Originally, this episode was going to be an easing back into The Abandoned Carousel after an extended period of time off to attend to family matters during the covid19 quarantine. 

However, I’m sure you can see the state of the world around you. As I was researching my proposed next topic, a group of rides which moved together through three different theme parks, all now defunct, I couldn’t get past the reasons for the downfall of the original park. And of course, it’s July of 2020 – the world is awash in pandemic, police brutality, black lives matter, and the desperate need for people to confront their inner biases.

So instead of doing a light-hearted chat, I’m going to talk about some reading I’ve been doing to educate myself. What I’ve learned is a lot about how racism is responsible for quite a few of the urban theme park closures that occurred in the 1960s and 1970s. My episode today will draw heavily from the excellent book “Racism, Riots, and Roller Coasters” by Victoria Wolcott. This book can be found for free online through Project Muse at Johns Hopkins University: https://muse.jhu.edu/book/17151 

I am still learning. So let’s learn together about this topic. It might be uncomfortable and that’s okay. And I will probably make some mistakes and that’s okay too.

In the past on this show, I’m sure I’ve mentioned how a number of parks seemed to close in the late 60s and early 70s. Well, the unspoken reason, in many cases, was: because racism. I’m going to talk about this in the context of one park in particular, but racism was a factor in the decline and closure of many urban theme parks. 

A Brief Discussion of Civil Rights

We begin towards the beginning.

Early amusement parks at the turn of the century were often trumpeted by owners as being spaces for cleanliness and order, but they accomplished this by putting in place the exclusion of Blacks. 

It’s perhaps a thesis-level work to try and condense this into a small format. However, we do need to have a few landmarks. You may or may not remember landmark cases from your US history class. Here’s a few relevant points:

• America was built on racialized slavery, from the very beginning. For more than you learned in school and less than you should know, please listen to or read the Pulitzer-prize winning 1619 Project. 
• Slavery was abolished by the 13th Amendment, just after the Civil War, in 1865. This was only 155 years ago. (To really place this in context for the podcast, Charles Looff’s first carousel was built only 11 years later, in 1876, and his contemporary Charles Dare built a carousel around the same time that still operates to this day.)
• The Civil Rights Act of 1875 was a federal law calling for equal rights for all people, particularly access to accommodations, transportation, and theaters, regardless of race. 
• A group of Supreme Court cases collectively called Civil Rights Cases of 1883 dismantled the 1875 act, ruling that Congress could not outlaw racial discrimination by private individuals. 
• As a result, Southern states began passing laws now called Jim Crow laws, codifying racial discrimination in public amenities.
• 1896 saw a landmark Supreme Court case, legally establishing the principle of “separate but equal” in Plessy v. Ferguson. This applied to all public facilities.
• As a result, individual states passed civil rights laws to ban racial discrimination in these public amusements and amenities. In the South, Jim Crow laws remained in place.
• 1954 saw the desegregation of education (Brown v Board of Education).
• 1964 and 1965 saw the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which broadly outlawed discrimination based on “color, religion, sex, or national origin”. 
• Despite this, today in 2020, racial discrimination is still rampant in hiring practices, housing, healthcare, and police brutality, among every other aspect of life. 

Given this context, let’s focus on one urban amusement park in particular as we move to look at how racial discrimination affected urban amusements over the last century.  

Euclid Beach Park in Cleveland, OH

Our park is Euclid Beach Park, located on the shores of Lake Erie, in the Cleveland, OH area. Euclid Beach Park opened its doors for the first time in 1895. A group of businessmen wanted to capitalize on the booming popularity of Coney Island, so they purchased land outside of Cleveland, OH and opened an amusement park.

In the late 1800s, amusement parks and carnival midways were still often seen as hotbeds of sin and salaciousness, crime and immorality. The sexes were allowed to freely intermingle, to experience freedom from crowded housing conditions in devastating summer heat, and they were a place for the working class to experience leisure activities for the first time. 

For Black people, it appears Cleveland was a good place to be, socially and economically, for most of the 19th century. By this, the subtext is: it was better here than most places, but probably still not as good as it should have been. Cleveland was a center for abolitionism prior to the Civil War, and local Black leaders in the community fought for integration rather than segregated, separate Black institutions. 

To really put a pin in it: slavery was abolished by the 13th Amendment, just after the Civil War, in 1865. This was only 155 years ago. (As I stated earlier, there are carousels contemporaneous to the abolition of slavery that still operate today in 2020.) On the surface of glossy history textbooks, things seemed to go swimmingly. The Civil Rights Act of 1875 was a federal law calling for equal rights for all people, particularly access to accommodations, transportation, and theaters, regardless of race. We of course all should know the undercurrents yet to come.

Euclid Beach Park: the Early Years

In its initial years of operation, managers William R. Ryan and Lee Holtzman modeled Euclid Beach after the best in the business at the time. The beach was obviously a large draw, along with other typical period amusements: vaudeville, sideshows, concerts, gambling, beer. High walls surrounded the property, blocking views of the rowdiness, and an entrance fee was charged. There were even some rides, like one of LaMarcus A. Thompson’s groundbreaking Switchback Railways (the tldr version – he’s called the Father of the American Rollercoaster, and Euclid Beach Park’s Switchback Railway was the sixth of his design ever). 

Unfortunately, despite the draws of the opposite sex, pleasures, and beer, the park didn’t do well in those early years – it was seen as a skeevy, sleezy place to be. And the city, formerly seen as well-integrated for most of the 19th century, had become more segregated. The Civil Rights Cases of 1883, ruling that Congress could not outlaw against discrimination by private individuals, and the 1896 Supreme Court Plessy v. Ferguson, meant that separate but equal was now legal, heralded from the highest court in the land. This applied to all facilities open to the public, including Euclid Beach Park, and meant that individual businesses could chose to exercise racial discrimination.  

It’s said that the earliest discrimination suits at Euclid Beach Park can be traced back to around this time. 

By late 1899, Euclid Beach Park had been open for a handful of years, but was reported in the newspapers as a failure, said to be losing over $20,000 a season (over half a million dollars a season in 2020 money). Investors were facing the loss of over half their investment funds if they sold the land for development, but they saw no other choice. In 1901, they put the land up for sale.

Euclid Beach Park’s Glory Days

In 1896, a year after Euclid Beach Park opened, a man named Dudley S. Humphrey II opened a popcorn stand at Euclid Beach Park. He’d built a name and a living for himself, having been popping popcorn in the greater Cleveland area since 1891, having patented a type of popcorn popper which seasoned the popcorn as it was popped (this sentence is a tongue twister). For three years, he and his family operated a stand at Euclid Beach Park, popping corn amidst the drunkenness and debauchery of the early park. In 1899, however, he closed his stand, unhappy with the atmosphere and park management.

However, in 1901, when the park went up for sale, Humphrey and six other members of his family got the funds together and purchased the park. They had in mind a new direction.

Immediately, changes were made. Gone were the high walls, gone was the admission fee. Money was charged at the attractions, with the goal of allowing anyone who wanted to visit the park, free of charge. 

Gone too was the rowdy behaviour. Humphrey wanted a family-friendly park and a family-friendly atmosphere. Gone was the beer garden, and patrons were strictly prohibited from entering the park if they consumed any alcohol, as well. Bathing garments had to be modest, and “definitely not gaudy in color”. 

This type of attitude was a contrast to the majority of amusement parks at the time, known for being rowdy, raucous places. But it was a strategy that worked for Humphrey. The slogan was “one fare, free gate and no beer”, since the average person only needed to pay a single streetcar fare to get to the park. 

It was a place suddenly very accessible to youths of all colors. Unfortunately, the park’s long history with banning Black admittance on certain days or on certain attractions is said to have begun around this time. This was done in direct violation of the standing 1894 Ohio state law barring discrimination in public facilites. 

The quote from the park’s leadership was that everything at Euclid Beach Park should be “of a highly moral and elevating character”. And as many sources describe, advertising for the park at one time included promises that Euclid Beach Park would “present nothing that would demoralize or depress,” and that visitors would “never be exposed to undesirable people”. Saying the quiet part out loud, the management, in a not uncommon opinion at the time, wanted to keep Black people out. 

Racial Discrimination in Theme Parks Before World War II

Commercial recreation (theme parks, swimming pools, etc; distinguished from non-commercial recreation such as public parks and picnic grounds) arose at the same time as the Jim Crow laws, which codified racial discrimination in public places both before and after the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case. While the South saw “whites only” signs and policies quickly enacted, the Northern states, such as Ohio, were slower to enact any sweeping measure prior to World War II. However, there was little public taste for “mixing” in the shiny new arena of a theme park. 

Forrester B. Washington, a Black social worker and activist, is quoted as saying that the young Black migrants “found the wholesome agencies of recreation either closed or closing to him”. Between Northern states and Southern states, the difference was one of degree. While a Southern swimming pool might be whites only, exclusively, a swimming pool in the North might have Blacks allowed only on a single day, with a more subtle “Members Only” policy. 

Theme parks did the same thing. Wolcott’s book lists the policies off: Lakewood Park and Idora Park allowed Blacks in only at the beginning or end of the season – once a year. Bob-Lo Island in Detroit allowed Blacks every other week.

And by 1915, Euclid Beach Park followed suit, as did local competition Luna Park: Blacks were only admitted on certain days of the week, and were strictly prohibited from interacting with white people while they were at the park. On the other days, the park’s private police force ensured that no Black person was admitted. 

More to the point, it’s noted in Wolcott’s book that once admitted to the park, a Black patron was not allowed to enter the restaurants, the bathhouse, the dance hall, or the roller rink except in rare circumstances. Again, it was all about keeping that family-friendly image. Popular culture had wrongly painted Blacks as harbingers of disease and violence, so in the eyes of management, the park was perfectly justified in admitting only people who would uphold that “high moral character”. 

Again, this was a common tactic for many theme parks in the early 20th century: racial discrimination was their way of establishing their business as a safe space, a twisted marketing tactic. Over in nearby Cincinnatti’s Coney Island, and in Youngstown’s Idora Park, similar policies were in place. Blacks were admitted on very few days, and private park police were used to eject anyone management deemed inappropriate. And even on the days Idora Park was open to Blacks, days when the popular Homestead Grays Negro League baseball team played there, many of the park’s more popular attractions were inexplicably closed or under repairs.

