Charnel Mulligan Park is nice little park in the Jefferson Westside neighborhood. Though I never had heard of it growing up it's the closest to where my family lives nowadays. Most parks in Eugene don't have any sort of fence or anything, and this is no exception (the park I grew up with, Tandy Turn Park, is unusual in this regard). Thankfully this one is offset from the road enough that I didn't have to worry too much about my little one.
It's a weird name, named after a Eugene pioneer and dedicated in 1984. There's a large green area where some folks were just relaxing, maybe having a picnic, when we were here and then there's the playground on the southwestern end. The playground has much of the typical equipment, including a swingset, teeter-totter, climbing equipment and slides. It's been renovated relatively recently in 2017, and they added some larger playground stuff, a half basketball court, a lot of benches, and a sandbox with real sand. My little one was drawn to that sandbox but I was not really keen to clean sand off her or out of the rental car so maybe another time.
I didn't love the tot swings because they didn't really have a way for children to easily hold onto the chain, which was something my kiddo was struggling to do. The terrain of the park is largely grass, but the playground is sawdust. There's no dedicated parking for the park, but plenty of street parking surrounding and if it were a super busy day, I don't know that the church across the street would put up a fight about parking unless they were having an event. They do have a dedicated disabled spot on the street by the park, which is great, and it's worth knowing that the south entrance to the park has a few steps though the east side of the park is all street level without more than a curb step. read more