SDSU’s School Of Design was chosen to propose a master plan for a new park design in Chamberlain, SD last spring.
Chamberlain is located in the middle of South Dakota along the Missouri River and attracts many tourists, and is the largest town within a 25-mile radius.
The idea for a new park in Chamberlain came about from residents of the town in 2014. They wanted the park to encapsulate South Dakota’s history of Dinosaur fossils and to also help increase tourism.
In that same year with funding, they were able to purchase a Mosasaur, which is a dinosaur that they found the fossils of in that region. Since then, the city has purchased other dinosaur replicas but had no plans for the park yet, until this past spring.
The city of Chamberlain and the nonprofit organization South Dakota Dinosaur Park Inc. reached out to the SDSU’s School of Design to help make this park a reality. Professor Jeremiah Bergstrom and Senior Landscape Architect student Riley Stueber took on the project.
“We came up with a plan to meet with them, visit the project site, get some ideas about what they are thinking, and we worked over the summer to develop a proposal,” Bergstrom said.
Their proposal included a baseball park, pavilion, picnic shelter, a fictional hunting scene of dinosaurs, playground, dog park, bridges, a wetland system, and an open lawn space with dinosaur replicas scattered throughout the park.
“ It was a fun project. Lots of random scribbles on trace paper, later it developed into something really cool,” Stueber said.
They started moving forward with the park after the endorsement of residents of Chamberlain, its town council, and the mayor. The town has signed a contract with a local engineering firm, Houston Engineering, and landscape architect Josh Johnson to begin the site survey and site engineering.
The two are very excited about the project coming to fruition. Struber shared his favorite part about working on the proposal for the Chamberlain Dinosaur Park.
“Getting to figure out a real-world project, and being able to look at when it is built and being able to say that this one is mine, I am excited to do that.”
