Fremont Park

Fremont Park sits at the center of downtown Menlo Park, but its peaceful lawns hide a history of rapid transformation. In 1917, the United States military chose this area for a massive World War I training site known as Camp Fremont because the local terrain resembled the rolling countryside of France. At its peak, the camp hosted over 40,000 soldiers, effectively turning a quiet hamlet of 2,300 residents into a bustling, crowded military boomtown almost overnight. The arrival of the army brought modern infrastructure to the area. Before the soldiers arrived, the town lacked basic municipal services, but military engineers quickly constructed the first paved streets, gas lines, and water systems to support the sprawling encampment. Many of the local businesses that opened to provide goods and services to these recruits found such success that they continued operating long after the war ended. The park itself, originally called Fremont Memorial Park, was formally dedicated on November 11, 1938, to mark the twentieth anniversary of the armistice that ended the fighting. A key figure in its creation was Jacob Frederick Carl Hagens, a corporate executive who stepped in to buy the land privately when the city government declined to purchase it for public use. Hagens acted to ensure this space would be preserved for the community rather than sold for commercial development. Today, the park serves as a community landmark, anchored by memorial plaques that commemorate the 319th Engineers and the other units who once trained on this ground.