The New York Mills Millers started playing town ball in the early 1920s. With Dr. A.T. Morstad as the manager, the Millers were consistent winners in the Otter Tail-Todd-Wadena County league, even winning themselves a trip to the World’s Fair in Chicago in 1934. Hundreds of people attended the games played by their hometown heroes. In fact, the Millers were so popular that a 1937 Works Progress Administration project resulted in a brand new field and complex.

And while improvements and upgrades have been made, the original 1937 grandstand, dugouts, press box and concession stand remain intact. Lights were installed in 1950 (the first ballfield in the area with lights), and in the first night game played at Smith Park
on June 29, 1950, the hometown Millers defeated Perham 4 to 1 before an overflow crowd of 2,000.

The baseball field is now named Russ Jacobson Field for the late coach and local baseball legend who spent more than 60 years involved in New York Mills baseball. Russ was known as "Mr. Baseball" in New York Mills; he was a Millers baseball player, manager and scout, as well as groundskeeper and bookkeeper for three Mills baseball teams, staying active in NYM baseball into his 90s.

The north end of Smith Park includes a football field and track. The football field, named in honor of Ralph Henry Smith, (another Smith!), who was the organizer of the first football team in New York Mills in 1933. He served as principal of the New York Mills school at the time and also became the first football coach. Also part of the WPA funds, the track (said to have been inspired by Jesse Owens’ favorite track), was one of the finest in the Midwest. There is a story that in the 1930s, the superintendent of schools from New York Mills toured the new track at the University of Minnesota. He reportedly told the coach from the U of M that while the track was beautiful, it could not top the track back in New York Mills.

In the early 1930s and 1940s, open track meets were common in small communities all over. New York Mills made use of its fine track to host invitational meets which included many famous runners over the years, including several Olympic athletes and Finnish American track star Tauno Nurmela.

Nurmela said that a large 1934 meet in New York Mills was one of the biggest moments in his storied career. Competing in a meet that included several university athletes, Tauno was picked as Most Outstanding Athlete. He estimated there was a crowd of more than 1,500 on hand.

“That was the most people I ever competed in front of,” he said.

“Those were tough times in this country,” Tauno told the Mining Gazette in a 1970 interview. “People wanted something to do …. and something to watch.”

Beautiful Smith Park is more than a collection of sports fields. It is a reminder that providing spaces for communities to connect, whether for picnics, old-fashioned town team baseball, or hosting track meets during the Great Depression, can be the glue that holds a community together, generating a great sense of pride and passion among its residents.