The Chicago Park District purchased this park site in 1961, and officially named it Aspen Park in 1974. Aspen Park was one of a number of properties the park district named for trees and plants at this time. The district's park naming committee felt that neighborhood children could relate well to park names chosen from nature. The Aspen tree, with its brilliant white bark, provides an especially appropriate name for this park, given its Wabash Avenue location. Wabash means "gleaming white" in the Sioux language. Before the Chicago Fire, the stretch of Wabash Avenue extending into the Loop was a much-admired, tree-lined avenue of beautiful homes owned by wealthy Chicagoans.