Thompson Park Pool Opens This Weekend

The wait is about to be over. The pool at Thompson park is about to be open again. This has been one heck of a ride. It really has. Back in 2018 the news came out that due to safety concerns the pool at Thompson Park was closing.

That pool has been a mainstay here in Amarillo for close to ninety years. That was not the news we wanted to hear. According to the City of Amarillo:

The City of Amarillo (COA) closed Thompson Park Pool in December 2018 due to public safety concerns. The pool, which opened in 1931, was one of the oldest (if not the oldest) public swimming pools in the Amarillo area. During its nearly 90 years of use, Thompson Park Pool underwent three renovation projects. The nearly 100 year-old pool was closed due to structural issues.

Then it was on. We needed to do better. Oh and the city did not disappoint. The next announcement was that Thompson Park was getting a new pool. Oh and this thing is going to be great. It will have a lazy river, cabanas and a pool that will hold at least 400 people. This is what Amarillo needed.

credit: Melissa Bartlett, TSM

The pool was supposed to open back at Memorial Day weekend. That didn't happen. It kept getting pushed back. We learned last week that there was water finally in the pool so the opening had to be soon.

Officially the word is out and Thompson Park Pool will be opening up this Saturday (7/24) at 10:30am. This is the excitement that Amarillo needs. Better late than never.

Here is the announcement from our Mayor, Ginger Nelson:

credit: Ginger Nelson

credit: Thompson Park Pool FB page

We are ready for this great new place to get opened so we can jump right in.

Check Out The Original Names For These Amarillo Streets

It's hard to imagine these well-known Amarillo streets as any other name. Try to imagine giving directions to someone while using their original names. Gets tricky, doesn't it?

The new names (that we currently know them by) came mostly from associates of Henry Luckett, who drew the first map of the area. When this took place exactly, records do not show, but the street name revamp is covered extensively in 'Old Town Amarillo' by Judge John Crudgington, published in the Plains Historical Review in 1957.

The Abandoned St. Anthony's Hospital on Amarillo Boulevard

The 119-year-old abandoned hospital is a fascinating place for any who are lucky enough to be granted the chance to explore.

The sprawling building saw thousands of Amarillo's citizens inside its halls daily, all the the way until it was shuttered in 2001. But there are still incredible artifacts of the all-too-recent past tucked away in the nooks and crannies of the old St. Anthony.

The explorer who took these photographs gave the following information:

"Many rooms were left untouched, we found patient files, old prescriptions, a blood transfusion machine from the 60s, and microscopic slides of breast cancer from the 70s and 80s. I put one picture in here of some heart scans so you can see the dates and diagnosis of the patient, but marked out the patient’s names of course. During a time when mental illness was not understood, 76 exorcisms were documented to have been performed between 1909 and 1931."

Take a look inside the halls of the legendary abandoned St. Anthony's hospital