park’s, so check before making a special trip for it. Allow half an hour for the garden alone, an hour and a half for the whole park. On heat: the mature trees around the lake and in the garden give this park considerably better summer shade than most of Dallas, and the 2023 restoration deliberately specified drought-tolerant and well-adapted plants after the garden struggled through dry summers with limited irrigation. The open ball fields, as always in Texas, are unusable in the middle of a July afternoon.

When to visit

Spring is when the Japanese garden earns its reputation — new growth, running water, and the crepe myrtles and butterfly beds coming into their season. Summer pushes visitors under the trees by the lake and into the pool; go early, and treat the garden as a morning stop before the heat sets in. Autumn is the calmest and arguably the most beautiful stretch, with turning color reflected in the water and comfortable temperatures for a slow circuit of the garden’s paths. Winter reduces the garden to its structural elements — stone, water, bridges, the great lantern — which is exactly how a Japanese garden is meant to be read, and with the leaves down the Edo artifacts stand out as they do at no other time of year.

Worth knowing

The park takes its name from “Colonel” James W. Kidd, who bought the land in 1874 from Mrs. S. E. Winston. A relative later described the spring as a fountain gushing from the side of the hill; Kidd’s son dammed it with a fallen log to make a swimming hole. In 1887 the property passed to Edward P. Turner, who enlarged the water into a proper lake and in 1895 opened the private Kidd Springs Boating and Fishing Club for prominent residents. As Lake Cliff, just to the north, declined, Kidd Springs rose in its place, gaining a large swimming pool and a pavilion used for dancing. Wirt Davis acquired the property in 1910 and ran it as a public pleasure ground with pools, slides and the pavilion. The City of Dallas bought thirty-one acres in 1947 for $125,000. In 1958 most of the old pool was filled in and the present one built; the recreation center followed in 1965. The idea of a Japanese garden here is remarkably old — a Dallas newspaper floated it as early as 1895 — but it took a 1969 gift from Dr. and Mrs. Jack Edwards to fund one, designed by Lambert’s Landscape Company and dedicated in 1970. Its treasures came separately: Ethel Buell, an Oklahoma heiress, had collected Japanese pieces, and after her death in 1964 her daughter offered them to the Dallas park department. Vandals destroyed much of the original garden, and though the parks department rebuilt it with bond money and Lambert’s redid the landscaping and stonework, it slid again through the 2000s. What turned it around was research: in 2015 artist Cynthia Mulcahy won a grant from the Dallas Office of Arts and Culture and, after a month in Japan studying architecture and sculpture, tracked the objects’ provenance through oral histories with former neighbors, landscaping contracts and municipal archives in Dallas, San Francisco and New York. She established that the great lantern had come from the 1933 World’s Fair, and documented what had gone missing — an Edo-period Buddhist temple bell that cannot be accounted for, and a twelve-foot torii gate that once stood in the water. Her work built the case for restoration, funded from the 2017 bond program; construction began in spring 2022 and the garden reopened in 2023 with new bridges, accessible paved paths, repaired water features, new entry gates and lighting modeled on traditional pagoda forms.

Visitor tips

• Confirm the Japanese garden’s hours before you go. It is gated separately from the rest of the park and keeps a shorter schedule, and it is the reason most visitors come.
• Look for the big lantern and read the stonework carefully. Three Edo-period pieces survive here, and nothing about the setting prepares you for objects of that age.
• Pair it with Bishop Arts. The two are within an easy walk, and the free streetcar from downtown ends there, making a car-free half-day straightforward.

Questions and answers

Is there really a Japanese garden inside the park? Yes. It was dedicated in 1970, designed by Lambert’s Landscape Company with funding from a 1969 gift by Dr. and Mrs. Jack Edwards, and it reopened in 2023 after a restoration of roughly a million dollars.

Where did the stone lantern come from? It was sent by the Japanese government to the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago. It stands about ten feet tall and weighs some two tons, and its history was pieced together by artist Cynthia Mulcahy through archival research beginning in 2015.

Who was Kidd Springs named for? “Colonel” James W. Kidd, who bought the land in 1874, and the natural spring on it. His son created the first swimming hole by damming the spring with a fallen log.

Does the spring still feed the lake? Yes, indirectly. The original spring now lies outside the park boundary, and its water is carried into the park’s lake by pipe.

What else can you do here? A great deal: a swimming pool and aquatic center, a recreation center from 1965 with a gym and fitness room, tennis and pickleball, basketball and volleyball courts, soccer and softball fields, a playground, trails, bank fishing and a butterfly garden planted in 2006.

When did the city acquire the park? In 1947, when Dallas bought thirty-one acres for $125,000. Before that it had been private ground for more than seventy years — a fishing club from 1895, then a public pleasure resort under Wirt Davis from 1910.

Is the garden accessible? The 2023 restoration added paved accessible pathways, new bridges and path lighting, which made the garden usable for visitors who could not manage the old surfaces.

How do I get there on public transit? The free Dallas Streetcar ends at Bishop Arts, a short walk away; on DART rail, Tyler/Vernon Station on the Red and Blue lines is the nearest stop, about a mile from the park.