Brownsboro Farm

Brownsboro Farm

Brownsboro Farm Park - By Kit Kincade

Take a quiet walk in shady vale along a country stream; meet your neighbors for a game of tennis after work; cool off with your kids in the swimming pool; or get into a volleyball game on a Sunday afternoon.
These are just a few of the activities available to Brownsboro Farm residents in the city's unique 11-acre park system.
The southern end of the park, accessible from Cascade Road, is devoted to recreation facilities; an all-weather tennis court, a four-lane, 20 yard swimming pool, a playground, and volleyball and badminton courts.
A nature park at the northern end accessible from Broadland Trail, provides a mixture of grassy slopes and a hardwood forest lined by a series of trail and centered on Little Goose Creek and its tributaries.
The park's facilities are open to all residents, but families using the swimming pool pay an annual fee to the city's Parks Department. The park system is also supported by a property tax of five cents per $100 approved by city voters in a November 1998 referendum.
The swimming pool opens on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend with a parade through the city. It is open daily through Labor Day. A swim team for children ages four through 18 competes with other clubs in the Louisville Swimming Association in June and July.
Tournaments for tennis, volleyball, badminton, and horseshoes are some of the many activities organized for holiday weekends. A family cookout around the big, brick barbecue is a regular event.
Kids and parents gather in costume at the pool for a special Halloween party before trick or treating. An Easter Egg hunt in the meadow at Broadland Trail welcomes spring.
The nature park provides a series of walking trails through forested hillsides and grassy vales.
The path from Broadland Trail drops rapidly 70 feet from the city's streets to the valley carved from layers of rock by Little Goose Creek. At several spots throughout the area you can see abandoned roads, fence lines and springs; vestiges of the farm that once covered this area.
Large groves of sycamores and ash trees dominate the flat valley of Little Goose Creek. Carinoid stems and shellfish fossils can be found in the creek bed.
The largest and oldest trees in the park ar maple, beech, shag-bark hickory and black walnut trees. Several buckeye trees line the slopes near the swimming pool.
Thorn-covered honey locust and osage orange trees are there to jab the unwark hiker.
Climbing vines include large wild grapevines as well as Virginia creeper, poison ivy and honey suckle. Watercress abounds in The Farm Creek and in the brook flowing into it from the spring. Wild strawberries are plentiful in May. At least fifty species of birds ranging from pileated woodpeckers to blue herons have been identified by bird watchers in the lower park.