Clapp Park Packs Gardens, an Arboretum, and a Chapel Together

Clapp Park is Lubbock's softer, leafier park. Tucked at 40th and University, it gathers the Lubbock Memorial Arboretum, the Municipal Garden and Art Center, and a rose garden in one place, a welcome patch of shade and bloom in a dry, sun-baked city.

It isn't only gardens. The City of Lubbock's parks list also puts a dog park, a walking track, picnic areas, a playground, courts, and the restored St. Paul's on the Plains Chapel inside Clapp Park, so it works for a wedding, a morning walk, and a kids' afternoon all at once.

The park is named for K.N. Clapp, the same parks-board chairman who started Mackenzie's Prairie Dog Town. It's a small thread tying two of Lubbock's best-loved green spaces back to one early booster of city parks.