Recently I was browsing the Seattle Parks website, looking for Beacon Hill area parks. One park caught my eye: McClellan Place. There is no picture on the park’s web page, but the address is there: 16th and McClellan. “16th and McClellan? But… that’s the Red Apple!” I thought. And then I realized — McClellan Place is the tiny triangle of greenery at the corner there, the one that cars cut in front of when taking a right turn onto McClellan from Beacon Avenue. It has a tree and a rhododendron plant, and unfortunately, usually a few pieces of debris as well.

The Seattle Parks and Recreation Department has a collection of histories about most of the city’s parks, including one that gives us a fragment of information about this most tiny park. The original improvement, it tells us, was financed by the Beacon Hill Lions Club. Unfortunately, it gives no date. (Anyone know when? Do we even still have a Lions Club on the Hill?)

Next time you walk past the Red Apple, take a moment to visit McClellan Place, and enjoy a bit of one of the Hill’s — and Seattle’s — smallest parks. Perhaps next summer it would be nice to bring a lawn chair and a hibachi out there and have a picnic.