 Clare Henley, for whom the park was named in 1942, encouraged its construction in an effort to persuade a professional baseball team to train there.On May 23, 1997, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.Henley Field was used as the home ballpark of the fictional Class D Tampico Stogies in the 1987 HBO movie "Long Gone" which starred William Petersen and Virginia Madsen.