We started by building one playset, for one daughter, in one backyard.

Tom and Dana Reeves started Johnson City Playgrounds in 2018.

Tom built the first one — a simple A-frame swing and slide — for their daughter Hattie's third birthday. He'd grown up on a farm and figured he could make something that would outlast the plastic ones at the box store.

Three neighbors asked him to build them one. Then a friend at church. Then a stranger on Facebook who'd seen Hattie's. Dana started taking the orders. They turned the back of the property into a small shop, hired their first employee in 2020, and never advertised — until now.

Everything we sell is still cut, sanded, and stained on Buffalo Trail. We use real cedar because plywood and pressure-treated pine don't belong where kids climb. We build to CPSC and ASTM safety standards because that's just the floor. And we're backordered because we'd rather have a queue than cut a corner — the families who've waited tell us their kids are still on it years later.