In the 1980s (and possibly into the 1990s), San Francisco-based Wells Fargo Bank sponsored the Wells Fargo National Fitness Campaign. Local organizations or businesses would often co-sponsor with Wells Fargo to help with the cost of a Gamefield in their community.
The program utilized a fitness curriculum designed by The Stanford University Heart Disease Prevention Center and the Arizona Heart Institute. In many communities around the U.S.A., a Gamefield was constructed, which included simple, but effective, exercise equipment with signs giving guidance for their use. If a running trail was not already nearby, the Gamefield might include a small, oval woodchip track.
I worked out on a Gamefield back in the 1980s. I really enjoyed it and felt that it was beneficial to my wellness. Most Gamefields are long gone now, though a web search shows that a few remain around the country. (I won't try to track them down--that's left as an exercise for the reader, if you'll pardon the pun.) I was able to locate one in Walla Walla, Washington, on the grounds of Wainwright Memorial VA Medical Center and photographed the signs. (That was late 2008 but by May, 2016, the Gamefield was gone.) I've done minimal retouching in Photoshop to restore basic readability.
With information from the signs, I've been able to adapt the Gamefield exercises to the fitness equipment at my local gym. Perhaps you'll find the images of these signs, sun-faded and water-stained as they are, to be useful in your own quest for fitness. If any of the signs are difficult to read on this web page, feel free to download them to your local computer. They have much higher resolution than is evident here. When downloaded, you can view the images at their full resolution.
In the future, I may do more Photoshop work to further improve their appearance. I may also put together diagrams of the equipment at each of the Gamefield stations. But for now, you're stuck with what information you can derive from the signs themselves.
-- Stan Cleveland, McMinnville, Oregon
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