It’s a throwback to a simpler time, when kids created their own disorganized sports and got dirty – really dirty – in the process.

Inspired by the primitive, make-your-own-fun parks then trending around Europe, Adventure Playground opened in Huntington Beach in 1974 as an antidote to urban life. A child’s wonderland like no other, it was, basically, a big mud pit at the bottom of an abandoned sand quarry.

“I distinctly remember thinking, ‘I can’t believe my parents are letting me do this!’” said Holly McGovern, 56.

“We would swing on a rope from a big tree and plunk into the pond, if that’s what you want to call it. It was more mud than water.”

The first Adventure Playground in Huntington Beach opened in 1974 in an abandoned sand quarry, adjacent to its permanent location now under renovation. The original play area was even more rustic than what it would evolve into over the years. Not only could kids slide down muddy hills and paddle rafts in a mud pit, they could hammer together their own “forts,” climb rope ladders and zip line on tires. Child-drawn signs marked the site. (Photo courtesy of Chris Epting)

The original site closed five years later, after a flood.

In 1981, it reemerged on an adjacent 1.5 acre parcel, consuming a fraction of scenic Central Park, the largest municipal park in Orange County.

Open only during summer months, Adventure Park was unavailable in 2020 and 2021 due to coronavirus. Now the city and a passel of volunteers are working on its grand – but not too grand – rebirth this June.

“We decided to use this pause to do some renovations,” said Chris Cole, community services manager for Huntington Beach.

It’s both surprising and charming that the idea of a city-run swamp has survived 48 years, entertaining some 10,000 kids every summer.

Sure, some of the rough edges have been smoothed out by time and caution. Long gone are the kid-constructed shacks, the zip-line tire swing and the slapdash rope bridge.

But the murky, two-foot-deep lagoon stays. So do the stand-up paddle rafts that are sure to mean some messy splats, as well as the slimy knolls for sliding.

Emily Gritchen, and her brother, Alex Gritchen, paddle on a raft at Adventure Playground in Central Park in Huntington Beach, CA, on Tuesday, July 26, 2016. The park, built in the early 1980s, has standup paddle rafts, forts on stilts built around trees, and a water slide in to a mud pit. It was closed due to COVID-19 and is being rebuilt. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

“It has a Huck Finn/Tom Sawyer feel,” said city employee Garrett Marchbank. “This place isn’t a cardboard cutout of typical playgrounds. Kids use their imaginations and create their own entertainment.”

In recent months, two dozen members of Huntington Beach Boy Scout Troop 274 have worked to erect a wooden staircase up a hill. From on top, daredevils can slog down a slippery slope into the marsh below. Each step is packed with decomposed granite to provide traction for wet little feet.

“Some of us had never swung a sledgehammer before,” said Joe Broadway, 17, a junior at Huntington Beach High.

Joe Broadway, 17, sits on steps he built as part of his Eagle Scout project, at Adventure Playground in Central Park in Huntington Beach, CA, on Thursday, February 17, 2022. The park, built in the early 1980s, has standup paddle rafts, forts on stilts built around trees, and a water slide in to a mud pit. It was closed due to COVID-19 and is being rebuilt. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Other updates include three new forts, all set on stilts. The low-slung tree houses hug the same trees they hugged before.

As much as possible – whether for the forts, the stairway or the fixed-up changing rooms – wood from previous structures has been repurposed for a second life.

Thanks to an outpouring of free labor, the facelift will cost the city around $22,000, with most of the expense going to materials.

Tustin building contractor Sean Hille – who passed hours at Adventure Playground as a youngster and later as a dad – volunteered to build the forts.

“I wanted to keep the playground going,” Hille said. “It’s a place for kids to just be kids.”

Newly built platforms at Adventure Playground in Central Park in Huntington Beach, CA, on Thursday, February 17, 2022. The park, built in the early 1980s, has standup paddle rafts, forts on stilts built around trees, and a water slide in to a mud pit. It was closed due to COVID-19 and is being rebuilt. (Photo by Jeff Gritchen, Orange County Register/SCNG)

Until the pandemic shut it down, Adventure Playground continued to offer yet another forbidden fruit of sorts: Hammers, nails and loose pieces of wood.

However, the nails will not make a return this summer. Cleaning up the sharp little spikes at day’s end is time consuming for staff, Cole said. Instead, the park will offer supervised classes where children can piece together pre-cut birdhouses and such.

So, yes, things have changed some since back in the day – when kids could shelter inside their own slapdash huts that were vulnerable to a strong breeze.

“It was kind of ludicrous, now that I think about it,” said Brian Fujita, 42. “I was less than 10 years old, making makeshift forts we climbed all over. Nowadays, parents protest if their kid gets a splinter.”

The first Adventure Playground in Huntington Beach opened in 1974 in an abandoned sand quarry, adjacent to its permanent location now under renovation. The original play area was even more rustic than what it would evolve into over the years. Not only could kids slide down muddy hills and paddle rafts in a mud pit, they could hammer together their own “forts,” climb rope ladders and zip line on tires. Child-drawn signs marked the site. (Photo courtesy of Chris Epting)

Fujita, a local graphics designer, recalls taking a lot of tumbles. “Your shoes would get stuck in the mud and down you’d go,” he said. “Or you’d be pushing yourself with sticks across the water, and your platform would sink.

“But I don’t remember me or anyone else ever getting hurt,” Fujita added. “I probably wouldn’t trust myself there today. I don’t know how many times I’ve cut myself just cooking.”

McGovern, an esthetician in Lake Havasu, and her sister relished the sense that they were breaking all rules.

“We could do everything we weren’t allowed to do in real life – touch rusty nails, get super dirty,” she said. “Mom lined the back seat of the van with trash bags because we got so filthy and disgusting.”

Jeff Kirkwood, 53, a water district technologist in Huntington Beach, remembers walking down a long ramp to reach the former sand pit after his mom dropped him off. If parents hung around at all, they usually watched from above to stay relatively dry and clean.

“You were free!” Kirkwood said. “We felt empowered to do what ever we wanted. It fed our independence.”

The first Adventure Playground in Huntington Beach opened in 1974 in an abandoned sand quarry, adjacent to its permanent location now under renovation. The original play area was even more rustic than what it would evolve into over the years. Not only could kids slide down muddy hills and paddle rafts in a mud pit, they could hammer together their own “forts,” climb rope ladders and zip line on tires. Child-drawn signs marked the site. (Photo courtesy of Chris Epting)

Today, children must be accompanied by an adult. At the start, admission was a quarter. Now it’s $4 per child, and free for accompanying guardians.

Also called “junk playgrounds,” adventure playgrounds became popular in Europe after World War II, later making their way to the United States.

Huntington Beach and Berkeley boast, arguably, the only authentic adventure playgrounds in California. Irvine has a pleasant spot that goes by the name Adventure Playground, but it’s a lot more pristine.

Five decades ago, Karen Harris helped christen the first edition of Surf City’s quirky Adventure Playground.

“I liked building forts with the boys,” she said. “I was not one to play with dolls.”

Harris, 58, now a home renovator in Fairbanks, Alaska, would have gone every day to “slide down the mudslide 1,000 times,” if not for her mother needing breaks from mucky laundry.

“It was the best place ever,” Harris said, “even more fun than the beach.”