Parque Urracá

This guide to Parque Urracá in Panama City traces how a stretch of Bella Vista that once sat at the water's edge, with a beach and a soda counter called El Squirt drawing afternoon crowds, ended up landlocked when the city filled in the bay in the nineteen fifties. It follows the century-old shade trees planted when this was the city's first real park, and the working life the ground led before that, with streetcars stopping nearby and cattle driven in from the western provinces. Heavy rain still turns the low ground into a small lake, a reminder of the shoreline that used to be here.