Lake and Drive Penn Valley Park

A crowning achievement of the “City Beautiful” movement in Kansas City, Penn Valley Park remains a massive acreage of an urban park so perfectly integrated into the grid, it’s hard to tell when it begins or ends. The three-acre Washington Lake sits in a valley just off of the interstate, and motorists tend to zoom past folks fishing in the otherwise peaceful waters. The historic Penn Street Ravine has long been a flyover for travelers—in the 19th Century the tree-lined area was a common passageway for pioneers on the Santa Fe Trail. Penn Valley Park, as it was built in 1904, has remained friendly to travelers since, with one section being used in the 1910s as a rest stop for cross-country motorists and in the 1940s as a camp for soldiers on leave. Today, the park houses a theatre, a skate park, and an off-leash dog park—not to mention the Liberty Memorial.