Resistance to Recreational Discrimination

Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote the lone dissent in the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case, apparently quite often quoted. In his opinion, segregation “can have no other result than to render permanent peace impossible, and to keep alive a conflict of races, the continuance of which must do harm to all concerned.”

Harlan’s view was that segregation caused violence, not that violence required segregation. Again and again throughout history, we have seen this born out. 

In the arena of public amusements, this violence was most often seen at the swimming pool. With women and children present, the specter of not only males and females gathered in less clothing than usual, but also miscegenation, interracial relations. It was seen as taboo and often illegal. With emotions of one sort already high, it’s unsurprising that emotions of another sort also exploded. 

The early 20th century is littered with violence and murder tied to racial discrimination at swimming pools and beaches. Spontaneous protests regularly arose in small groups, given the increasing segregation of public recreation. Public policy, especially in large urban cities like Chicago, was that racial segregation would lead to racial peace. However, this was not the case – from minor antagonism like angry words, to unsafe recreation conditions, to actual bloodshed, violence, and death – there was no peace.

Back to Euclid Beach Park

Back at Euclid Beach Park, similar policies were still in effect. The park banned Black schoolchildren from using the dance hall in the 1930s. After pushing from the NAACP, the Cleveland School Board resolved that no schools would visit the park until all children were “accorded the full and equal enjoyment of the accommodations”.

However, the private park police force and the constant threats of violence were wielded most commonly against Black patrons whose only “crime” was to attempt to enjoy the recreations. 

Rides of Euclid Beach Park

Here we’ll take a quick diversion, for what wonderful recreations they were. My original discussion about Euclid Beach Park, before I learned more about it, was going to be about the enduring rides, a group of which passed from Euclid Beach Park to Shady Lakes Park to Old Indiana Theme Park over several decades. There were some really fantastic rides. Groundbreaking coasters:  1913’s Derby Racer, aka Racing Coaster, a John Miller-designed moebius style coaster which gave the effect of  racing cars when multiple trains ran on the track. 1924’s Thriller coaster, at the time the tallest and fastest coaster in the world, designed by Philadelphia Toboggan Company and Herbert Paul Schmeck. (If you’re a long time The Abandoned Carousel listener/reader, you might remember him as the designer of Joyland’s iconic Roller Coaster, as well as Little Amerricka’s classic Meteor coaster.) 

1930 saw a unique one, the Flying Turns, a trackless coaster, more like a wooden bobsled course than a traditional “coaster”. Designed in partnership between (yet again) John Miller and British WWI ace John Norman Bartlett, Euclid Beach Park’s Flying Turns was the second ever built, and the tallest. Two-person sleds, designed to look like airplanes, were chained together in three-car trains, winched up to the top, and then let go, much like a waterless waterslide. There are some videos of this ride on YouTube, and it looks very fun indeed. In fact, the Flying Turns made it into a Beach Boys song. Euclid Beach Park is one out of five parks mentioned in Amusement Parks USA: “At Euclid Beach on the Flying Turns I’ll bet you can’t keep her smilin’” the lyrics go.

And of course, the carousels: 1904 saw the installation of Philadelphia Toboggan Company #9. This carousel was a work of art, a three-row menagerie with a magnificent lion, dancing horses, a giraffe with a snake draped around its neck, and my favorite, a proud golden retriever. In 1909, the original PTC carousel #9 was sold to Laurel Springs Amusement Park in Hartford, CT. The next year, 1910, PTC installed a new carousel at Euclid Beach Park: PTC #19, a 58 horse carousel with two chariots. The horses were replicas of famous horses ridden by characters such as Sitting Bull and Lady Godiva. Along with the carousel came an beautiful band organ from North Tonawanda Musical Instruments, all to the tune of $7,734. 

There were dozens of other popular rides and attractions. Things like the Rocket Ship stood out. Designed and built by the park’s welder, this classic swinging car ride was built with classic futuristic Buck Rogers-style lines. Riders boarded the cars at the platform, and were swung high enough to touch the trees when the ride was at its peak. The shiny silver steel cars were some of the park’s most memorable, even made into a two-rider Kiddie version at one point. Of course, the ride was the subject of urban legend. Rumors say that one car broke off its cables and landed in Lake Erie. (This is not physically possible and never happened. Rumors, however, persist.)

The iconic arched entryway was built in 1921. With stone pillars on either side of the roadway, beautifully styled letters spell out “Euclid Beach Park” to entice patrons in. 

Only the right kind of patrons, of course.

Racial Conflicts at Euclid Beach Park

As discussed, recreation riots were a huge part of the early 20th century. Constant activism began to pay dividends by the 1930s. Also in effect was the Great Depression – with nothing but time on their hands, there was plenty of additional time for leisure and protesting. 

(In a time before our modern era of June 2020, this fact was probably counterintuitive. Now, I think it is probably quite clear how even in lean financial times, a lack of work means time can be spent on recreational and leisure activities.)

Government-sanctioned segregation, including New Deal-era segregated housing and hundreds of segregated swimming pools, led to a rising tide of anger. Black youth continued to protest racist policies at local swimming pools across the United States. White people, in turn, fought the rightful access of Black people to recreational spaces, among others, at every turn. “Mild” violence, including hateful words and harmful pranks, up to life-threatening violence, including rocks, fists, and more, were what faced Black people trying to access the theme park or swimming pool in their neighborhoods, paid for by their own taxpayer dollars in many cases. 

Demanding access to recreation was seen as central to an assertion of citizenship and consumer rights, so the fight went on. 

In the 1940s, race relations was increasingly a hot topic in a way it hadn’t been since post-Civil War Reconstruction era. Before and after the war, discrimination in housing and employment were huge areas of focus, and so was recreation. Recreation segregation was a huge focus if only because it was so visible, whereas discrimination in jobs and housing could be hidden away. Activists began to focus on nonviolent protests in recreational spaces. A 1944 book of essays by Roy Wilkins entitled “What the Negro Wants” laid it out, stating that what Blacks wanted was “to be able to go to parks, playgrounds, beaches, pools, theatres, restaurants, hotels, taverns, tourist camps, and other places of public amusement and accommodation without proscription and insult.” Seems perfectly reasonable, but we’re still fighting this fight here in 2020, so…?

In the 1940s, organized “nonviolent direct action” was the innovation, defined by Greg Houser as “group action against injustice by challenging directly the right of that discrimination to exist” in contrast to the reliance on states or courts. There were two movements that came out of this: A. Philip Randolph’s March on Washington Movement (MOWM), which led to the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE).  

CORE’s first use of the nonviolent direction action came in response to an Illinois skating rink in 1946 that used a fictitious “club” to keep Blacks out and circumvent the Illinois civil rights laws. Physical pickets blocked and slowed access to the club, and picketers touted their military veteran status, with signs reading “The draft boards did not exclude Negroes”. Larger crowds joined the picket each weekend, and from January to March, the aptly named “White City” skating rink lost 50% of their business. Ultimately, White City began allowing Blacks entrance to the skating rink, else they go out of business entirely. A local paper wrote “The fight against White City is considered to be the opening gun in a campaign to smash discrimination in all skating rinks and amusement centers in Chicago.”

The fight for equality was then taken to further North to other so called “civil rights states”, where there were discrimination statutes on the books that were not enforced. Ohio was one of these states, and the place most heavily-targeted by activists was Euclid Beach Park. 

The Euclid Beach Park “Riots”

By this time, Euclid Beach Park was solidly established as a popular, family-friendly amusement park with many exciting rides, roller coasters, shows, and of course, the beach and pier. All of these were still only open to white visitors; Blacks could visit only on the designated days, and were kept under tight watch from the park’s private police force. 

In 1946, a young woman named Juanita Morrow established a new chapter of CORE. She began spearheading nonviolent protests to challenge Euclid Beach Park’s discriminatory policies. July 21, 1946 saw a protest where a young group of activists were harassed by the park police and then roughly evicted from the park when they tried to enter the dance hall. The activists subsequently filed lawsuits and began picketing the park. 

A month later on August 23, 1946, twelve activists again visited the park to nonviolently protest by playing Skeeball in an integrated group. Park police didn’t allow the activists to attempt rollerskating or dancing, and roughly evicted them from the park. Albert T. Luster was separated from the group and violently beaten. 

The summer of activism at Euclid Beach Park was not over, however. The dance pavilion was the most carefully guarded (read: discriminatory) space at the park. Two off-duty Black police officers escorted two couples to the pavilion, one white and one Black. When the Black couple were prevented from entering by park guards, the police officers attempted to arrest the guards for violating state civil rights laws. The resulting brawl caused an accidental gun misfire, with an officer badly injured as a result.

Subsequently, the mayor shut down the dance hall a week earlier than the season closure. Activists pushed in city council meetings for a change to public accommodation laws in include antidiscrimination language. After months of debate, the mayor publicly expressed his unease but signed the law. 

Unfortunately, his unease paved the way out for Euclid Beach Park.

The 1947 season opened with the dance hall, skating rink, and bathhouse closed. They would later reopen under private management as “private clubs”, no longer part of the park and therefore circumventing the public licensing laws. 

And Euclid Beach Park wasn’t alone. Wolcott’s book cites at least two more incidents of theme parks closing in order to avoid desegregation. Nonviolent protesting worked, though, as the 1949 Freeman Civil Rights Act in New Jersey proved – laws surrounding all commercial amusements were rewritten following increased public support for desegregation after highly visible nonviolent protests at places like Palisades Park. This was the first civil rights statute for public accommodations since 1931. Public actions by CORE forced Palisades Park to desegregate officially by 1952, although discriminatory policies were reportedly upheld throughout the 1960s. 

Closure of Euclid Beach Park

While officially, Euclid Beach Park was required to comply with public anidiscrimination laws after the 1947 season, “private clubs” for the bathhouse, dance hall, and skating rink were used to skirt that law, and discriminatory policies continued.

The park ultimately closed 22 years later, in 1969.

