Paul Richards Park
Waxahachie, Ellis County, Texas
Marker Inscription
This ballpark has hosted athletic events since the early 20th century. By 1914, local officials began planning for a field to attract a major league baseball team to train in Waxahachie. After various team representatives visited in 1915, local businessmen formed the Waxachie Ball Park Association to raise funds. The Detroit Tigers decided to train here in 1916 if facilities were satisfactory. Builders soon completed the field, known as Jungle Park. It included a grandstand and bleachers, and its field measured 360 feet down both foul lines and 412 feet from home plate to the center field fence. The Tigers trained here in 1916 and 1917, and the Chicago White Sox and Cincinnati Reds, as well as the Kansas City Blues of the American Association, followed in subsequent seasons. The Reds won the World Series the year they trained here (1919). The diamond also served as an athletic field for Waxahachie High School. In 1922, when the Chamber of Commerce began managing the property, a flood damaged the site. Although the grandstand was dismantled and rebuilt at the high school campus in 1923, Jungle Park continued to be used by teams, including one organized by the Woodmen of the World; for a time the field was also known as Woodman Park. During World War II, it fell into disrepair until Waxahachie native Paul R. Richards, a major league player and manager, again stirred local interest for baseball. Renamed Paul Richards Park, the field reopened in 1946 with lights for night games and a terrace system to prevent flooding. In following years, many local teams and organizations have used the field, which the school district purchased in 1965. (2007)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
In the 1910s, small Texas towns competed to lure major-league clubs south for spring training, and Waxahachie built a field—nicknamed Jungle Park—that drew the Detroit Tigers, White Sox, Reds, and other pro teams. Flood damage, a rebuilt grandstand, and years of neglect nearly ended it before native son and big-league manager Paul Richards revived the park, which reopened with lights in 1946. Long shared with the local high school, the ground has hosted community baseball for over a century.
Why it matters
The park captures the early-20th-century golden age when major-league teams trained in Southern towns and baseball anchored civic life across small-town America.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Paul R. Richards
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Getzendaner Memorial Park
Waxahachie, TX
Laid out in 1889 as West End Park, this Waxahachie ground soon became Chautauqua Park, hosting the annual summer assemblies that carried culture, lectures, and music from western New York to towns across the country. For two weeks each year through 1930, thousands camped here amid tents, a barbershop, a post office, and a 1902 auditorium that welcomed speakers from William Jennings Bryan to Will Rogers. The park was renamed in 1914 for Civil War veteran W.H. Getzendaner and remains a civic gathering place.
The Sims Family of Ellis County
Italy, TX
The Sims family were among the first pioneers of Ellis County, settling along Chambers Creek in 1851 where Nicholas P. Sims operated a mill and helped lay out the county's early roads. In 1852 Nicholas donated land for a Methodist church and, with his brother-in-law Ezekial Marshall Brack, organized the Waxahachie Masonic Lodge; Brack went on to serve as county judge. Over 150 years the family built ranches, a cotton gin, and — through bequests from Nicholas and his stepson S. M. Dunlap — public libraries in Waxahachie and Italy.
Lancaster Education
Lancaster, TX
Lancaster's first log school rose in 1846 near the settlement of Hardscrabble, and as families arrived the Masonic Lodge and other buildings served the growing community. In 1868 a former Confederate gun factory became the town's first school for African Americans, and by 1876 a formal school district had organized under local trustees. Through a Female Institute, a chartered district, WPA-funded athletics, and integration in 1965-66, the town wove a continuous thread of public education.
Rocky Crest School
Lancaster, TX
In 1868, just after emancipation, Lancaster's first school for African American children opened inside a former Confederate pistol factory, soon serving 73 pupils on Keller Branch. Known over the years as the Lancaster Colored School and later Rocky Crest, it moved among several locations, once reusing brick from the absorbed Rawlins School. Led by longtime principals like Laura B. and R. B. White, it taught eight grades and anchored community life until integration in 1965-66.