At the park you'll find soccer field, a free-ride bike park known as The Garden, the WMS Boat House, and new Kerry Wood Cubs Field. The park's soccer fields and bike trails sit on land once occupied by the fondly-remembered Riverview Amusement Park.*  

 

Riverview was created in 1904 on the site of a former German hunting preserve. For a time it was the world's largest amusement park, with a massive roller coaster, double Ferris wheel, tunnel of love, water slide, parachute drop, and carnival games of skill and chance, among many other things.

 

After the amusement park's demolition in 1967, the City of Chicago purchased more than three acres of the Riverview site. The Chicago Park District transformed the site into parkland in 1979. The park grew by another six acres in 1988 when the park district began leasing additional land along the river from the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District. Today Clark Park consists of 19.56 acres.

 

In 1986, the park was officially designated Richard Clark Park in honor of a Chicago police officer killed in the line of duty. Richard Clark (1938-1986) was an 18-year police veteran and member of the nearby Belmont Tactical Unit at the time of his death. Clark was shot and mortally wounded on April 3, 1986, while attempting to rescue a victim wounded by a gunman who had barricaded himself in his north side apartment. "

Richard Clark Park comprises 22.42 acres of greenspace along the east bank of the Chicago River in the North Center neighborhood.**