Ask someone in Willoughby Hills where they take the kids on a Saturday morning and you'll get the same answer almost every time: Squire's Castle. It's the postcard image of the city, a stone gatehouse from the 1890s that kids climb through like a ruin from a storybook. What most residents don't realize is that the castle sits inside just one of three separate park systems operating within the same city limits, each with a different owner, a different budget, and a different reason to exist.
That's not a trivia footnote. It changes where you should actually be spending your weekend depending on what you're after, and it means you're already paying into infrastructure you've probably never used.
Squire's Castle Is the Headline, Not the Whole Story
Squire's Castle sits inside North Chagrin Reservation, which belongs to Cleveland Metroparks and stretches across Willoughby Hills, Mayfield Village, and Gates Mills. The castle itself was built as a gatehouse for Feargus B. Squire, a Standard Oil executive who later served as mayor of Wickliffe. He bought 525 acres in the Chagrin Valley in 1890 hoping to build a full estate. Only the gatehouse got finished. The main house never happened, and the Metropolitan Park Board bought the property in 1925 after it passed through a private developer's hands. The upper floors were removed and the basement sealed decades ago for safety, which is why what stands today is a shell you can walk into and look up through, not a furnished building.
An Axios Cleveland piece published just five days ago pitched the castle as a last-chance destination before the school year starts, and that framing is accurate for where we are on the calendar right now. But the castle grounds are also where North Chagrin's programming concentrates. Earlier this month, a naturalist-led storytime brought families into the ruin itself for a hands-on activity, and a meteor shower watch party turned the castle lawn into a blanket-and-lawn-chair viewing spot for one of the year's best sky shows. Both have already happened, but they're worth knowing about because they tell you something useful: this park runs frequent, dated programming, not just open trails.
One series is still open right now. A picnic-and-hike event pairs a gathering inside the castle with a three-mile hike along the ridgeline above, and it runs in sessions through August 30. If you've been meaning to see the castle from a different vantage point than the parking lot, that's your window before it closes for the season.
North Chagrin also holds quieter spots that don't get the castle's foot traffic. Sanctuary Marsh and Sunset Pond are where you go for waterfowl, not crowds. Oxbow Lagoon, just south of the castle off Chagrin River Road, is a separated wetland tracing an old flow path of the Chagrin River. A.B. Williams Memorial Woods protects one of the few old-growth beech-maple forests left in the region, named for the Metroparks' first naturalist. And Manakiki Golf Course, tucked into the same reservation off SOM Center and Eddy roads, is a full 18 holes most people don't associate with a "hiking park" at all.
Three Agencies, One City Limit
Here's the part that surprises longtime residents as much as newcomers: Willoughby Hills' own parks page states plainly that the city hosts three separate parkland agencies within its borders, not one. That's unusual for a suburb this size, and it means the answer to "which park department serves my neighborhood" depends entirely on which park you mean.
| Agency | What It Runs Here | What You'll Actually Find |
|---|---|---|
| City of Willoughby Hills | Campbell Park | Two covered pavilions with electricity and grills, restrooms, a playground, pickleball and tennis courts, a basketball court |
| Cleveland Metroparks | North Chagrin Reservation | Squire's Castle, Sanctuary Marsh, Sunset Pond, Oxbow Lagoon, A.B. Williams Memorial Woods, Manakiki Golf Course |
| Lake Metroparks | Gully Brook Park, Pleasant Valley Park | A 1.4-mile gravel trail and playground at Gully Brook; 2,000 feet of fishable stream and floodplain restoration at Pleasant Valley |
Campbell Park sits right behind City Hall and is the one most residents actually think of as "the city park." It's built for reservable, practical use: birthday parties under a pavilion with electricity already run to it, a pickup pickleball game, a kid's basketball practice. There's also a veterans memorial area on the same grounds with a gazebo and amphitheater-style seating, used for Memorial Day and Veterans Day ceremonies as well as summer concerts.
Lake Metroparks' two properties are the ones people drive past without realizing they're public land. Gully Brook Park covers 174 acres the district has assembled over roughly the past decade, and its main draw is a straightforward 1.4-mile gravel trail plus a picnic shelter right on the bank of Gully Brook itself. Pleasant Valley Park is the more interesting reclamation story. Lake Metroparks bought the site at the end of 2007 from a former commercial nursery and has spent years turning it back into a working floodplain along the Chagrin River, with cottonwood and sycamore trees slowly reclaiming the valley floor beneath an 80-foot bank. Nearly 80 acres of it front 2,000 feet of stream that's open for fishing, which is a very different use case than anything North Chagrin offers.
The Pool Deal Most People Never Hear About
There's a fourth wrinkle that isn't a park at all but works the same way: Willoughby Hills doesn't run its own public pool. For summer 2026, the city has again partnered with neighboring Mayfield Village to give residents a subsidized per-visit rate at Parkview Pool, located at 425 North Commons Boulevard near the Progressive office campus. Willoughby Hills residents pay $8 per visit for ages 5 to 59, $5 for seniors 60 and older, and kids 4 and under get in free. It's not something you'd find by driving around the city looking for a pool sign, because the pool itself isn't in Willoughby Hills at all. It's a cross-municipal agreement that only shows up if you know to look for it on the city's own recreation page.
How to Actually Use What's Already Yours
If you've only ever set foot in one of these systems, the fix is simple and doesn't cost anything beyond a drive across town. Start at the North Chagrin Nature Center if you want a map and a low-effort introduction, since it sits close to Sunset Pond and gives kids something to look at immediately. If your priority is a short trail with a playground and you're not trying to make a day of it, Gully Brook's gravel loop is built for exactly that. If you'd rather fish or just watch a river valley being slowly restored, Pleasant Valley is the one worth the extra ten minutes. And if what you actually need is a grill, a pavilion, and a place for the kids to run around while the adults sit still, Campbell Park has been doing that job the whole time, five minutes from most of the city's front doors.
The picnic-and-hike series at the castle runs through the end of the month, which makes the next two weeks the last easy window to combine the castle with a real hike before routines shift back to school pickup lines and shorter evenings. After that, North Chagrin's programming calendar moves into its fall lineup, and the crowds thin out on weekdays in a way that's worth knowing if you'd rather see the castle without a line for photos.
None of this requires a membership, a fee, or advance planning beyond checking a calendar. It just requires knowing that "the park" in Willoughby Hills was never one place to begin with.
If you're thinking about what life actually looks like in a neighborhood like this, from the parks to the pace of a weekend, Beth Kitchen is always glad to talk through what a specific street or section of Willoughby Hills feels like day to day. Let's Connect.
