GREAT FALLS — Great Falls Mayor Cory Reeves has proclaimed Wednesday, June 17, as Wadsworth Pond Day, recognizing work led by the Sun River Watershed Group and supported by Great Falls Park and Recreation, Walleyes Unlimited, Missouri River Fly Fishers, Electric City Disc Golf, local donors and others to improve the park as a public resource.
All of those partners together, joined by volunteers, make up the Wadsworth Pond Community Coalition.
(WATCH: Wadsworth Pond Day highlights park improvements, community partnerships)
Tracy Wendt, executive director of the Sun River Watershed Group, said her organization works to improve and restore resources connected to the Sun River and its communities. After visiting Wadsworth Park herself and hearing community feedback, she reached out to Great Falls Park and Recreation to ask how the area could be improved.
Wendt shared how Parks and Recreation manages more than 50 parks, which can make it difficult to focus heavily on one site, which helped lead to the creation of the coalition.
The group started with a wish list, looking at what the pond needed, what the public would use and how partners could help make those projects happen.
“Wadsworth Pond is a great community resource for the city of Great Falls,” Wendt said.
Some of the early work focused on improving the banks of the pond so people could get closer to the water more easily. She says the group also worked with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks on recommendations to improve the experience, while supporting efforts to improve the intake that helps bring water into the pond.
Since then, partners have helped add a permanent two-vault toilet, two picnic pavilions, a second fishing dock, trash cans and dog waste stations and 13 new trees for a windbreak.
“I feel like this park has been really underutilized,” Wendt said. “There’s a lot of interest in it being a better community resource.”
They have also been looking ahead to future work at the pond, including continued maintenance, weed control and other improvements.
Wendt said the proclamation is one way to help more people learn about the work already being done at the park.
“We need to make sure the public is aware of the improvements we’ve made at this pond,” Wendt expressed.
The Celebrate Wadsworth Pond event begins at 4 p.m. Wednesday, June 17th. The event will include a ribbon cutting for the new amenities, food, yard games, hands-on demonstrations of disc golf and fly fishing, and more information from some of the partners at Wadsworth Pond.
The Sun River Watershed Group said the event will also highlight upcoming work and thank the donors who helped make the projects possible.
“Wadsworth Pond is not the same pond you used to come out to a few years ago even,” Wendt laughed. “It’s nice.”
