World's Smallest Park Reopens In Portland After Refurbishment

PORTLAND, OR — Monday was a very big day for a very small park. Not just very small — Guinness World Records says it is the "world's smallest."

After being closed for several months because of work on the Better Naito Forever parkway improvement project, Mill Ends is not only reopened, it is now 6 inches to the west of its original location.

Six inches may not seem like a lot — but when one realizes that the entire park is only 452 square inches and is said to be inhabited by leprechauns, it is quite a distance.

"In Portland, we've long embraced the quirky, creative spirit that drives our city," said Portland Parks Commissioner Carmen Rubio, who attended the ceremony. "Mill Ends Park embodies that spirit."

Rubio added that safety improvements will make it easier for pedestrians to visit and help the leprechauns living there.

The park was started in 1946 by Oregon Journal columnist Dick Fagan. His second-floor office overlooked Front Street, as Naito Parkway was then known. One day he noticed there was an unusual hole in the median that looked as if it was supposed to be home to a light pole.

He waited and waited for the light pole and eventually decided that it wasn't coming. So he planted flowers and eventually a tree.

In 1948, the park was "officially" dedicated for the first time.

Since Fagan's office overlooked the park, he often wrote about what went on there, describing the families of leprechauns that had settled there — the "only leprechaun colony west of Ireland."

It turned out that Fagan was the only person who could see the colony's head leprechaun, Patrick O'Toole.

Attempts to reach O'Toole for this story were unsuccessful.

Guinness gave it the "world's smallest" designation in 1971, and five years later it became an official city park.

"It's just so iconic," Rubio said. "It's really a testament to the quirkiness and the ingenuity of Portlanders such as Mr. Fagan. It's a testament to the culture of our city that we’re preserving what is so quintessentially Portland."

As part of the renovation, the city installed a small Ferris wheel, a cooking pot, a park bench, pitchfork and shovel.

There is also a dinosaur roaming the park. While the city describes it as a "toy," it also points out that Portland Park Rangers had to check through the city code to see if there was anything about establishing "designated dinosaur off-leash areas."

There was not.

The question is, if it's a "toy," why the need to check the code?

Fagan's daughter, Carolyn Fagan, used an appropriately small pair of scissors to cut the tiny ribbon at the world's smallest park.