Brief by Central Staff
South Park – July 1998 – Colorado Central Magazine
It turns out that Colorado doesn’t have the only South Park that isn’t on TV. There’s one in Pennsylvania which is actually a park in the most common sense of the word.
The South Park in the Keystone State is a game preserve and part of the Allegheny County public park system.
It was featured in the June 9 edition of the Wall Street Journal on account of its small bison herd and resulting difficulties with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The herd is so small (eight animals) that the bison are too inbred, the USDA announced, and this South Park could have lost its license to keep bison in captivity. But it arranged to trade some critters with a farm in Ohio to improve its genetic variety.
Our South Park has bison, too — we saw a herd last month somewhere east of Hartsel. But other than that, our South Parks don’t seem to have much in common.
The word “park,” as used hereabouts for a broad mountain valley, comes from the French word “parc,” meaning “an enclosed area.” The more common meaning, a place to recreate, comes from Old French through Middle English, when it meant royal land set aside for hunting.
