Miriam Walls | The Roanoke Times

Brianna Elizabeth plunges into the water after going down the big water slide at Randolph Park in Pulaski. It's the New River Valley's only water park.

At a glance

• The Evelyn Alexander Water Park includes the eight-lane lap pool, a 38-foot water slide, spray toys and water drops. It is open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. weekdays and 12:30 to 6 p.m. Sundays (the hours will be cut to 3 to 7 p.m. starting Aug. 23 and the pool will close for the season after Labor Day).
• Shelter with up to 450 seats and gazebo with an 80-seat capacity, both with electricity.
• Athletic facilities: four irrigated baseball or softball fields, a half-mile walking or running track, two full basketball courts, two tennis courts, two sand volleyball courts, an irrigated soccer or football field, horseshoe pits, separate children’s playground.
• Natural areas: Outer loop walking trail, inner loop walking and wheelchair-accessible trail, pond.
• Fees: Pool admission is $3 generally, $2 up to age 2 ($1 more in each category on weekends) and $2 at all times for age 55 and up; shelter and gazebo rents are $10 an hour. Everything else in the park is free.

Anthony Akers, park manager.

DUBLIN -- Water splashed, heads bobbed and voices squealed happily as groups of youngsters took their final dips of the year Wednesday in Randolph Park's swimming pool.

A virtual convoy of yellow school buses delivered Pulaski County students on their last day of summer school. Youngsters from the county's special-needs summer camp, who arrive before the pool opens to the public at 10 a.m., were also making their last trip as a group (the park has a waterproof wheelchair for pool use). County Office on Youth summer camp participants had their last group swim, too.

"But that's not untypical, the large crowd out there," said Anthony Akers, the county's community activities director, a job that includes managing Randolph Park.

Since the park opened six years ago, he said, pool usage has been averaging 600 people a day throughout every season. Sometimes it is more like 800 people a day, and at times it rises well above 1,000.

"When it's warm, real warm, 80 degrees-plus," Akers said, "we bank on close to 1,000 people."

And they come from places other than Pulaski County, from as nearby as Radford and as far away as West Virginia. When Radford ended the use last year of its 50-meter pool in Bisset Park, competition from the nearby Randolph Park pool was cited as one of the reasons.

"A lot of people come from Roanoke and Salem. We get a lot of day care and churches," said Akers, who was among those on the steering committee that helped design the park.

Gaye Whitaker, a travel counselor at the Pulaski County Visitor Center not far from Randolph Park, has directed quite a few travelers to the pool. "They're in here for a couple of days, and they want something for their children to do," she said.

This summer, a new salt-chlorine generator has been introduced for pool use. In the process, salt ions pass over specially coated blades in an electrolyte cell that converts the salt to chlorine, but keeps its levels low.

It was in the mid-1990s when Evelyn Randolph Alexander proposed donating some land to the county for use as a public park, land that had been in her family for some 200 years. She ended up donating 87 acres. The park is named for her parents.

Alexander was a retired teacher and lifelong county resident, born in Newbern. She had taught math in Smyth, Wythe and Pulaski counties. She died four years ago, but not before she saw her park dream fulfilled.

The only things missing from her original vision are an amphitheater, which got cut from the project, and wetlands, also cut out of concern over the West Nile virus being bred by mosquitoes around standing water.

County Attorney Tom McCarthy came up with the idea of using U.S. Army reservists on the project. Members of the Marion-based Company A, 463rd Engineer Battalion, 99th Regional Support Command broke ground on the park on Sept. 12, 1999, and did $684,000 worth (based on a private contractor's estimate) of rough grading work during their two-week summer training.

Randolph Park opened June 30, 2001.

Today, the park not only boasts Pulaski County's only public outdoor pool, but also walking trails, playgrounds and sports fields. When the pool closes after Labor Day (Sept. 4 this year), the park still hosts soccer leagues, football leagues and other sports activities.

"So the park, September and October, is full of people," Akers said. Things do not start to slow down until November.

"Our shelter and gazebo is booked several months in advance," he said. "The county has in the works to add two additional small shelters because the demand is so great."

The new picnic shelters should be open next year.

The county supported the idea of Randolph Park from the beginning, even though it was a $6 million project -- $2 million for the pool alone. The supervisors approved $4 million initially and, after a fund drive headed by a group calling itself Friends of Randolph Park raised about $1 million more, pitched in the rest.

The result is one of Pulaski County's proudest accomplishments, standing at 5100 Alexander Road in Dublin.

On the Web: pulaskicounty.org/randolph_park