As a longtime resident of Crystal City, I have always wondered why the little median park between Richmond Highway and Crystal Drive on 23rd Street South is called Cheerios Park. I would love to know how this little piece of land got its name.
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The world awaits a credible photo of a space alien. It longs for a photo of Bigfoot — clear and in focus. Ditto the Loch Ness monster.
For his part, Answer Man would be happy with a picture of Cheerios Park. Oh, you can take a picture of it now. In fact, you’d better, since the narrow strip of green will vanish as Crystal City is turned into National Landing. What Answer Man hasn’t seen — what he is desperate for — is a photo of the park from about 1988.
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That’s roughly when the 0.9-acre park got its name. The moniker was an informal one. It came about because of a sculpture that sat in the park. No one Answer Man spoke with could recall exactly what this artwork looked like, just that it reminded people of a certain breakfast cereal introduced by General Mills in 1941.
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Answer Man supposes the sculpture was composed of disks, hoops, roundels. It was a Cheerios-ish sculpture. Thus “Cheerios Park.”
At some point, the park lost the sculpture, but the name remained. It pops up in various official documents, including a 2009 Crystal City vision plan prepared by the nearby communities of Arlington Ridge and Aurora Highlands. It’s also in the county’s response to that paper.
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Christer Ahl lived in Crystal City from 1999 to 2021. He was involved in establishing the existing Crystal City Sector Plan. Cheerios Park came up in that document.
“The reason was that in the Plan it was decided that the ‘park cum generous median strip’ should be replaced by a normal ‘divider’ between east- and west-bound traffic,” Christer wrote in an email. “This was welcomed by Crystal City residents, as the site has been pretty useless, and has certainly not functioned as a ‘park,’ between heavy traffic with noise and fumes, and with the access being a bit hazardous. But in those discussions, some residents of Aurora Highlands and Arlington Ridge become a bit nostalgic or almost angry.”
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They were sorry to be losing the park.
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Wrote Christer: “Some veterans in Aurora and Ridge are still well aware of the name and the artwork, but our efforts to find a photo have been without result so far.”
The Arlington Public Library’s Center for Local History was also unable to find a photo of the sculpture. Nor is there a photo at the Arlington County Department of Parks and Recreation. National Landing developer JBG Smith could not unearth a photo.
We often assume that the history of any municipal feature must be known. And while that’s usually true for a bridge or an art museum, that isn’t always the case for an informal pocket park. There is no vertical file at the county HQ labeled “Cheerios Park: Name.”
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And it’s not the only one. We can only speculate about another memorably named Arlington County park: Gum Ball Park, at 3715 North Seventh St.
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Cheerios? Gum balls? Are Arlingtonians obsessed with circular food?
Susan Kalish, public relations director of Arlington County’s Department of Parks and Recreation, said there is no record of how Gum Ball Park got its name.
“There was a thought that there were sweetgum trees there at one time, and they have those nasty balls that drop,” she wrote in an email. “However, the County is phasing out those trees (we don’t plant any of the traditional ones with the balls), so the park has no more or less than other places.”
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And so, people of Arlington, Crystal Citizens, National Landed gentry: Hie thee to yonder attics and basements. Pull out your shoe boxes. Dig out your snapshots and negatives. Do you have a photo of Cheerios Park? And, better yet, do you have a photo of the sculpture that gave it its name?
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The world awaits.
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Read more from John Kelly.