Maggie Stuckey-Ross: Stewards of Lincoln's Green Spaces

Episode Summary

Maggie Stuckey-Ross runs the department that runs the parks. As Director of Lincoln Parks and Recreation, she oversees 168 parks, 186 miles of paved multi-use trails, four eighteen-hole golf courses, a network of pools and rec centers, and the brand-new 32,000-square-foot skate park at Canopy Yard downtown. She's also a Lincoln native, a two-time boomerang, and someone who clearly loves her job.

About Maggie Stuckey-Ross

Maggie Stuckey-Ross is the Director of Lincoln Parks and Recreation. Before stepping into this role, her career moved through public service and nonprofit work — including time as a legislative aide in Washington, D.C. and a stretch with the Arbor Day Foundation. She grew up near Irving Dale Park, came home to raise her own family in Lincoln, and now leads a department that touches almost every neighborhood in the city.

About the Conversation

This is a conversation about something most of us take for granted until we stop and look at it. Lincoln has 168 parks, organized into a quiet hierarchy — three regional parks, community parks, neighborhood parks, and the small "pocket parks" tucked into corners around the city. Roughly 90 percent of Lincoln households are within a ten-minute walk of a park facility. That number isn't an accident. It's the result of decades of planning, and a quiet partnership with Lincoln Public Schools that lets the city follow growth instead of guessing at it.

Maggie walks the hosts through what's old, what's new, and what's changing. The new Canopy Yard skate park downtown — designed in close conversation with Lincoln's skate community — opened in April 2026 with a nine-foot bowl and pool tile around the edge as a nod to skating's origins. The Mahoney Park accessible playground came out of a group of parents saying, in effect, your definition of inclusivity doesn't work for our kids — and changed how the department thinks about play.

There's also a great fact about basketball hoops. You'll have to listen for that one.

Conversation Highlights

• The Big Dam Mug from the Hoover Dam gift shop, and what it tells you about Maggie's day
• Lincoln's 168 parks — from the 1,472-acre Wilderness Park to the quarter-acre Government Square
• The "spark" partnership with Lincoln Public Schools — how parks follow new schools
• 186 miles of paved multi-use trails, plus the natural surface trails on top of that
• Why playgrounds are no longer one-size-fits-all — and what accessibility really means
• The Mahoney Park accessible playground, and the parents who started it
• The new 32,000-square-foot skate park at Canopy Yard
• Municipal golf — four eighteen-hole courses, plus Jim Ager Junior — and why Lincoln is leaning in while other cities lean out
• Lincoln's national park ranking (24th — and #1 in basketball hoops per capita)
• America's 250th: free shelter rentals the week of July 4th, free pool admission and Bomb Pops on the 4th, and a parks-themed bingo card
  

The Mug

Maggie forgot her favorite mug and showed up borrowing a Coffee Roaster cup — but the favorite, she explained, is the Big Dam Mug she picked up at the Hoover Dam gift shop. Jumbo-sized. Holds two cups of coffee. There are some mornings, she said, when you simply need coffee in the Big Dam Mug because you know what's coming.