Peace Pole installed at Timber Trail
TTE staff, along with Castle Pines Mayor Tracy Engerman, joined members of the Rotary Club of Castle Pines to celebrate Timber Trail Elementary’s Peace Pole, the first in Douglas County.
What started as a new community garden in early 2025 turned into a greater opportunity for Timber Trail Elementary (TTE) to connect with a larger global movement––Peace Poles.
The TTE garden project began as an idea for a school space that would provide students and staff with a peaceful environment to relax, reflect and recharge during the school day. Phase one kicked off last fall with kindergarten students planting tulips, which bloomed this spring.
The Rotary Club of Castle Pines (RCCP) donated to the first phase of the garden and during that process invited the school to take part in the Rotary Club’s Global Peace Pole initiative. The RCCP dedicated the Peace Pole to TTE staff and students during a school assembly last month and is the seventh installation in Colorado and the first in Douglas County.
“What brings us together is more important than what keeps us apart,” said RCCP member Dr. Ruth Shoemaker. “Peace begins with us.”
Peace Poles are hand-crafted monuments that can be found in almost every country around the world, with more than 250,000 installed globally. They are symbols of unity and all of them have the phrase, “May Peace Prevail on Earth” in the language of the country where it is installed.
There are eight different languages—English, Polish, Spanish, Chinese Mandarin, German, Hindi, Arabic and Russian—on the TTE Peace Pole reflecting the diversity of the school. “This makes our pole a unique representation of who we are and what we value,” said Matt LeClaire, TTE program manager.
Created in 1955 by Masahisa Goi of Japan in response to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Peace Pole movement has spread to foster a unified, peaceful consciousness among all cultures, ethnicities and backgrounds.
Phase two of the garden is targeted for later this year and will include planting vegetable garden beds to provide students experience with gardening.
TTE will be added to the worldwide map of Peace Pole installations and visitors can scan the QR code on the school’s pole to view the other locations.
For more information on Peace Poles, visit worldpeace.org.
TTE Program Manager Matt LeClaire with the Peace Pole in the school’s new community garden.
Article and photos by Julie Matuszewski