Discrimination persisted for the rest of Euclid Park’s operation, despite nominal desegregation. Chroniclers of the park’s history cite “racial tensions” and “gangs and undesirables” that were attracted to the park because of the open-gate policies, thereby “[scaring] off the patrons with money to spend.” Other descriptions of the park from different sources, however, tell a different story, with facilities were continually being closed to Black people in the years prior to the park’s 1969 closure. A native Clevelander wrote of the park’s closure, saying that society “treat[s] the park’s financial failure in 1969 as an unfathomable mystery. It’s no secret in this town that it was due, in large measure, to racial bigotry.” 

Taxes continued to increase on the park’s land, making the land almost more profitable than the business. At the same time, profits began to decrease; a familiar theme park story, now with additional context. 

1963 saw the city cutting public transportation, with bus routes no longer running to Euclid Beach Park. In 1964, the park began to operate in the red, losing money. 

Reportedly, management began to abandon the park little by little, apparently a common practice for small urban parks in this time period. One author writes “The vacant, darkened spaces on the countenance of Euclid Beach Park were like teeth absent from an aging face.” Rides were shuttered and sold off, exhibits were closed. Rides were demolished, like the Aero Dips coaster which was destroyed in 1964 or 1965. 

The guests who could, largely the middle-class white patrons, went in increasing numbers to Cedar Point (an hour west) or the Geauga Lake (40 minutes south). Mass suburbanization meant both were increasingly accessible from the highway, by car. Cedar Point, indeed, implemented a massive improvements campaign beginning in 1959, billing itself as the Disneyland of the Midwest, with single-price admission instituted on certain days beginning in 1964. This policy kept out lower-class patrons who visited to bring their own picnics, gather and people watch, and otherwise spend little money, riding few rides. Reality or perception, the idea that urban parks were “dangerous” and suburban/remote parks were safer was an idea, rooted in racism, that ultimately spelled the downfall for many central urban amusement parks.

Finally, in 1969, Euclid Beach Park was an unprofitable shadow of herself, and closed.

Remnants of Euclid Beach Park

I originally chose this park because I was fascinated by its rides. A large bulk of the Euclid Beach Park rides moved to the Humphrey family’s second take on Euclid Beach, called Shady Lake Park down in Streetsboro OH. This short-lived park operated for only a few years, from 1978-1982. After Shady Lake Park, the same bulk of rides moved to Old Indiana Fun Park, down in Thorntown, IN. The rides operated there until 1996, when two guests were killed after the miniature train derailed. The park quickly shuttered and the rides were liquidated; additionally, the incident forced changes in the state safety and inspection laws for amusement park rides. 

From here, rides were quite dispersed – the Giant wheel is notable for heading to Geauga Lake, where it had to be completely rebuilt. (Most of the rides were said to be in quite poor shape at this point.) Still operating today are the Turnpike Cars, which operate at Idlewild Park today. These are notable for being the same limited-run model as Disneyland’s first Autopia, and there’s an excellent article about them. The Great American Racing Derby, sold early from Euclid Beach Park in 1967 to Cedar Point, where it still operates today as the Cedar Downs. 

After the closure of Old Indiana, Six Flags parent company Premier Parks purchased the property, storing several dismantled coasters onsite as late as 2006 (for images of these coasters, visit the park page at the incredible RCDB). No new theme park ever operated there, and today the land is a hops farm.

Shady Lake Park had an entrance modeled after Euclid Beach Park’s, which remained until 2004. Today, the area is apartments and a bank.

And Euclid Beach Park? The famous arched gateway was made a Cleveland landmark, and still stands. Apartment buildings occupy much of the former amusement park site. The remainder is park land, including the Euclid Beach Park Pier, which was recently rebuilt and rededicated. You can still purchase Humphrey family popcorn today. 

And of course, the beautiful PTC Carousel. When Euclid Beach Park closed, the carousel went to Palace Playland in Maine, where it operated for several decades, until 1996. Subsequently, the Trust for Public Land repurchased the theme park at $715,000. A quote on the matter said, “they don’t normally bid on carousels, but they realized how important it was to Cleveland history.” By 2014, Philadelphia Toboggan Company carousel #19 was fully restored, and opened to the public under the operation of the Western Reserve Historical Society.

Conclusions

Although I focused on the story of Euclid Beach Park here, it’s important to remember that they were in no way unique or out of step with other theme parks at the time. While Euclid Beach Park of the past made their own decisions, similar stories can be told in both the North and the South. 

“We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights,” Martin Luther King Jr wrote in his 1963 Letter from a Birmingham Jail, speaking of racial injustice. Among them, he spoke of his daughter. “[W]hen you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children,” he wrote, “then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.”

This is a podcast about theme park history and theme park nostalgia. We also need to acknowledge the implicit perspectives we bring to the table: some bring nostalgia for glimmering childhood experiences and joys long-gone, and others remember sad longing for something that was closed for too long. The memories are as segregated as the parks were.

Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of The Abandoned Carousel, where I talked with you about Euclid Beach Park and the history of discrimination at urban theme parks. Much of this episode relies on the book Race, Riots, and Roller Coasters by Victoria Wolcott. You can read the entire book for free on Project Muse at Johns Hopkins University’s site: https://muse.jhu.edu/book/17151. As always, my theme music comes from Aerobatics in Slow Motion by TeknoAXE. 

I hope you all are taking covid19 precautions, and wearing a mask. A mask is not political, it is a common sense piece of science that shows respect for the people around you. Masks decrease your risk of covid by something like 5-fold. Wear a mask, stay at home. 

I’ll be back with another episode of The Abandoned Carousel as soon as time allows. In the meantime, stay safe. Remember what Lucy Maud Montgomery once said: nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.

References

The resources used when researching the topic are included below.

1. Civil Rights Cases. In: Wikipedia. ; 2020. Accessed June 3, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Civil_Rights_Cases&oldid=944066989
2. Plessy v. Ferguson. In: Wikipedia. ; 2020. Accessed June 7, 2020. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Plessy_v._Ferguson&oldid=960997924
3. Pounce-Matics Amuse-Matics Page – Photos. Accessed May 13, 2020. https://www.facebook.com/pg/Pounce-Matics-Amuse-Matics-Page-255013401192815/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1559917020702440
4. 9 Sep 1933, Page 4 – The Evening Independent at Newspapers.com. World Collection. Accessed June 9, 2020. http://newscomwc.newspapers.com/image/4116455/?terms=%22euclid%2Bbeach%2Bpark%22%2Briot&pqsid=bvv1_4kZIYPgii3XmHImIg%3A923000%3A531208327
5. 10 Sep 1917, Page 11 – The Akron Beacon Journal at Newspapers.com. World Collection. Accessed June 9, 2020. http://newscomwc.newspapers.com/image/228104538/?terms=%22euclid%2Bbeach%2Bpark%22&pqsid=bvv1_4kZIYPgii3XmHImIg%3A207000%3A1285248979
6. 24 Sep 1946, 1 – Greenville Daily Advocate at Newspapers.com. World Collection. Accessed June 9, 2020. http://newscomwc.newspapers.com/image/651346524/?terms=%22euclid%2Bbeach%2Bpark%22%2Bpolice&pqsid=bvv1_4kZIYPgii3XmHImIg%3A1379000%3A1447968642
7. 28 Jun 1939, 5 – The Paducah Sun-Democrat at Newspapers.com. World Collection. Accessed June 9, 2020. http://newscomwc.newspapers.com/image/502190846/?terms=%22euclid%2Bbeach%2Bpark%22%2Bpolice&pqsid=bvv1_4kZIYPgii3XmHImIg%3A1379000%3A1447968642
8. Rodrigue G, Dealer TP. A holiday treat for lovers of Cleveland history: George Rodrigue. cleveland. Published October 30, 2018. Accessed June 3, 2020. https://www.cleveland.com/opinion/2018/10/a-holiday-treat-for-lovers-of-cleveland-history-george-rodrigue.html
9. African American History in Cleveland – Teaching Cleveland Digital. Accessed June 5, 2020. http://teachingcleveland.org/category/african-american-migration/african-american-history-in-cleveland/
10. africanamericanexperienceyoungstown.pdf. Accessed June 5, 2020. https://ishof.org/assets/africanamericanexperienceyoungstown.pdf
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The post Racism, Riots, and Euclid Beach Park appeared first on The Abandoned Carousel.

Intro

How’s it going, theme park aficionados? Life’s a lot right now, so let’s distract ourselves from it. Today I’m going to go narrow, and tell you the story of a single ride. A beginning, and an end.

So instead of talking about a theme park meeting its tragic end, let’s talk about a beginning. Today, I’m going to tell you about the first Ferris wheel.

Before the Ferris Wheel: the Eiffel Tower

Two hundred and thirty one years ago, a French mob stormed the Bastille Saint-Antoine in Paris, France. This was the flashpoint, beginning the French Revolution, marking a period of extreme social and political upheaval in France over ten years. The French Revolution accelerated the rise of modern republics and democracies, and is widely considered one of the more significant events in human history.

ONE hundred and thirty one years ago, the Exposition Universelle of 1889 was held in Paris, France, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Storming of the Bastille. 

World’s Fairs

This was a classic world’s fair. As I talked about last time during my Carousel #15 episode, a world’s fair is a generic term used to describe an event where many nations come together to showcase achievements, technology, products, etc. 

Consensus is that the first world’s fair was held in 1851 in London, an idea of Prince Albert (Queen Victoria’s husband). It was called “Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations” and was based on an already-extant French tradition dating back to 1798, titled “Exhibition of Products of French Industry”. 

Wikipedia tells me that there have been three periods of world’s fairs so far. 

1. Industrialization (through 1938), where the fair focused on trade, technological advances, and inventions
2. Cultural exchange (1939-1987), where the fair focused on social and cultural themes likes “Building the World of Tomorrow” and “Peace Through Understanding”
3. Nation branding (1988-present), where the fair focuses on improving the images of each nation, almost as in an advertising campaign.

Exposition Universelle of 1889

The 1889 Exposition Universelle, then, was about industry, trade, technology, and inventions. The last may strike a chord with you, for an invention is the reason we’re bringing up this particular world’s fair at all.

