The Royce Files

My Alma Mater, Park HS of Cottage Grove, recently put on the musical Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat  which I also did at Park and it made me think- is there a record of Park musicals since the move from the old building in St. Paul Park to one on 80th St in Cottage Grove in 1965?  I tried in 2007 to create such a list. It is actually somewhere on this blog. Whew, almost 20 years ago! Now I could dig through a bunch of yearbooks or South Washington County Bulletins that I have no easy access since I am out of the region now. So for now I will rely on my memory and what I can piece together on the net. Accessing memory..... Park High School originally occupied a building in St. Paul Park. By the 1960s the school outgrew the space so a new campus was built over in the neighboring city of Cottage Grove. The old campus ended up getting used as junior high for a time but then became apartments and community space. The new campus included a music 'complex' across the ...

I had the distinction of attending Park High in my fledgling days. And it was one of those schools people would mistaken for the half dozen or so other schools which had a Park in its name: Como Park, Champlin Park, Spring Lake Park, Brooklyn Park, Park Center, Highland Park, Park Rapids. And let us not forget Darth Maul- Ray Park. But that was later. My Park was in the south east suburbs- a kind of forgotten collection of bedroom communities which is now home to 4 high schools since East-Ridge was added recently. Well back in the day it was just Park and Woodbury and that private high school and Hastings if you want to stretch it. Now these burgs usually get overshadowed by their southern neighbors Eagan and Apple Valley and Lakeville. But back in the day we held our own. There is so little about Park history out there on the web I thought I'd add what I recollect (and discover) from those days when Park was still the Indians. Park had been the Indians since the beginning- which ...