Halperin Park opens above I-35, drawing Oak Cliff families together on Mother’s Day

A new park above I-35 in Oak Cliff opened this week, drawing Dallas families on Mother’s Day and healing a divide the highway created in the 1950s.

DALLAS, Texas — Rain swept through Oak Cliff on Sunday, sending families scrambling from Halperin Park. But before the storm rolled in, the new green space above Interstate 35 had already delivered a Mother’s Day to remember.

Ollie Kidd was there with her children and grandchildren — three generations spending the holiday at a park that finished construction just this week.

“It’s nice for the kids,” she said. “It has the entertainment over there…”

The 3-acre park sits directly above I-35 in southern Dallas. The Kidd family was among the first to take in the green space, the playground and the splash pad.

“It’s a beautiful thing,” Kidd said of motherhood, “but it is always work.”

She hopes the park becomes the kind of place where that shared experience keeps repeating. “Hopefully all these events can bring families together,” she said. “They learn the history of why it was built.”

That history runs directly underneath the park. I-35 was built in the 1950s, cutting Oak Cliff and parts of southern Dallas in half. Halperin Park was built specifically to help stitch those communities back together.

April Allen has spent seven years helping make that happen. As president and CEO of the Halperin Park and the Southern Gateway Public Green Foundation, she watched the project go from vision to reality.

“It was a really vibrant community, and it split certain folks off from others,” Allen said. “We have this opportunity with this park to really shift that paradigm and change the trajectory and the future of Oak Cliff and of our city overall.”

For Kidd, that mission was already visible in the crowd around her Sunday. 

“If that was the goal to try to get everybody together, I feel like they’re accomplishing that,” she said. “Because, you see, it’s so many different people out here.”

She said she wants her grandchildren to understand why this park exists — and to carry that knowledge with them.

“So when they get older, they may bring their kids here and let them know the understanding and the meaning of what happened,” she said. “So it’ll just keep going.”

A highway once cut through this community. Now, a park sits above it. And when the rain clears, it will be here for the next generation.