In interesting trivial tidbit time, apparently all of the European countries with monarchies officially boycotted the fair, since it was celebrating the French Revolution (otherwise known as the overthrowing of the French monarchy). (Despite being officially boycotted, however, the manufacturers from these countries still wanted to participate, and were sponsored by private industry in order to do so.) 

The exposition was filled with exhibits of science and technology, many located within the massive Gallery of Machines, a building with the longest interior space in the world at that time. There were showcases of improvements in telephones and phonographs, maritime navigation and military technology, and the elevator, with miraculous new safety brakes from the American Otis Elevator Company. 

There was the Palace of Fine Arts, the fountains and the various side streets designed to look like places around the globe. There was good food, there were hydrogen balloons in which spectators could view the fair from on high, there was a train (choo choo, Abandoned Train fans – this one was called the Decauville Railway, which utilized many different narrow-gauge steam locomotives over its short 6-month run).

Gustav Eiffel and the Eiffel Tower

But. All of this stood in the shadows, literally, of the spectacle of the 1889 Exhibition. 

The centerpiece for the exhibition was to be simply a three hundred meter tower. At the time, tall buildings were reserved only for religious buildings, and these were half the height of the proposed tower – the Notre Dame cathedral with its 40-meter high spire, for instance, claimed a total height of 151 meters. It was the mastery of iron that allowed something twice this height to even be considered.

The man to do it was Gustav Eiffel, born in 1832. He made a name for himself in France, building highly regarded bridges and aquaducts across the country. He firmly established himself with his successful building of several of the 1878 Exposition buildings. And of course, he was responsible for the metal interior of the Statue of Liberty, around 1881. (Beyond the scope of this story, but worth looking into if you have the time – an incredible amount of engineering went into this structure and it’s one of the earliest examples of “curtain wall” construction!)

By 1884, three men at Eiffel’s company had come up with a design for a novel tall tower, inspired by something from a previous world’s fair, the 96-m tall Lassing Observatory built for the 1853 New York exposition. Eiffel bought the rights to patent the design from his workers, and began to promote the tower’s design in engineering circles.

In 1886, a competition was formally announced for the centerpiece of the forthcoming fair, and it was written in such a way (a 300 meter tall four-sided metal tower!) to make the choice of Eiffel’s design the foregone conclusion.

Construction began in 1887. Surprisingly to me, all of the Tower’s 18,037 individual parts were prefabricated at the factory and assembled onsite. Eiffel’s tower was roundly critiqued as it was built, both by people who thought it was not a feasible project and by people who thought it was going to be an ugly eyesore and a blight on the Parisian landscape.

By March of 1889, the structure was complete, and it sounds that critics quickly changed their tune as the popularity of the structure grew. In the short period when the Tower was open to the public but before the elevators were operational, over 30,000 people climbed the twisting stairs up to the top. 

In terms of ricky-ticky details: The Eiffel Tower is said to be the most-visited paid tourist attraction in the world. The Tower is 1063 feet tall, or roughly 81 stories, and was the first manmade structure to surpass 300 m. 

The Tower was stunning for every visitor to the 1889 Exposition, as well as being incredible advertising for the Expo and for Paris in general. 

The Ferris Wheel

As you may be saying, why am I telling you about the Eiffel Tower instead of the Ferris Wheel? The reason we must care about the Eiffel Tower in this context is because of how inspirational it was – without the idea of the Eiffel Tower and how breathtaking it was for the 1889 Exposition, we wouldn’t have the subsequent idea of the Ferris Wheel to try and top the Tower.

There was a guy. He wanted to “Out-Eiffel Eiffel”. 

George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr.

His name was a real mouthful – George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. He had a very nice mustache in his prime. He was an American, born in Illinois, and he was the guy who invented the Ferris wheel.

George Ferris, because I’m neither going to say nor type all of that, was 32 when he came up with the idea for the Ferris wheel, to really make you feel terrible about your personal accomplishments. He had some very slicked-back hair and a truly spectacular droopy mustache, perfect for his time. Prior to building one of the most iconic rides and structures ever, Ferris was a fairly typical 19th century dude. He went to military school, he went to college for engineering, he was in a frat, and then he started his own company, because they didn’t have podcasts for white guys to start back then. 

Ferris’s company inspected metals in bridges, so at least tangentially, he was positioned for his big breakthrough. He also designed and built bridges.

The 1893 Columbian Exposition

1893 saw the biggest World’s Fair held to date at that point, designed to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the famous voyage of Christopher Columbus. The primary “Director of Works” for the Columbian Exposition was Daniel Burnham, an architect known for many skyscrapers and shopping centers, including New York’s Flatiron Building. He took primary charge of the fair’s development after his business partner died early in the planning process, and much of the success of the fair is contributed to Burnham’s action and effort alone.

The fair was to be held in Chicago, and the Americans desperately wanted to surpass the Eiffel Tower. That was *so* a few years ago, after all, and the Eiffel Tower was still the star of the global tourism scene. 

In 1891, Burnham and his team announced a challenge for American engineers. The challenge was to come up with something which would surpass the Eiffel Tower, *so* two years ago. The directive was “make no little plans”. They wanted something original, daring, and unique, something that would blow the socks off the Eiffel Tower. 

A space was left blank in the map for the exhibition’s exclamation point. Ferris, our friend with the long named, took to the drawing board. Or, well, to the paper nakin that accompanied a meal at a steakhouse. In a newspaper interview, he’s quoted as saying ““[B]efore the dinner was over I had sketched out almost the entire detail, and my plan has never varied an item from that day.”” He had an idea for a wheel that would take guests spinning higher than even the Statue of Liberty. 

A Ferris wheel in general concept wasn’t new, though. 

The Somers Wheel

The thing is, Ferris copied the idea of the Ferris wheel from someone else. Ferris was “just” the guy who made the wheel famous. 

Now with our entire world in lockdown, I don’t have a copy of the book I really need, “Ferris Wheels: An Illustrated History” by Norman Anderson. So I’ll have to make do with digital-only references. It seems that Ferris wheels, in fact, go back over a hundred years before even George Ferris. The earliest wheels were apparently in Bulgaria in the early 17th century, and were turned by very strong men while guests rode around. Similar contraptions existed in many different countries.

The connection to the US was said to have been a Frenchman named “Antonio Manguino”, who built a pleasure wheel for his fair in the little town of Walton Springs, Georgia. From here, the wheel caught the eye of a man named William Somers. And with names like Epicyloidal Diversion and the Cycloidal Chariot, why wouldn’t they?

Now, there are at least two patents for Ferris wheel type devices prior to Somers’ wheel, but William Somers was the first American to patent a Ferris wheel type design, sometimes called “vertical swings” or “Roundabouts”. Somers’ first wheel was built in 1891 in Atlantic City, two years prior to his patent. It was called the Observational Roundabout, and it towered over the boardwalk. People loved it – it was the effect of looking down on the world for people who’d never been near a skyscraper before. 

Unfortunately, the wheel was made out of nice solid wood, and in June of 1892, caught fire when a gasoline lamp exploded. He rebuilt an even better “double” wheel there in Atlantic City, and then built another at Asbury Park in NJ and another at a little place called Coney Island in New York.

The wheels were unsurprisingly immensely popular, despite their flammability and incredible noise. Being steam powered, Somers’ wheels spewed smoke and were said to be as loud as a locomotive. It’s said that George Ferris rode the Atlantic City Somers Wheel. Some time after his ride, Ferris came up with the idea for the Ferris wheel. 

The Chicago Wheel

Ferris’ idea for the Columbian Exposition was a great wheel. The directors weren’t immediately convinced, reportedly fearing that it would topple over in the middle of the park on the guests. Director Burnham took one look at the slender spokes and described the whole thing as “too fragile”. 

Additionally, the country was in the middle of a severe financial Depression with 25-40% unemployment, depending on the city, so financing for such a project wasn’t the easiest to come by.

Ultimately, the directors relented, putting their faith in Ferris and his network of connections. Ferris began construction on his massive wheel right away. 

And massive it was. 

Ferris’s Great Chicago Wheel:

• Was 250 feet in diameter
• Had an 89,000 lb axle, 45.5 feet long
• Carried 36 cars
• Carried over 2,000 people at once

When the directors finally gave Ferris the green light, it was the middle of winter, and Ferris was already under a tight deadline. It was the middle of one of the most severe winters Chicago had experienced in years. The ground there in Chicago was already frozen something like three feet deep, and underneath were another 20 feet of slushy quicksand-like sand, adding another manufacturing dilemma to be solved. And the fair would open in four months.

Engineers used dynamite to begin excavation. 

(There’s actually a really great children’s picture book that details the whole process, available in video format from PBS here.)

Pumps were running constantly. Hot steam was piped in to thaw the frozen sand, and to keep the newly-poured concrete from freezing before it set. March 20, 1893: with the tall towers prepped, the massive 89 thousand pound axle, six times larger than strictly necessary for safety reasons, was hoisted 140 feet in the air to its resting place. The wheel was nowhere near complete, but it was a good step.

The power plant which drove the wheel was located 700 feet away from the wheel itself, and the steam to power the wheel’s engine was carried through long pipes. For the wheel, there were many parts to be added before the big wheel would be anywhere near recognizable. And time was ticking, for the 1893 Columbian Exhibition opened to the public on May 1, with the Ferris wheel still incomplete, steelworkers atop the growing structure barely pausing to watch the influx of new crowds nearby. 

Parts were manufactured all over: Detroit, Pittsburgh, Youngstown, Cleveland.

Indeed, it wasn’t until June that the structure was fully assembled, but it was indeed finally complete, and on the evening of June 9th, the great Chicago wheel, san cars, was turned on for the first time. It’s said the wheel moved with only the soft clink of metal upon metal, nearly silent in the twenty minutes it took to make a full revolution. 

The sight of this great wheel, finally slowly moving on a warm early summer’s evening…it must have been something else for the patrons of the world’s fair and the locals. Two hundred and sixty four feet up in the air, nearly the height of the Statue of Liberty, with two concentric circles. Despite the notion Ferris had liberated from Somers, there was little similarity between Somers’ angular design and Ferris’ sleek circular design – more like a bicycle wheel than the triangular shapes of the smaller design.

