Combat Wounded Parking Spaces

History

On December 6, 1935, voters rejected a proposal to turn the Danbury airport into an athletic park. The vote was sparked by complaints of noise generated by the airport. However, the vote focused community attention on the shortage of playgrounds and parks in the city. The local Lions Club pushed the previously rejected idea of the City accepting a donation of 20 acres of swampy land at the intersection of Main Street and South Street from Cephas Rogers. Rogers was a local industrialist who was hard hit by the Depression. The donation would be made for forgiveness of his $6,000 tax debt. The Common Council accepted the offer, and applied to the Works Progress Administration for funds to drain the land and build access roads and athletic facilities. Two hundred workers began work in 1937. The project was finished in mid-1940 at a cost of about $175,000, $30,000 of which the City paid. Cephas B. Rogers Park opened in the spring of 1941.

Over the years, the City acquired additional acreage to increase the size of the park.

The Danbury War Memorial was built in 1951 and was designed and built in honor of the men and women who fought in World War I and II. Just after World War II ended, every morning, students at Danbury High School put their pennies and nickels in a pot to fund a memorial to honor those who so recently served their country.