Baker City's new splash pad opened on June 14, 2025. (Lisa Britton/Baker City Herald)

I have been wetted by Baker City’s new, and only, splash pad.

I stayed clear of the fountains, sprayers, dumping buckets and other features and thus was scarcely moistened by a few stray drops.

My grandsons, Brysen Weitz, 8, and his brother, Caden, who’s almost 6, made no such concessions to the mild, but decidedly not hot, weather on the evening of June 28.

They splashed with the careless abandon that is the sole province of kids whose ages are still expressed with a single digit.

Those who study such matters have concluded that human brains remain incomplete, synaptically speaking, until about age 25.

This of course surprises no one who has helped to raise a teenager, no matter if you can’t tell a hippocampus from a hippopotamus.

(The latter is a massive African mammal that kills far more people than lions kill despite its lumbering appearance that makes it sometimes seem more comical than sinister. The former is a part of the brain that, among other things, preserves memories, which is to say it’s the hippo that helps you recall an encounter with the other hippo, assuming of course that you survive.)

I have walked past the splash pad several times since it opened June 14 in Central Park, just west of the Powder River, and just east of Resort Street, between Washington and Valley avenues.

On each occasion at least half a dozen kids were cavorting through the cooling spray, and once there were at least a couple dozen.

I smiled every time.

Nothing is quite so satisfying, it seems to me, as watching children having fun in a harmless way in a venue that would not exist without volunteers.

Baker City’s splash pad, as is typical with such projects, was the work of multiple years.

In 2019 Penelope Simmons, a local Girl Scout, suggested a splash pad as an addition to the city’s parks. Her mom, Charline Simmons, took over the fundraising effort in 2022.

The amount raised — $289,000 — included, almost inevitably for such an endeavor in a small town, selling homemade baked goods. I’m pleased to know that cookies and scones, in addition to giving someone a sweet interlude in an otherwise plain day, contributed to a lasting addition to the city’s roster of public amenities.

Chris Folkman engineered the park and worked with several contractors who donated their time, equipment and supplies. Natural Structures of Baker City designed the five pergolas and benches that surround the splash pad. The names of major donors are engraved on the pergolas —  Carl and Virginia Kostol Fund, Leo Adler Foundation, Marvin Wood Products, T-Mobile, Steve Ritch Environment & Construction Inc.

Names engraved on the benches recognize contractors who contributed, including Melo Excavating, Sid Johnson & Company, Bain & Lager Construction, Powder River Electric, Eagle Cap Plumbing, Shankle Landscaping, Eastern Oregon Ironworks and Ash Grove Cement.

As with the two playground additions to Geiser-Pollman Park over the past 11 years, the splash pad proves that persistent volunteers can accomplish great things.

As anyone understands who has spent even part of a summer in Baker City, a splash pad — a fancier version of setting a sprinkler spinning in a front yard — is an appropriate accoutrement indeed.

The story of Baker City’s splash pad epitomizes the adjective “heartwarming.”

Even as it cools us on sweltering afternoons for decades to come.

Jayson Jacoby is the editor of the Baker City Herald. Contact him at 541-518-2088 or jayson.jacoby @bakercityherald.com.