Lest there be any doubt, the City of Powell affirmed last week that Homesteader Park will always be a park.

At a March 16 meeting, the council agreed to file a document with the Park County Clerk’s Office that says the roughly 45-acre park “shall be retained and used for public outdoor recreation in perpetuity.”

The U.S. Department of the Interior required the city to record the document as a condition of receiving a $500,000 grant from the Land and Water Conservation Fund (LWCF); the funding is covering roughly half the cost of the park’s new splash pad, which opened last spring, but the feds have been withholding the last 10% until all of their conditions are met.

City Administrator Zack Thorington said there are “plenty” of city parks that are already subject to the stipulation as a result of receiving LWCF funding, including the Powell Golf Course. Homesteader Park itself received money from the program decades ago to build a pathway, Thorington said, but the federal government has since added a requirement that a map of the park be filed alongside the outdoor recreation restriction. 

The terms of the document do leave the door open to changing Homesteader Park’s use in the future — but only with the approval of the Wyoming Department of State Parks and Cultural Resources and the Department of the Interior, which would have the final say.