How did this smaller city in Massachusetts wind up with a park so big?

Laurel Hill, Forest Park, Springfield, Massachusetts, 1925. (Photo by Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images)

The boys were 18, 20, maybe 22, old enough to lick beer foam from their sparse mustaches. They leaned at a hard angle against their cars, Chevy Camaro Z/28s with racing stripes along the side and spoilers popped like the polo collars on the preps they would have loved to run down. They idled these Camaros on the street circling the long, ovoid green that held three baseball diamonds: the main one with the grandstand at the northern end, for the American Legion players, and two smaller ones, for the Babe Ruth players and Little Leaguers, stretching out toward the brick snack kiosk near where the road dipped toward Porter Lake.