The day long party kicks off a year-long celebration of its Centennial Celebration at the park on February 16. The celebration, presented by the Dept. of Cultural Affairs and the Daffin Park Centennial Celebration Committee features a year-long calendar of events celebrate this 100th anniversary. The year's celebrations will include lectures, sporting events, movies in the park and concertrs. Call 651-6417 for more information, and watch the Events Calendar at SavannahBest.com for the monthly dates.

Though not as well-known as Forsyth Park in the Historic District, it boasts 80.4 acres of rectangular grassland on which sit 12 tennis courts; a children's playground, a sand field, 2 basketball courts, a swimming pool, a football field, the Grayson Stadium -- home to the Sand Gnats -- as well as a lake near Victory Drive and Waters Ave complete with 2 huge spray fountains flanking a gazebo in the center where barbeque functions for up to 20 people may be held.

Designed by the famous landscape artist John Nolen of Cambridge, Massachusetts, the park was developed as a formal Beau Arts-style park with two circular nodes linked to the four corners by tree lined diagonal roads. His vision for the park was to provide a first-class recreation park, a pleasant resort, and eventually, for it to become a national iconic pleasure ground. In its heydays in the early 20th century, locals would go for a swim in the bathing house or a dip in the lake, and children would build sandcastles on the lake's sandy shores. The park even had a tourist camp added in 1922, when campers visiting Savannah from other states came to pitch their canopy-like tents.

Today, the park's regular activities range from tennis tournaments and football matches for high school students to annual fishing competitions and seasonal baseball games (between April to September every year) at the Grayson Stadium. The gazebo in the center of the lake is also very popular among residents who rent it for a small fee to hold gatherings and cookouts.

The last time the park came into limelight was when a sculpture about five feet tall was erected on top of the pavilion in commemoration of Savannah's role in the 1996 Summer Olympics. The sculpture, which remains today, was created like a weathervane that would twirl with the wind, mimicking a sailboat under a gale. It was hand-hammered from iron and sheet metal by Savannah's internationally known blacksmith, John Boyd Smith; and the final, aged weather-bronze look effected by artist Kevin Palmer.

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