The Tacoma School District acquired the DeLong property in 1948 (the school site plus 8 acres to the east of the school) and opened DeLong Elementary six years later.  In 1973 neighbors organized the DeLong Park Recreational Association (DPRA) to spearhead the development of the 8 acres parcel adjacent to the school into a park. At that time the Tacoma School District was using the site to dump waste materials from other schools and projects. (A memo from the School District about the conversion of the dump site to a park mentions the School District’s concerns that losing this dump site would mean they would have to pay fees associated with dumping waste materials at the city dump.)

Once the Tacoma School District agreed to the park concept, the DPRA began raising money for the project. They received grants from the Bicentennial Commission, the Jaycees (Junior Chamber), and private individuals. The City of Tacoma and the Parks Tacoma also contributed funding to their effort. The DPRA was also successful in securing donations of materials, services, and labor from several Tacoma businesses and individuals.

The official kick off of the park development occurred on October 13, 1973. Rather than hosting a traditional ground-breaking ceremony, the DPRA arranged to have the National Guard come with heavy equipment to remove an old rusting car from brush and wetlands portion of the park. Over the next two years, the DPRA worked hard to develop the park. They cleared nature trails and picnic sites, installed picnic tables, a wading pool, tennis courts, play equipment and started work on a restroom facility.

In December of 1975 the DPRA dissolved their organization and transferred their remaining funds to Parks Tacoma to put the finishing touches on the park. Their plan had always been to turn over the park to the District once the work was done.

On June 8, 1976 DeLong Park was officially dedicated. All the donors were recognized and the park now consisted of a turf multi-purpose field, restrooms, Tot Lot and plays area, wading pool, two tennis courts, lighting, picnic tables and one mile of walking paths through the natural areas.

Two years later the Tacoma School District formally transferred the DeLong Park land to Parks Tacoma.

In 1990 the DeLong neighborhood pulled together again to form the DeLong Lake Preservation Committee. A private individual had purchased over 13 acres of land along the east side of DeLong Park between Gove and Cheyanne Streets and extending through the wetlands to South 18^th Street (abutting the Fred Meyer parking lot) with the intention of developing a 110 unit townhouse-condominium complex.

The neighborhood group strongly opposed the development on the grounds of protecting the wetlands. Parks Tacoma, the City of Tacoma, and Pierce County worked together to find funding to purchase the property and protect the area as an expansion of DeLong Park. In an appraisal of the property for the city, the Department of Wildlife noted that the wetland is diverse and “contains open water, marsh, swamps and riparian habitats.”

The appraisal also acknowledged that the wetland area also contained “concrete, asphalt, steel pipes and construction debris.” The report did not state where this construction debris came from but it is believed to have come from the construction of the “Narrows Freeway” now known as Highway 16.

To encourage the community to find a way to save the wetland a student at DeLong wrote the following poem:

In our swamp there are beautiful things.

I saw some birds with pretty wings.

They were all so beautiful all around.

I couldn’t understand why there was litter on the ground.

In 1996 this additional 13.83 acres was purchased by Pierce County using Conservation Futures funding. The following year, Pierce County transferred the property to Parks Tacoma more than doubling the original size of DeLong Park.

Significant work was completed on the park in 2004 thanks to a Building Tacoma Together grant and Make a Splash Grant. The scope of work included:

1. Demolition of existing restroom/picnic shelter, existing paved tennis courts, existing fencing, existing light poles, existing paving and other items indicated on the drawings or specified.
2. Clearing, grubbing, selective noxious weed removal, earthwork, rough grading, and erosion control measures.
3. Importation of base course, drainage materials, topsoil, export of excess materials and installation of masonry wall units.
4. Asphalt paving, concrete paving, concrete curbing, concrete ramps, cast-in-place concrete stairway and pre-cast concrete wheel stops.
5. Site utility work including abandonment of existing utilities and limited site drainage work.
6. Automatic irrigation system including updating existing backflow protection, new control equipment and connections to existing system.
7. Landscape work including amending existing topsoil, imported topsoil, fine grading, mulch, and installation of trees, shrubs, groundcovers, buffer restoration plantings, lawn seeding, Ecoturf seeding and erosion control seeding.
8. Site furniture and improvements including park signs, interpretive signs, removable bollard, relocation of sections of chain-link fence, and miscellaneous site construction items.
9. Three (3) year maintenance and monitoring of buffer restoration plantings

Parks Tacoma completed some planting, stump grinding and fencing in 2011.