‘Riverdale’: What Is Pickens Park?

Riverdale loves to include Easter egg-like nods to Archie Comics in The CW series, and tonight’s episode continues that tradition.

Spoilers for tonight’s episode of Riverdale, “Chapter Nineteen: Death Proof”, below!

Tonight’s episode saw Archie (KJ Apa,) Veronica (Camila Mendes) and the rest of the gang who attended Nick St. Clair’s (Graham Phillips) little party last week get into trouble for having used drugs – specifically Jingle Jangle. While they don’t end up with any criminal charges, they do get stuck doing community service picking up trash at Pickens Park.

Turns out Pickens Park isn’t just a random location on The CW’s Riverdale. It’s a canon location in Archie Comics. Named for American Civil War army general General Pickens, the Riverdale park happens to sit on what was a battlefield. While General Pickens himself is generally just referenced as part of local history, Pickens Park has appeared as a setting for some unusual adventures. The park appears in a Jughead’s Time Police story -– at least the battlefield version of it -– where a future clone of Jughead goes back into time (alongside regular Jughead and a future descendant of Archie, January McAndrews who are tasked with preserving history) to the Civil War where he takes the alias of Pickens and becomes a hero before returning to his own time. When he leaves and is presumed dead, Pickens isn’t quite yet a general. Maybe he got a posthumous promotion.

Of course, while time travel isn’t part of tonight’s Riverdale episode, the group probably wishes they could make time move faster. Pickens Park isn’t exactly a serene and lovely place. It’s full of trash and drug paraphernalia, meaning that the community service sentence has Archie and his friends having to do actual work to atone for their party sins, even though Veronica does get Reggie’s Jingle Jangle contact while she’s supposed to be learning a lesson.

Riverdale airs Wednesdays at 8/7c on The CW.