Kiroli Park

The stone bridge dates to the 1920s. The formal gardens came later, then the trails. Now Kiroli Park covers 150 acres along Bayou DeSiard—fishing ponds, disc golf, a playground, natural bottomland, the kind of green space a city builds when it realizes it needs one. What is now the University of Louisiana at Monroe started playing football as a junior college in 1931. For decades the team was the Indians, competing in the NAIA, then Division I-AA. In 1987, trailing Marshall 42–28 in the fourth quarter of the national championship game in Pocatello, Idaho, quarterback Stan Humphries led the Indians to a pair of late touchdowns. They won 43–42. It remains the program's only national title. The team moved up to Division I-A in 1994, became the Warhawks in 2006, and played in their first and only FBS bowl game in 2012. Their thirteen-year drought is currently the longest among all NCAA Division I FBS teams. Kiroli Park is where the city goes when it isn't watching football—seasonal festivals, nature trails through bottomland along Bayou DeSiard, the disc golf course threading between the formal gardens and the fishing ponds. The 1920s stone bridge is still there. Go in the late afternoon when the bayou is still. The park holds what the city was before it had a team to wait on.