The location gained national attention in December 1832, when the pregnant lifeless body of Sarah M. Cornell was found hanging from a stackpole there.

Sarah's body was initially buried on the Durfee farm, but moved years later to Oak Grove Cemetery when the park was being built.

The park provides a vast area of open space in the middle of a particularly dense portion of the city, surrounded by many triple-decker working-class tenement houses and the Catholic St. Anne's Church.

In September 1996, over 25,000 people gathered in the lower portion of the park to see then President Bill Clinton during a campaign stop for his 1996 re-election.

[5] Each August since 1986, the park hosts the Great Holy Ghost Feast of New England, a celebration of Azorean culture which attracts over 200,000 people each year.