Ferris, by the way, was ecstatic about the successful test, and immediately ordered the cars hung. Now when we think of modern Ferris wheel cars, we might think of two to five people per car. Ferris’ wheel? Huge. The cars were like buses, holding upwards of 60 people each.  Inside, 40 chairs. Plate glass windows, and steel mesh on the doors. Firefighting equipment, just in case. And a personal conductor was stationed in each car. To speed loading and unloading, platforms were designed and arranged such that six cars were loaded and unloaded at a time. Efficient!

Between June 10th and Jun 13th, the majority of the cars were attached to the wheel. On June 11, when there were only six cars attached, Director Daniel Burnham and Ferris’ wife Margaret took a ceremonial ride on the wheel. By June 21st, all 36 cars were on.

Operation of Ferris’ Chicago Wheel

On June 21st, 1893, with the Columbian Exposition already seven weeks open, the Ferris wheel was given its grand opening. There were speeches galore, the band played, and a golden whistle marked the official opening of this giant wheel.

It was an incredible experience. 

As I noted earlier, the cars were gigantic, and you could board at one of six platforms. The ride consisted of a single revolution with six stops, as cars were loaded and unloaded. Then came nine minutes of non-stop revolution.

Guests could see incredible distances. On cloudy or dark days, Edison’s fancy new electric lightbulbs kept the wheel illuminated in cheerful patterns.

And millions rode the wheel. During the roughly six months in operation, approximately 1.5 M people were marked as riding on the wheel, simply enjoying the novelty of the amusement ride, so very high up in the air. It cost the same to ride the Ferris Wheel as it did to even enter the Expo. 

Famous people rode the wheel, even our fierce friend Helen Keller, who wrote to a friend of her experience at the fair, saying “I saw a great many of the most wonderful and interesting things at the Fair. ” and “ Of course I rode in the Ferris-wheel. Just think of being swung two hundred and fifty feet in the air ”.

The Columbian Exposition closed after six months of operation, on November 1, 1893. The great Ferris wheel had a perfect safety and mechanical record during this time, despite gale-force winds, storms, and lightening strikes, and reportedly made approximately $400,000 net profit. 

Chicago Wheel Post-Exposition

Ferris had high hopes for the future of his wheel. Weather wasn’t on his side yet again, with another Chicago winter coming on. The wheel stood silent and shuttered until the end of April, 1894, after the thaws had begun. From there, it took 18 days and almost $15,000 to disassemble the wheel. The pieces were kept in flatcars off a Chicago railroad siding. (Interestingly, I read that some of this original concrete foundation was still present as late as 2015, according at a Hyde Park History article. Long time!)

It was another year before the company found a new home for their disassembled giant wheel. They began reassembling the wheel in July of 1895, adjacent to Lincoln Park, some 11 miles away from the Expo site on the other side of Chicago’s city center. By October 1895, the wheel was open to guests.

The company’s directors had grand plans for the new site. It was about 20 minutes (at the time) away from railway stations and hotels, and the directors began selling bonds in an attempt to finance additional development. Things like painting the wheel and cars, landscaping the area, adding a bandstand and restaurant, etc. 

One contemporaneous article did describe its location as “an amusement park at North Clark Street and Wrightwood Avenue”. I was all set to tell you that I couldn’t find any info on this, but Google made me a quick liar. It was actually called “Ferris Wheel Park” – a name we might think generic today, but pretty groundbreaking back then. 

Ferris Wheel Park was…a trolley park. It was the end of the line for the nearby streetcars.

Unfortunately, it seems as though the site was poorly chosen. See, it was in the middle of a residential neighborhood, a wealthy one. And the wealthy neighborhood wasn’t particularly excited to have an amusement park nearby, nor were they big fans of the streetcar owner Ferris had partnered with. “ Charles Tyson Yerkes, Jr., who owned the Chicago Electric Street Railway” was Ferris’ partner in the endeavor. Legal battles held up the project, and community votes banned the sale of alcohol, dooming on of the major sources of revenue in a proposed beer garden. 

At the same time, too, we have the legal side of things. 

Somers sued Ferris for copyright infringement. The legal suit went on for several years.

Ferris sued (or discussed suing, it’s not clear) the directors of the Columbian Exposition, saying that they’d robbed him of his share of the profits from the fair.

On a personal level, Ferris’ wife left him in 1896. Ferris was said to be hugely depressed as a result, and his life quickly went downhill. He died alone in November of 1896, penniless and bankrupt, effectively ending all his legal battles. 

Well, most of them. His ashes stayed in the care of a local funeral director for more than a year, because no one wanted to pay the money for his ashes and funeral.

By 1900, the small Ferris Wheel Park had to file for bankruptcy, now under the ownership of the unpopular Yerkes. Vocal opposition from the community meant that patrons never turned up to the park in the numbers needed to make it a success. The wheel continued to operate even as it went through several rounds of receivership. At one point, local William Boyce, who later founded the Boy Scouts of America, filed a lawsuit against the wheel. This page goes into detail of the various suits, including original newspaper articles.

The wheel lingered there at Ferris Wheel Park, with its quite charming castle facade entrance, as Yerkes tried to wrest control from the locals one way or another. But ultimately, it was put up for sale. 

(Interesting sidebar: during its time here, the Lumiere brothers, the famed groundbreaking filmmakers responsible for the first motion pictures, took some footage of Chicago, including the wheel. Their film here was 1896’s Grande roue.)

Chicago Wheel Moves to St. Louis

In July of 1903, the Chicago Tribune wrote a story about the old wheel. Headline: “Ferris Wheels Lives Anew” Subtitle: “Though sold as junk it will revolve again”. 

See, the wheel was doing worse and worse and worse. By 1903, the company was $400,000 in debt. All those lawsuits, not enough visitors from a hostile neighborhood.

I liked this quote from the article: “Once the incarnation of a wondrous feat of engineering, the old World’s Fair relic now seems to be inevitably approaching the final dissolution which has threatened it periodically for ten years… A wrecking company has agreed to remove the structure. Immediately? 0 not they-in five months. Sentimental persons who would drop a tear for the passing of the wheel, and other citizens who have procrastinated the adventure of a run about its axle may take heart. It is understood that rural excursionists in search of thrills may still be accommodated if they can guarantee 30 cents in receipts and wait for the engineer to get up steam.”

The wheel was sold at auction for a junk price: $1800. Remember, it made over $400,000 in profit back in the World’s Fair days. But still, it had one more life left in it.

Despite the $1,800 price tag, it’s said to have taken over $150,000 to move the wheel, in pieces, in 178 freight cars, down to its final home.

By July of 1904, the wheel was again turning at a World’s Fair, this time the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition down in St. Louis, MO. The theme for this fair was another celebration, nominally for the centennial of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. It was located on the present-day grounds of Forest Park, near the Saint Louis Zoo and the Saint Louis Art Museum. (In fact, the Saint Louis Art Museum is one of the original buildings from the fair, the former Palace of Fine Arts. Image then and image now. This fair was to a much larger scale than Chicago’s Columbian Exposition, but the great wheel still stood out.

It’s said that the wheel recouped its moving costs handily in less than four months. People loved the wheel once again – there were over 50 weddings performed on the wheel, and reportedly there was enough of a market that they installed a piano in one car for the express purpose of ceremonies. One daredevil named Maud Nicholson actually rode on top of one of the cars as the wheel revolved. 

The Louisiana Purchase Exposition ran until December of 1904.

The End of the Ferris Wheel

After the Exposition, it’s said that there was some talk of moving the Ferris wheel to Coney Island in New York. After all, a huge wheel, a huge amusement area, and the wheel had already demonstrated that it could be moved once.

However, the move ultimately never occurred. It was determined that it would simply be too expensive to move the wheel all the way to New York. 

And so, the wheel needed to come down, destined solely for the scrap heap and the metal shop. It was too expensive. It couldn’t stay there, but it had no other home to go to.

From a 1906 Chicago Tribune article titled “Ferris Wheel is Blown Up” we have a blow by blow account: “It required 200 pounds of dynamite to put it out of business. The first charge… wrecked its foundation and the wheel dropped to the ground… as it settled it slowly turned, and then, after tottering a moment like a huge giant in distress, it collapsed slowly. It did not fall to one side, as the wreckers had planned… it merely crumpled up slowly. Within a few minutes it was a tangled mass of steel and iron thirty or forty feet high. The huge axle, weighing 45 tons, dropped slowly with the remnants of the wheel, crushing the smaller braces and steel framework.”

For many years, the whereabouts of the huge axle was unknown. Did they chop it into pieces? Unlikely, it was simply too big – remember that this was the largest single piece of forged steel at the time. Did they drag it to the river? Maybe. Did they just bury it? Maybe. There are two sets of rumors after this point. One story says that the giant axle was put on the train back to Chicago, where it was taken to a scrap shop and cut into tiny pieces. 

The other story is that the axle was buried in place, or buried in a nearby landfill. In 2007, a man named Sheldon Breiner decided to put it to the test, building on an earlier 1996 study that just looked for the former Ferris wheel base. He used a cesium magnometer and simply walked around Saint Louis, scanning for anomalies in the ground. Being made of steel (therefore permanently magnetized) and likely being in one piece, the axle would probably register even from such a crude search. And it did. In the middle of a modern day road, roughly 200 feet south of where the wheel once stood, Breiner noted the presence of a 45 foot anomaly, which would correspond exactly to that gigantic hunk of steel. Take a look at the link above for some cool photos showing the original wheel location and the presumed modern axle location, worth checking out.

Conclusions

Though Ferris personally met a disappointing end, his legacy is incredible. Literally everyone knows what a Ferris wheel is, and they stand across the globe as a testament to his attitude in pursuing and expanding on ideas he thought valuable. The original Ferris wheel was 80.4 meters (264 feet); today, the current tallest wheel is the Las Vegas High Roller (167.6 m / 550 ft), over double the height of the original wheel. (Despite the size, the Vegas wheel has a max capacity of 1120 people, compared to the 2160 of the original wheel.)

