File:Sign - Grdina Park.jpg

English: Signage in Grdina Park in Cleveland Ohio, in the United States.

This park is in the St. Clair-Superior neighborhood. The name Grdina (pronounced "ger-din-uh") is taken from the settlement of the same name in the Styria region of northeastern Slovenia. It is the name of the street which makes up the park's southern boundary. Many people who settled St. Clair-Superior in the 1880s and 1890s were from Slovenia.

The park exists because of the East Ohio Gas Disaster.

East Ohio Gas was a natural gas distribution company. In 1941, it built two liquified natural gas (LNG) tanks above-ground just north of this park. Two more tanks were built in early 1944. This was the first LNG tank farm anywhere in the United States.

On October 20, 1944, two workers saw vapor pouring out of LNG Tank No. 3 at 2:30 PM. The cold natural gas fell to the ground and began pouring into the local streets and down stormwater drains and manhole covers into the sewers below. At 2:40 PM, the natural gas exploded, devastating about a half square mile of the city. The city streets were torn up by the blast, making it difficult for firefighting personnel to reach the blaze. At 2:50 PM, LNG Tank No. 4 exploded.

It took 24 hours for the fire to be extinguished. (It died out, more than was put out.) More than 130 people died; the death toll is probably closer to 150 or 160, but many of the bodies (even the bones) were burned to ash. (Had the explosion occurred just an hour later, the death toll would have neared 1,000 -- as children would have been home from school.)

Massive underground explosions ripped apart the infrastructure of the neighborhood. Electricity would not be restored for four months. A total of 79 homes were burned to the ground, and two nearby factories. More than 200 automobiles were torched as they sat on the street.

East Ohio Gas never again used the site for natural gas storage. A vehicle maintenance and repair shop was erected there in 1946, and remains in use to this day.

When the street was rebuilt, the western end of Grdina Avenue was shifted a half block to the south. This created a 2.2-acre triangular space in which a city park was established in 1946. Grdina Park today features a baseball field, playground equipment, wooden benches, and a mist/sprinkler area which operates in summer.