The kids were not waiting. With a formal ribbon-cutting of Mosier’s new skateboarding park still hours away, skate enthusiasts from around the area arrived at the site on the eastern edge of town and started rolling, on skateboards and scooters, roller skates and bikes.
No one minded the lack of patience to officially open the park.
“We are here to have a good time and celebrate what this park is all about,” said Mosier City Manager Andrea Rogers. “This day celebrates the five years of work and effort in the community to bring this special place to Mosier. Every time I come here and see people skating, it brings me joy.”
Rogers has a direct and very emotional connection to the new recreational facility: It is named “Jacob’s Skatepark,” in honor of Rogers’ son Jacob, a skateboarding aficionado who died in 2019 at age 23. Before the ribbon-cutting, organizers held a moment of silence for Jacob.
“He’s been gone for six years now,” Rogers said. “When I moved to Mosier, I was pregnant with Jacob. He grew up here in Mosier. It’s amazing to honor him.”
After several years of dreaming and a price tag of nearly $700,000, Mosier has now realized its long-held goal of creating a skateboard park in the community. On Saturday, Sept. 12, the city of Mosier and key partner Main Street Mosier — a local nonprofit organization created to “continually find ways to improve the quality of life in Mosier through community development, sustainable business, and historical preservation” — celebrated the completion of the new recreational facility.
In a dedication ceremony that drew dozens of people and avoided most of the day’s rain, those who worked for several years to bring a skatepark to Mosier expressed appreciation for the commitment and perseverance of community leaders and residents.
John Grim, a former city engineer in Mosier who served as project manager for the skatepark, said there was a feeling of accomplishment and satisfaction at finally completing the project.
“We’ve been working on this for five years, and finally shepherded it through,” Grim said. “We are really relieved we could make it happen.”
Grim added that he believes the skatepark is the best project he has ever worked on.
“No one comes out for a ribbon-cutting on a wastewater treatment plant,” he joked.
Manny Rincon, a member of Main Street Mosier who helped spearhead the goal of bringing a skatepark to the city, praised the young people in the community for getting directly involved in the project. He pointed out that many local skateboarders went to public meetings to work to make the park a reality.
“Kids spoke up about how important it is to the community,” Rincon said. “It took some time. They were just babies then; now they are teenagers.”
Skateboarding fans were impressed with the well-designed facility, which is on the eastern edge of Mosier, just south of the Union Pacific Railroad tracks through the city and directly east of the Mosier Creek Bridge.
“It’s amazing,” said Mosier resident Rhylo Gerlick. “I am really surprised they did this. It’s such a good thing. I used to have to go to Hood River or The Dalles to skate.”
“I love it, it’s an awesome park,” added Mosier resident Miles Buckwalter, who added he likes Mosier’s park even more than the ones in nearby cities.
“This one has more of a flow,” Buckwalter said.
It was a long journey for the community to get to this milestone accomplishment, yet once the funding came through, the project took off.
In 2025, Main Street Mosier won an Oregon Parks & Recreation Department grant to fund the skatepark. The grant totaled $552,000, covering most of the project’s total cost of roughly $696,000. The remaining amount, approximately $144,000, was raised via local donations, fundraising events, and in-kind volunteer support.
Dreamland Skateparks LLC, a small, family-owned business based in Neotsu, Oregon (Neotsu is a tiny coastal community near Lincoln City), was selected to design and build Mosier’s skatepark. Dreamland is a highly regarded company with 30 years of experience constructing skateparks across the United States.
Andrea Weinman, vice president of Main Street Mosier, said it was a joyous time in Mosier with the city able to dedicate the new park.
“It feels wonderful to see new faces in our community and people coming out and enjoying the public space,” Weinman said.
The dedication of Jacob’s Skatepark attracted people from well beyond the Mosier city limits. Ethan Bodin, who lives in Bozeman, Montana, explained he found out about the event purely by chance, and was happy he did.
“I’ve been out here in Hood River kayaking, and just happened to be biking by and saw this event,” Bodin said. “This is the first time I’ve been to Mosier. This is beautiful here; I couldn’t help but stop.”
Bodin said he enjoys skateboarding as much as he likes kayaking and biking, so he took the opportunity to roll a few times around Mosier’s new skatepark.
“I took a little rip around, touched everything I could touch,” Bodin said. “This is such a sweet park. They did a great job with this one. Bozeman has a few skateparks, but not as nice as this one.”
For background on the creation of Jacob’s Skatepark, see earlier Uplift Local reporting plus notes from public meetings discussing the project, by Uplift Local Documenters Lynda Ontiveros, Chelsea Clark, Kathy Omer and Sherry Ann Romero Brunecz.
Douglas Burkhardt
Douglas Burkhardt, aka D. C. Jesse Burkhardt, is a University of Oregon graduate. He served as an editor, reporter, and photographer with four different community newspapers in Washington and Oregon over a career spanning 23 years. Burkhardt also has published several books on railroad history and operations, as well as two travel-adventures. He was an early member of Uplift Local's Gorge Documenters team.
