Gage Park, Topeka
Encyclopedia
Gage Park in Topeka, Kansas
Topeka, Kansas
Topeka |Kansa]]: Tó Pee Kuh) is the capital city of the U.S. state of Kansas and the county seat of Shawnee County. It is situated along the Kansas River in the central part of Shawnee County, located in northeast Kansas, in the Central United States. As of the 2010 census, the city population was...

 is a city park of 160 acre (0.6474976 km²). It was established in 1899 and is one of the largest parks in Topeka. It features the Topeka Zoo
Topeka Zoo
The Topeka Zoo is a medium-sized zoo in Topeka, Kansas in the United States. It is located within Gage Park, just off I-70 in the north central portion of the city. Despite its size, it has a number of exhibits, including one of the first indoor tropical rain forests in the United States...

, a miniature train
Minimum gauge railway
Minimum gauge railways have a gauge of less than or , most commonly , , or . The notion of minimum gauge railways was originally developed by estate railways and by the French company of Decauville for industrial railways....

 of gauge, an outdoor theatre
Theatre
Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...

 and the Reinisch Rose Garden
Reinisch Rose Garden and Doran Rock Garden
Reinisch Rose Garden and Doran Rock Garden is a garden located in Gage Park, at 4320 SW 10th Avenue, Topeka, Kansas.The Reinisch garden features 400 varieties of roses with over 6,500 plants. It is one of 23 test gardens in the United States for hybridizers, and officially designated for its...

. The 70-year-old rose garden is a very popular place for weddings and events, and also a place where serious horticultural work
Horticulture
Horticulture is the industry and science of plant cultivation including the process of preparing soil for the planting of seeds, tubers, or cuttings. Horticulturists work and conduct research in the disciplines of plant propagation and cultivation, crop production, plant breeding and genetic...

 is done.

Fred Phelps
Fred Phelps
Fred Waldron Phelps, Sr. is an American pastor heading the Westboro Baptist Church , an independent Baptist church based in Topeka, Kansas...

 and the Westboro Baptist Church
Westboro Baptist Church
The Westboro Baptist Church is an independent Baptist church known for its extreme stance against homosexuality and its protest activities, which include picketing funerals and desecrating the American flag. The church is widely described as a hate group and is monitored as such by the...

 began their anti-gay crusade in 1991 with what they call "The Great Gage Park Decency Drive," seeking a crack down on homosexual activity in the park. At the time the church circulated a flyer "Gage Park Sodomite Rats Nest."

In popular culture

Gage Park was featured in the beginning of the 1997 Stephen King
Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...

 novel The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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