An early morning fire heavily damaged the Olsrud Family Community Playground at Bear Creek Park in Medford Thursday. The play area, designed and built with help from community members, was built  just five years ago.

Passersby reported the fire just after 1 a.m. after seeing flames lighting up the sky in east Medford from nearly a mile away at Main Street and Highland Drive.

At least one large section of the playground — an area for babies and younger children — appeared to have been destroyed, according to law enforcement on scene, but damage reports were not immediately available.

An area for older children appeared intact, but impact from the fire was not yet known.

Police blocked Siskiyou Boulevard at Eastwood Drive for nearly an hour while firefighters dowsed the flames with water.

Phoenix resident Anna Nash was one of the first to report the fire. Nash and her boyfriend were turning onto Highland Drive when they noticed flames and smoke.

Nash said smoke and hot embers reached higher than some of the larger trees that shade the playground area.

“We were driving home from 7-11 on McAndrews through the roundabout when we saw 30- to 45-foot flames. We pulled in and didn’t see any law enforcement so I called 911 immediately. The operator mentioned that there was one person prior that had called it in,” Nash said.

“When we arrived at roughly 1:01 a.m. there were already huge flames. We didn’t see anyone surrounding the fire when we first arrived, no neighbors or civilians. We waited until it was out before pulling away.”

Medford city and police officials were not immediately available for comment.

Originally built in 1988, the playground formerly known as the “castle park” was constructed through a special community design process with help from renowned Leathers playground architects in Florida.

The firm helps to facilitate projects around the country in which community members design play spaces and then community members and municipalities help fundraise and donate volunteer labor to bring the projects to fruition.

Three decades after building the locally beloved “castle park,” Leathers aided the city of Medford in repeating the same process just before the pandemic.

Community members turned out in droves in fall and winter of 2018 to participate in the process. Various parts of the playground bear the names of families and community entities who donated for the structure.

Slated for a grand opening in early 2019, parks officials surprised community members by dedicating the playground the week before Christmas in 2018, renaming it in honor of Sherm and Wanda Olsrud, owners of Food 4 Less and Sherm’s Thunderbird Market, and very generous philanthropists who lived for decades across the street from the park on Siskiyou Boulevard and whose family donated to the replacement playground in the Olsruds’ honor.

The newer rendition of the city’s largest playground doubled the size of the original, taking the space from 9,500 to 18,500 square feet.

Rich Rosenthal, Medford Parks and Recreation director, reported in 2018 that the renovated playground was the product of some 6,400 hours of volunteer labor, contributed by more than 1,000 volunteers during an eight-day assembly process.

Nash said she was heartbroken to see a favorite childhood play place nearly destroyed.

“It was devastating to see it burn, I’ve played there since I was little. Especially with how it was rebuilt, it’s just so upsetting,” Nash said early Thursday morning.

“We could feel the heat radiating from the fire as well as ash landing on our truck and lit pieces of the trees in the street… It looked like it was raining embers.”

Police and fire officials were not immediately available early Thursday morning.

Anyone with information about the fire should call Medford police 541-774-2250.