In a eulogy, his former business partners wrote of Ferris: “He was always bright, hopeful and full of anticipation of good results from all the ventures he had on hand. These feelings he could always impart to whomever he addressed in a most wonderful degree, and therein lay the key note of his success. In most darkened and troubled times… he was ever looking for the sunshine soon to come…”

In a personal note – I know it is a time of uncertainty right now, to say the least. Even if you’re healthy and stable, everything is hard. Do you find things harder to focus on? I do. Everything is harder to focus on – the research for this episode took twice as long as usual.

If you are listening to this or reading this, please know that I am wishing you continued good health and happiness. Remember too that although things might be scary, take time to enjoy yourself, even in the smallest way. Be kind to yourself, follow health guidelines, and take it easy.

Remember that what you’ve read is a podcast! A link is included at the top of the page. Listen to more episodes of The Abandoned Carousel on your favorite platform: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | RadioPublic | TuneIn | Overcast | Pocket Casts | Castro. Support the podcast on Patreon for extra content! Comment below to share your thoughts – as Lucy Maud Montgomery once said, nothing is ever really lost to us, as long as we remember it.

References

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The post The First Ferris Wheel appeared first on The Abandoned Carousel.

Picture yourself driving down I-20 in Meridian, MS. It’s your average American town, with Motel 6s and McDonalds. As you near the exit, you decide to turn off because there’s something interesting just off the front road, glinting in the sun. You turn onto Sowashee St. 

There’s a lot with a for sale sign plastered on a billboard over the top of abandoned entrance gates, perhaps last used thirty five years ago. Next to it, a white structure covered in rust stands out against the blue sky, behind an ever-growing forest of trees. Could this be a drive-in?

You continue down the road, and suddenly jerk your car to the right onto the shoulder in surprise. There, looming behind some trees, a specter on this otherwise cheerful summer day. The foliage is lush and green, but what lays behind it is eerie, something out of the twilight zone. 

Concrete block turrets, grey with age. Two. A rusting metal gate, solid and vintage, stands slightly askew. Arching overhead, a sign, or what used to be one. It’s not legible from inside your car, hidden behind a branch, but something compels you to hop out and get a closer look. 

As you step from the car, the chill of the air conditioner is quickly driven away by the hot air of a Southern summer, heavy on your skin like a wet wool blanket. You bat away a cloud of mosquitoes as you step from faded asphalt onto concrete that’s literally vanishing into the grass below your feet. 

And as your hand clears your face, the outline of long-faded letters on the sign becomes clear, tangled overgrowth obscuring the path that once ran beneath it. This was the entrance to Royal Land. 

Today, it’s all abandoned: the amusement park and the fairgrounds and the drive-in and the baseball stadium. But a generation or two ago, this small corner of Meridian, MS was a bustling place to be.

Behind Royal Land: Lloyd Royal

It began with A. Lloyd Royal, Sr. He was a man of the South, born in the 1910s.

Lloyd spent his early 20s, between 1936 and 1944, building at least 14 independent movie theatres across Mississippi. In Greenwood, Hattiesburg, Gulfport, Picayune, McComb, Carrollton, Lumberton, and Purvis, among other towns, Royal established different movie houses. It was January of 1941 when Royal opened his first theater in Meridian, the “Royal Theater”, becoming the fifth movie theater in the town. The Royal Theater, by the accounts I read, was said to have quickly establish itself as a landmark. Think of the time period – the movie theaters would’ve had air conditioning (of some sort) long before it was common in folks’ houses, and this of course is the South – on a hot muggy summer day, where to go but the pictures?

Theaters opened and closed in Meridian through the war years, but the Royal Theater stayed strong. By the 1950s, a big tidal change was sweeping through the States. If you recall my last episode on the Land of Kong, where I talked about the history of US roadways, you’ll remember the Federal Highway Act, which became law in 1956. The 1950s saw a huge boom in American car ownership. Pre-WWII, most people did not own a car. Post-war, a glut of small cheap houses were built outside towns to accomodate returning soldiers and their ever-growing families. Prosperity meant that owning a car was within reach for the average American, and not only that, but cars began to have AC installed as a standard feature. Cars were almost more comfortable than the American living room. 

So what entered the picture? The drive-in theater. 

The earliest forms of drive-in were set up in 1915, but the drive-in theater as a concept was patented officially in 1933 by Richard Hollingshead Jr. His first drive-in theater opened in New Jersey that year, but pre-WWII, there were still only a handful of theaters open in the US – about 15. Post-war, of course, drive-ins boomed like everything else, and hundreds of new drive-in theaters opened each year. 

Lloyd Royal capitalized on that bandwagon, and opened the Royal Drive-In in either 1950 or 1953, at 2601 Sowashee Street, there in Meridian, MS. It was located adjacent to a baseball stadium. 

He stayed connected, serving on the War Activities Committee of the MPAA; the March of Dimes Committee; former President of the Lumberton Rotary Club; and the Legislative Committee of the Meridian Exchange Club. (I was unfamiliar with the latter, as it wasn’t an activity where I grew up – turns out this is a national service organization. The Mississippi District has been a part of the national organization since the 1920s, and it’s still going strong today.)

By 1952, he was President of the Mississippi Theater Owners Association. That same 1952 blurb in the Clark County Tribune called him “one of the most progressive and important exhibitors in the state”. 

By 1959, he’d served as president of the Tri-States Theater Owners Association, as well as president of the Meridian Exchange Club.

Movies of Lloyd Royal

Not only was Lloyd Royal interested in being a business manager and owning his own line of theatres, he was also a part of the movie business itself.

Royal produced or wrote three movies, by most accounts: 1954’s Jesse James’ Women, 1956’s Frontier Woman, and 1960’s Natchez Trace. All were filmed in the South, not in Hollywood itself. Royal by this point was the president of Panorama Pictures, a Mississippi-based production company. 

Two of the movies are still extant and easily watchable today. Jesse James’ Women is available in full under public domain license on the Internet Archive. This one is a classic 50s Western that probably hasn’t aged particularly well, given the summary: “The fugitive outlaw (Don Barry) enjoys the company of several ladies while he and his gang hide out in a Mississippi town.” 

Natchez Trace appears to be the most popular of the three films, with a 6.9/10 rating on IMDB. “The daughter of a murdered plantation owner and her fiance try to disrupt an outlaw’s plans to build an empire of thieves along the popular Mississippi-Tennessee trail.” The movie is named after a 440-mile long trail between Nashville TN and NAtchez MS, which fell out of use when traffic shifted from trail to steamboats on the Mississippi. 

The third, Frontier Woman, was exceedingly confusing by all accounts. Rumor says that most or all of the copies of the film have been destroyed, save for one, said to be in the hands of the film’s tiniest, trivialist star. Today, this film is noted for a tiny triviality. Actor Harold Beckenholdt played an unscrupulous trader in the film. He included his son Ron, then 8 months old, in the film in a small cameo, just because. Of course, you don’t know Harold Beckenholdt, but Harold chanced his name to Rance Howard. And you definitely know Ron Howard, who made his feature film debut here in Frontier Woman. Yes, the very famous Ron Howard, with too many film credits to his name, things like Apollo 13 and The Andy Griffith Show and Happy Days. 

All three movies were well-received at the time of their release, with special showings locally to honor the local filmmaker. 

Buckwalter Stadium, near Royal Land

Somewhere in the mid-1950s, between movie productions and theater openings, Lloyd Royal added “baseball stadium owner” to the list, purchasing Buckwalter Stadium, adjacent to the Royal Drive-In he’d purchased a few years prior, there on Sowashee Street.

The stadium wasn’t new even then. 

It’s falsely claimed in many articles and discussions on this topic that the stadium was constructed in the 1930s. The most popular video about this place (type “1930s abandoned baseball” into Google and this video is probably your top result. I’ll also link it in the playlist I’ve created on my YouTube channel for this episode.) even claims this was built in the 1930s. Unfortunately, these other sites are falsely conflating two different baseball parks: Fairgrounds Park and Buckwalter Stadium.

It is the conclusion of my research in this area that the stadium was actually built in 1947. The local team back then was a new club called the Meridian Peps, and their president was a guy named Charles Buckwalter, who at one time owned the Meridian Pepsi-Cola Bottling Plant, to give you an idea. In fact: “Meridian Peps”, “Pepsi-Cola”… 

Meridian Peps (1946-1950)

The club formed after the war, and the team played minor league baseball, in the Southeastern League. But it was a rocky road. Despite popularity with the locals, baseball was expensive. The Peps didn’t have their own park, so they played at Fairgrounds Park, the site of the now-defunct Valley Fair Mall in modern Meridian. Teams had played there since 1922: Meridian Mets, Meridian Scrappers, Meridian Bears, Meridian Eagles, and now the Meridian Peps. But the Peps weren’t happy with the stadium. 

An October 1946 article in The Greenwood Commonwealth says the following: “Charles Buckwalter, president of the Meridian Peps, Southeastern League, said he would not Benter a team in the 1947 race unless a satisfactory park is provided in which to play. Buckwalter said the club went deeply in the hole last year, spending about $5,000 for the use of the fairgrounds, privately owned, while some other cities had only to pay a token fee of $1 for the entire year.” In November 1946, The Selma Times-Journal echoed similar sentiments, noting that the future of the Meridian club in the Southeastern Baseball League was dependent on “civic pride and spirit”, as the current owners of the Fairground Field baseball park they played at charged them a fee to use the park and would not allow the team to collect on fence ads, which could’ve brought in a proposed $2500. That opinion article closes by saying “That is definitely a losing proposition and Charles Buckwalter is certainly within his rights in refusing to pay through the nose for civic enterprise.”

By January 1947, Buckwalter licensed the Peps to be a subsidiary for the Cleveland Indians, retaining 25% of the stocks for himself and continuing as president. This sale likely allowed him to pick up the additional funds he needed. It’s not entirely clear what happened with this deal, though, as two years later, by January 1949, the club was back up for sale again. In comments to the papers, Buckwalter claimed that he had suffered financial losses for each of the three previous seasons of the club’s operation, and declared that the club needed financial backing or else it would have to leave Meridian for nearby Laurel or Hattiesburg. By February of that year, a group of local businessmen stepped up to the plate, leasing the team and park from Buckwalter in a $10,000 deal (in today’s money, $105,500).  

