Downtown City Park

Paso Robles grew up around hot mineral springs in the 1880s, and its founders, Drury James and the brothers Daniel and James Blackburn, ran the grand hotel that drew visitors to bathe in the thermal waters. In 1887, with the town barely a year old, they donated two city blocks across from that hotel to be a public park, stipulating that the land be kept exclusively for the pleasure of the community. It was a farsighted gift, the sort that shapes a town's character for good.

By 1890, money raised from theatrical performances paid for a bandstand so brass bands could play in the open air. In its early years the square was almost exotic, ringed by a cactus hedge and home to tame deer and a fish pond, with swings, a merry-go-round, and picnic ground for the townspeople. Over the decades the flourishes came and went, but the two blocks of green and the founders' promise stayed exactly where they were put.

The building everyone photographs is the Carnegie Library, a dignified red-brick landmark on the park's edge. It was built in 1907 and 1908 with a ten-thousand-dollar grant from the Carnegie Foundation, one of the many free public libraries the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie funded across the country. The cornerstone was laid in January 1908 and the doors opened that June.

The design came from William H. Weeks, a busy Central Coast architect who gave the town a Classical Revival gem: a projecting entrance with an ornamented pediment carried on two columns and brick pilasters, a decorative cornice, and a carved frieze. It served as the town library until 1995, when a new library opened and the historical society took the old building over.

The Carnegie was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998, and today it is the home of the Paso Robles History Museum and the area historical society. So the corner of the square where children once checked out their first library books is still a place to go looking for the town's story.

What makes City Park special now is that it never became a quiet relic. Paso Robles has grown into one of California's best-loved wine regions, and the square sits right in the thick of it, ringed by tasting rooms, restaurants, and shops in the old brick storefronts. A visitor can spend an afternoon strolling from the fountain to a tasting room to a bench under a tree and never leave a two-block radius.

The event calendar keeps the green busy nearly year-round. Free summer Concerts in the Park run from spring into late August, with music from country to jam bands drifting out from the bandstand. The Paso Robles Wine Festival, an olive-oil festival, farmers markets, classic car shows, and the annual downtown lighting ceremony at the holidays all take over the square in turn, drawing the whole town and plenty of travelers.

It is a rare thing to find, a real public square that a town still uses the way it was meant to be used. On an ordinary day it is simply a fine place to sit in the shade; on a festival weekend it is the beating heart of the Central Coast.

The park sits in the center of Paso Robles between 11th and 12th streets and Spring and Park streets, an easy walk from anywhere downtown and just off Highway 101 as you pass through wine country. It is free to enter, open from morning into the evening, and has restrooms, picnic tables, and a playground, so it works equally well for a quick stretch of the legs or a lazy afternoon.

Give yourself time to walk the whole square, admire the Carnegie Library, and then wander the surrounding blocks, where the tasting rooms and cafes are all within a short stroll. If you can time your visit to a summer concert or one of the festivals, do it, since that is when the square shows off what it has always been: the place a whole town comes together, under the same trees, on the same two blocks that were set aside for exactly that more than a hundred years ago.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.