CAMBRIDGE — A family spreads out a blanket to picnic. Runners jog around a track. A kid lines up a row of soccer balls and pings them goalward. Dogs of various breeds and sizes bound through the grass.
On a recent summer day, there were no hints of the space’s former identities: a pit where men labored for the raw material that helped shape the region’s buildings, a landfill where malodorous trash was dumped, a spot to store dirt from a transformative transportation project.
Instead, there are rolling, manicured hills. Athletic fields and playgrounds. Even a Miyawaki forest, dense plantings intended to boost biodiversity and climate resilience—the first of its kind in the northeastern United States.
Celebrating its 35th year, Danehy Park is considered by many to be an extraordinary urban planning success story, a jewel of green space, the type of neighborhood anchor that residents couldn’t now imagine living without.
“It shows us how to think creatively” about city spaces, said Beth Folsom, a historian and program manager at History Cambridge.
None of it was preordained on the 50-acre-plus swath of Cambridge land.
The area had been culled for its clay deposits for decades. In the middle of the 19th century, Folsom said, the brick industry boomed as more housing was made with brick instead of wood, as the former was less flammable. At its zenith, the demand saw 2,000 bricks a day being made from Cambridge clay.
The area was used into the 1940s by the New England Brick Company. Eventually the clay deposits were exhausted, and in the 1950s it became a garbage dump, an identity that stretched until at least the early 1970s.
Starting in the late 1970s, the space became something else: the place where the dirt ended up from the MBTA’s Red Line extension project, which would transform neighborhoods in North Cambridge and Somerville, as stops were added at Porter, Davis, and Alewife.
The rock and dirt from the Red Line work, which included extensive tunneling, helped speed up the process of settling the garbage underneath, making its transformation to a park easier, said Folsom.
Charles Sullivan, executive director of the Cambridge Historical Commission, said the park was the end result of a bunch of people and agencies looking to solve two main problems: remediating the landfill and finding somewhere to dispose of the Red Line tunnel waste.
The landfill was a tremendous public liability that needed to be addressed. It wasn’t suitable for housing, said Sullivan, because of the methane gas it would emit, as well as toxic run-off.
The Red Line extension included a deep-bore tunnel that went through bedrock, and a huge quantity of rock had to be put somewhere. So the fact that that refuse could be used to reclaim the landfill for public use “was like a gift from the gods,” said Sullivan.
“It was widely considered to be miraculous,” he said. The park increased Cambridge’s open space by 20 percent, Sullivan said.
Now, the only clue at that former use nowadays is the absence of a summertime staple: grilling. Barbecue pits were removed in recent years and cooking with an open flame is prohibited in the park out of an abundance of caution, according to the city. There are vents at various locations throughout the park to allow methane, created through the breakdown of materials in the old landfill, to escape the ground safely.
Methane itself does not pose a risk to people as it disperses in the air, said Jen Letourneau, a senior engineer for Cambridge.
But, “We wanted to be as risk-averse as possible,” said Letourneau, who described the park as well loved and well used.
The space opened as a park in the fall of 1990, named after a former mayor and longtime local pharmacist who was known to be a conservative on the Cambridge City Council.
Now, the park that bears Thomas Danehy’s name is used by multitudes. The city says 10,000 hours worth of activities are booked each year, from soccer and ultimate Frisbee leagues to road races, a jazz festival, and other concerts.
And there are other, unorganized events. It boasts the highest point in Cambridge, and features a beloved and heavily used sledding hill during winter months. One sign identifying the park doubles as a community bulletin board; there are advertisements for a “Dungeons & Dragons” campaign, French and math tutoring, a local handyman, and a sticker protesting police use of ShotSpotter, an acoustic gunshot detection system.
At more than 50 acres, it is the largest park the city owns. It’s also situated near affordable housing developments, a fact that Danehy’s evangelists say underscores its importance.
One development, Jefferson Park, which is managed by the Cambridge Housing Authority, is at most a 10-minute walk from the park. Elsewhere stands what have long been known as the Rindge Towers. There are more affordable housing units planned for New Street.
In tight urban quarters — where not everyone has access to a yard, spaces such as Danehy are essential, said local residents and advocates, for people’s mental and physical health. The park, they said, helps curb the effect of heat islands and air pollution and simply gives residents somewhere outdoors to go.
“Open spaces are extraordinarily healthy for urban populations,” said Federico Muchnik, a Cambridge native and filmmaker who made a documentary about the park in recent years. “They are places where people get well.”
Years ago, when Muchnik’s mother passed, his family dedicated a tree to her memory in Danehy, he said. He currently walks through the park regularly — it’s along his regular 6-mile walking route that brings him around Fresh Pond. The day-to-day of the park helps mitigate what he called the “fraying of community fabric.”
“This is community,” said Muchnik. “This is the antidote to ‘Bowling Alone.’ ”
To be sure, Muchnik, a former Cambridge City Council candidate, said there are areas for improvement, from better access to the park for those who live in Rindge Towers to drainage problems at one of its baseball fields.
Additionally, city officials have acknowledged the need for a park pavilion, a place that houses public restrooms, equipment storage, and locker rooms where athletes can change. There are also plans for infrastructure, including an overpass and a new path, to better connect surrounding areas to the park, but some officials say those proposals are probably years away from becoming reality.
A capital improvement plan is slated to be completed this fiscal year, which will guide investments over the next 10 to 15 years.
Cambridge resident Eric Grunebaum grew up less than a mile from the park. In his youth, the space that would become Danehy Park brought the acrid smell of burning garbage and flocks of sea gulls hovering in the skies ready to pick their next meal from the refuse in the landfill. It’s a far cry from the rolling and manicured green hills of Danehy today. Its transformation, he said, is a model of what is possible with derelict spaces.
The reimagining of Jerry’s Pond, a former North Cambridge swimming hole that Grunebaum has worked to reopen to the public in recent years, owes much to Danehy’s conversion from dump to urban jewel. And the future of the sprawling Alewife garage space, long a crumbling edifice just off Route 2 in North Cambridge, could draw inspiration from Danehy, he said.
“It’s an example of ‘we can do this,’” he said. “Take degraded, underutilized, former industrial sites and turn them into something great that really improves life for everybody.”
Danny McDonald can be reached at daniel.mcdonald@globe.com. Follow him @Danny__McDonald.