A 1949 article notes that Buckwalter “personally built the Peps field out of his own pocket”.

Though the citizens had grand plans, the renamed Meridian Millers team and the B-class Southeastern League fell apart after only a year under new management. In 1951 and 1952, Charles Buckwalter began hosting the New Meridian Fair and Cattle Show at his Buckwalter Stadium and property instead of baseball.

Meridian Millers (1952-1955)

By 1952, Meridian was back in the baseball game, however, taking over the Clarksdale baseball franchise in the class C Cotton States League. The Meridian Millers had great success their first year in the league, winning the championship in 1952 and 1953. However, it was not to last. 

Jackie Robinson had broken the color barrier in Major League Baseball after the war in 1947. The hurdles were fierce for non-whites, and the Cotton States League and other Deep South teams did not follow popular sentiment, and refused to integrate, hiring white players only (with one exception, which I’ll get to). This unsurprisingly alienated fans of color. Minor league baseball also started to see fierce competition from a wide range of similarly accessible amusement options. Baseball fans could watch major league baseball on TV or listen to it on the radio. Attendance at minor league games began to drop. 

The Cotton States League team, the Hot Springs Bathers, hired two players in 1953: Jim and Leander Tugerson, both WWII veterans who’d been pitchers from the Negro League. This was done against the opposition of the league president, who is quoted as saying “I advised against signing (black players) and requested they do not attempt it at this time knowing the hornet’s nest it would stir up.” Five days after they were signed, the remaining teams in the Cotton States League voted unanimously to expel the Bathers from the League as a result. 

The Bathers were later reinstated that season, but the Tugersons were shipped to other leagues. When the Bathers had a pitching injury in their roster in April 1953, they called Jim Tugerson back up. He was set to pitch in front of 1500 strong, lights on, bats out. But as a result, the president of the CSL called the game a forfeit before the first pitch had even been thrown. 

Jim Tugerson went back to the D-class Knoxville Smokies, where he was celebrated with a Jim Tugerson Night. And then he filed a federal lawsuit against the Cotton States League, its teams, and its president. The lawsuit was dismissed later that year, but it was too late; it was a sign of a turning tide. Uvoyd Reynolds, another player of color, suited up for the Bathers in 1954.

Not only that, but also in 1954, even “our” team, the Meridian Millers, hired a person of color against the strictures of the Mississippi Constitution set in 1890. And this guy, we’ve got to talk about this guy next.

Carlos “Chico” Heron

Born in March 1936 in Bocas del Toro, Panama, Carlos “Chico” Heron was a right-handed second baseman. In 1954, he joined the Meridian Millers, becoming the first player of color to sign with a Mississippi team. 

He played with a number of different teams both in the US and in Panama over the next decade, before moving to a more managerial position, coaching teams in both Canada and Panama throughout the 70s. He held position of Panama’s National Team coach for more than 20 years. 

The big thing about Chico Heron is that he became a scout in the more modern era since the late 1970s, scouting for the Philadelphia Phillies, the Kansas City Royals, the Saint Louis Cardinals, and finally a little team called the New York Yankees.

It was here that Chico Heron is most known in the US, as he brought a young guy by the name of Mariano Rivera to the attention of the Yankees. Rivera caught the eye of Heron, and after some time pitching under observation in Panama, was signed by the Yankees. Even if you’re not into baseball, you’ve probably at least some passing familiarity with the name. Mariano Rivera was the Yankees closing pitcher for 17 years, between 1995 and 2013. His presence at the end of games was signalled by the song “Enter Sandman”, ominous tones marking how well he saved games. Rivera was a major contributor to the Yankees success during his time there, and it’s only because of Chico Heron that he obtained the position to begin with.

Heron was more than just a scout, though. It’s said that he had a huge influence on the people he worked with, instilling a sense of love and discipline in every player. He was a dedicated man, a giver, and an inspirational figure. 

After Heron’s death in 2007, Mariano Rivera described Chico Heron, saying “he was one of those men that if I call him any time, anytime that I need something from him, he would have done it on the spot.” Rivera went on to say “that’s how close he was to me. I respect that man until the day he died.”

Flashing back in time, back to Meridian and Buckwalter Stadium, we return to 1954.

At the end of the 1954 season, all players of color hired in the Cotton States League were released to other teams. Baseball at this unpretentious field came to an end the next year, as it’s said a team called the Pine Bluff Judges joined with the Meridian Millers mid-season and finished their 1955 season there at Buckwalter Stadium. 

Royal Land

Here in 1955, then, we are almost ready to talk about Royal Land.

Carnivals and Fairs in Meridian

With the collapse of the Cotton States League marking the end of baseball at Buckwalter Stadium, fairs and movies became the non-televised entertainment options of the day. It appears that the Royal family purchased Buckwalter Stadium around this time. As noted earlier, the New Meridian Fair operated at Buckwalter Stadium at least in 1951 and 1952, but from what I can tell, the general opinion at the time was that the fair elsewhere in town under other operation had gone downhill, getting smaller and run-down. By 1956 or 1957, with the purchase of Buckwalter Stadium and surrounding lands, Lloyd Royal began operating the Mississippi-Alabama State Fair in Meridian. 

(As a brief sidebar, for whatever reason, it seems unlikely that the fair operated in 1956 in Meridian, or if it did, it wasn’t noteworthy, and here’s why. If you just Google “Mississippi-Alabama Fair” you’ll get thousands of hits, about the 1956 fair held in Tupelo, MS. Of course the fair was held in multiple cities throughout the season, but 1956 in Tupelo was something different. A young singer named Elvis Presley had become incredibly famous in 1956, and he returned to Tupelo, his birthplace, in a “homecoming” event at the fair that year. It was unsurprisingly hugely popular, and you can find several videos of the event up on YouTube. Elvis’ charm with the crowd is undeniable, and he cuts a magnetic figure up on the slightly elevated stage above his screaming fans. )

The Mississippi-Alabama State Fair in Meridian was from then on held at the old Buckwalter Stadium, behind the Royal Drive-In. The grandstands (the former baseball stands) were used for the big shows and events, and the midway and other concessions stretched out on the land between the baseball stadium and the drive-in. 

It earned a reputation as “of the cleanest and best operated fairs in the South.” Big name carnivals like Century 21 Shows and Heth Shows (famed for their 30-car railroad and “mile-long midway”) provided impressive midways and rides, with the excitement of all of our mid-century and even present day favorites: Caterpillars and Roll-o-planes and Mad Mouse Coasters, Ferris Wheels, and of course, the humble carousel. Refreshments stands and ticket booths were operated by local civic groups and religious organizations. 

Royal was an excellent manager, as evidenced by his long track record in the movie theater business, regularly coming up with new ways to thrill his guests. In 1959, he staged a helicopter landing in nearby Quitman to help promote the fair. This was a huge deal at the time, and I think it still would draw a small crowd even today. After a weather delay, one lucky passenger was picked up and flown in a Bell G47 Whirlybird to the Meridian fairgrounds. Apparently the helicopter was the centerpiece of the Atterbury-Hornbeck trapeze act which operated at fairs around the country in the late 1950s. This act featured two acrobats doing daredevil stunts, dangling outside of the helicopter while it flew and hovered over the grounds of the grandstands. Unsurprisingly, several acrobats got injured during the brief lifetime of the act.

The highlight of the 1960 fair was the unique high diving grandma, Ella Carver. In this pinnacle of spectacle, thousands crowded the grandstands of Buckwalter Stadium and watched as the 72-year-old Carver leapt off a flaming 90-foot-tall tower, diving into a 6-ft-deep bucket of water covered in flames. 

Operations continued on. 1960 saw Lloyd Royal opening his own newspaper in Meridian, the Meridian Leader, a weekly competitor to the established Meridian Star. One story I saw had it that he wanted more flexibility on opinion pieces and availability for print advertising, the lifeblood for a movie business back in the day.

And in 1964, Lloyd Royal expanded his fair operations, opening a new fair in Hattiesburg. All the while, his movie theater operations had continued, opening new theaters throughout the South.

Royal Land

And in 1967, Lloyd Royal and his sons began construction on something new, adjacent to the drive-in and the stadium fairgrounds. 

There are two versions of the story. In one, likely the more true version, the rides for Royal Land, for that was what they were building, were purchased secondhand and refurbished into working condition.

In the other, more colorful version of the story, rides had been abandoned by the carnies at the fairgrounds over the years. Broken, rusting, and otherwise unusable, the rides were then salvaged, cobbled together into something barely functional.

The second option is likely an embellished story, but this is the popular conception of Royal Land that remains on most abandoned theme park and basic urbex sites. It’s of course very unlikely that any ride destined for the scrap heap would be able to be pushed into service in a theme park, even in a small Mississippi town. 

Miniature Train at Royal Land

The most renowned ride at Royal Land was the miniature train, remembered in nearly every recollection I saw about the amusement park. 

It appears that the train was a miniature GM aerotrain streamliner, similar to those made by Ottaway Amusement Company (if you remember back to the Joyland episodes I did last year, you’ll remember this amusement magnate). A video of a similar train can be found on YouTube, operating at the Ellis, KS railroad museum. Picture the 1950s space age aesthetic, sleek and shiny, with passengers perched on the backs of the open-air cars. 

The train was said to run on a track around the circumference of the park, roughly half a mile to a mile long, through the woods and over a trestle bridge, around a lake stocked with jumping goldfish. 

There was a real train car at Royal Land, too: an L&N Pullman car serving as a restaurant, as well as an old boxcar used as storage. The seminal source for information about the park is a decade-old story from the local paper, and it suggests that “the train” was leftover from a movie set, though the story is unclear whether this is the Pullman car or the miniature train ride. Most likely, this comment is in reference to the Pullman car – the train restaurant was used prior to its days as a restaurant in the 1966 film “This Property is Condemned”. Indeed, in the newspaper article, Monte Royal is quoted talking about the temperature of the train, saying that it “was a bakery in that thing in summertime.” As the train ride was completely outside and un-air-conditioned, this was then about the Pullman car.

Other Rides at Royal Land

Royal Land also had a handful of other rides. It’s reported that there was a merry go round, as well as other circular or umbrella-style flat rides that you could find at any fair. Given the name of the podcast, you know I wish I had more information on the carousel, but alas, with this one, so much has been lost to time. 

There were pony rides, including one named Trigger with a bad temper, who is said to have kicked and bucked something fierce. 

There was a Ferris wheel, which Monte Royal (Lloyd’s son) recollected having nightmares of it falling over on him. One comment I read suggested there might have been a kiddie Ferris wheel as well as an adult-sized wheel, but this is again not clear. 

And of course there was a little roller coaster, likely a classic Allen Herschell Little Dipper coaster, that simple circuit with its classic ups and downs. (If you recall, I talked about one back in the Little Amerricka episode. A fun first coaster.) It seems as though it wasn’t always assembled correctly; our newspaper article describes the coaster as having difficulty getting over the hills sometimes and needing to be pushed by hand.

There was a go-kart track adjacent to Royal Land, as well, very visible from the satellite view of Google Maps. It’s not clear whether it was part of Royal Land or a separate thing. Apparently there used to be races on Sundays for several years until the nearby hotel complained about the noise. Reportedly, the track sat abandoned for decades before becoming a radio-controlled car track for a few years recently. 

Most of the park was said to be operated on an old “half-broken” generator that was constantly breaking down or operating with too many draws on the power. The stories described in the newspaper article about Royal Land are like something out of a Stephen King book. It’s said that when too much was running at once, everything would slow to a crawl, even the music of the rides. Can you imagine, half-speed or slower plinkety-plink carousel carnival music, weirdly spinning up and slowing down? Terrifying. 

Royal Land, Abandoned

Royal Land opened in 1968, and operated in 1969 as well, before shuttering for good. While it was open, the place was a wonderful spot for local families, birthday parties, etc. (You could get your name on the marquee out in front of the park!) There was nothing nefarious about the closure, no murders or deaths or illicit activities. As you can probably guess, the real reasons were economic: Royal Land simply didn’t make enough money to stay in business. It wasn’t financially viable to keep operating Royal Land. 

Now of course, the Internet will Internet, and I’ve seen lots of plausible suggestions that might also have contributed to the downfall of Royal Land: insurance costs, land located on a flood plain, bad wells, tax costs, not enough guests. Whether any of these reasons contributed is unclear. Ultimately, the visitors for the site simply weren’t there.

There are no extant pictures of Royal Land in operation that I’ve been able to find. Everything is lost in people’s basements and attics, on old film reels and fading away in photo albums. If you’ve got photos of Royal Land in any state, please send them in! 

The closest thing I could find was on a Remember Meridian Facebook page, and it showed an interesting modular-type building located inside the old Royal Land parks gates. It turns out, based on comments from that page, that this was simply a house for the Royal family, built after the park’s closure and demolished in the mid-90s, situated inside the old theme park gates. I can’t even imagine living on such a site but it truly sounds like a hoot. I’d be delighted to live in such a place.

After Royal Land closed, the rides were slowly auctioned off one by one. I saw a comment online saying that the roller coaster was the last to go, and that the kids in the family assembled and disassembled the little coaster for school projects. 

Abandoned Royal Land Today

Though Royal Land had closed, the adjacent businesses stayed operational for several decades longer. The Royal Drive-In closed in 1985, and the last fair operated in Buckwalter Stadium in the late 90s, around 1998. So yes, that incredibly well-filmed, beautiful viral video about the 1930s baseball stadium? Well, it’s more like an “abandoned for 20 years stadium”. Still impressive on its own merits, but it certainly hasn’t been abandoned since the 1950s like the video suggests.

Interestingly, it seems that a documentary is being made, or perhaps has been made already. Panamanian filmmaker Alberto Serra is working on a documentary about the life and legacy of Chico Heron and his influence on modern baseball legends like Mariano Rivera. Part of the documentary filmed at Buckwalter Stadium. The film is to be called Chico Heron y el Ultimo 42; a trailer for it was released in January. It appears the documentary was released last July in Panama; I’m not clear if the new trailer indicates a new release, perhaps on the film festival circuit, is coming.

The old L&N Pullman car was removed, moved to the Meridian Railway Museum. It was L&N 6157, known as Miss Alva’s Diner. The train car was featured in the 1966 film “This Property is Condemned”. I saw a comment online that this was actually not the correct number, that this had been painted for the movie and that the actual info was “The car is Louisiana & Arkansas (KCS) 353, ex-PULL 4127, nee-Monteith, a former Plan 2411 16 Section sleeper that KCS rebuilt as a coach.” but I wasn’t able to find more information to this end. Here’s a FB group thread discussing how the train cars were moved from Royal Land to their current location. It’s actually quite sad to see recent pictures of the Pullman car – it’s rusted and faded, numbers and letters nearly illegible. The scene is a far cry from the crisp green paint with white lettering and fancy trim that once beckoned visitors to Miss Alva’s Bar-B-Q. Like so many other pieces of rolling stock, this Pullman car is almost certainly destined to sit and rot until it’s nothing more than a piece of rust.

As for Royal Land itself, nothing remains except the iconic castle gates, which are visible from the roads. If you’re tempted to visit, please don’t. The land is private property, reportedly crawling with ticks, and nothing of any note beyond the gates is left on site to see. The land is for sale, should you be interested, but the Royal family still own the property and will prosecute any and all trespassers. 

Instead, take a virtual walk. There are a couple of unauthorized trespassing videos available on YouTube, or you can take a look at a motion picture, filmed with permission instead. Royal Land has been featured in a indie flick called Ozland in the modern era. This movie is available on Amazon Prime. Fast forward to timestamp 41:02, and take in a beautiful HD view of the old castle gates, the destroyed fairgrounds, the old baseball stadium. The movie was filmed in 2014, and very nicely encapsulates the entire Royal Land / Buckwalter Stadium / fairgrounds area as it stands today.

Conclusions

Lloyd Royal, the master of Royal Land, brought liveliness and entertainment to Meridian and the South for decades. Fairs in Petal/Hattiesburg and Meridian, the Royal Drive-In as well as other theaters, Royal Land, WQIC (a radio station)…this was a man with his hands in many businesses, a successful businessman. He and his family had a long impact on the area. 

Today, some of those enterprises are defunct, but others still live on under new operation. And for what’s gone, there are still memories of the days and places gone by. 

This park, Royal Land, has been inside my brain for quite some time. There’s nothing quite like that sudden haunting image in front of you, of seeing the dark castle gates, slowly being enveloped back inside a forest of greenery. Once the land was clear and neatly manicured, full of laughter and music and rides; today it’s been reclaimed by the fast-growing flora of the South, silent but for passing cars on the frontage road and the highway nearby. 

But if you stop and listen, maybe, just maybe, you can still hear the carousel music, like a whisper on the wind of a legacy of childhood joy. Can you hear it?

Remember that what you’ve read is a podcast! A link is included at the top of the page. Listen to more episodes of The Abandoned Carousel on your favorite platform: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | RadioPublic | TuneIn | Overcast | Pocket Casts | Castro. Support the podcast on Patreon for extra content! Comment below to share your thoughts – as Lucy Maud Montgomery once said, nothing is ever really lost to us, as long as we remember it.

References

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Intro

I moved the topic of today’s episode from my master list of parks to my short list based on the name. Just a silly, wacky name, and I expected grand things from it. What I learned once I began my research is that the story of Wobbies World is perhaps a story of misconceptions – where expectations do not meet up with the reality. 

As I welcome you to the new year and back from the holiday season, I invite you down under. It’s time to go back down to Australia and see what’s happening on that massive country continent. 

Well, what’s happening in 2020 is a massive series of wildfires, abnormally extreme due to the ongoing climate change crisis. For now, let’s dial the clock backwards to the sometimes comparatively blissful 1980s. Broadly speaking, the social revolution of the 70s gave way to the economic revolution of the 80s.

The 1970s and 1980s saw the development of a number of major and minor theme parks throughout Australia.

Today’s topic is not the biggest of these theme parks and not the best of these theme parks. It’s unclear if it was the smallest, but it’s certainly remembered online with quite a bit of notoriety. Everything about this park was a lot grander in advertisement and memory than reality. 

Today: Wobbies World.

Wobbies World

Wobbies World opened around 1978 in a Melbourne suburb called Vermont South. The land in this area had predominantly been orchards, specifically apple orchards, until the 50s or the 60s. At this point, demand for housing in the Melbourne area was growing, and the orchards began to be subdivided. The 1966 acquisition of a large block of orchards is considered the start of the acquisition by the local government, Nunawading Council. 

(This begins the start of the delightfully fun names, at least to American ears, which my statistics tell me most of you listening are. For all that Australia speaks English, the odd place names and baffling slang definitely provide a little bit of a language barrier. And even though I know that intellectually, it’s still surprising and amusing when I come across it out of the blue. It makes me happy!)

With the rise of the suburbs, there was a boom in the development of theme parks in Australia, ranging from small to large parks across the country. 

Wobbies World was on the smaller side, as I said earlier.  

From the beginning, the park advertised itself to local and not-so-local kids TV, with well-edited footage promoting the thrills of the park. A near-universal remembrance of the park is its TV commercials, which reportedly played “often” or “incessantly”, depending on your perspective. (Several of them can be found on YouTube, and linked through the shownotes, of course.) People who were children at the time remember the FOMO feeling of seeing the commercials and then hearing mom and dad say no. But ultimately, the park was very good at promotion, as we’ll see, and the actual experience was often more of a letdown.

What’s a Wobbie?

The first question you might wonder about is what’s a wobbie? Is it a person? Is it a thing? 

Google unfortunately did not answer this question for me. The majority of people discussing the question out there are confused. It turns out, no one knows. There’s no real definition for the word. There is a book series out there (“The Wobbies and the Caterpillar”). Meant for children, it shows Wobbies as miniature blue fox-like creatures. A 1946 short story in the Sydney Morning Herald tells the tale of Wobby the Whale. There’s a modern guy named Mike Wobschall, nickname Wobby, a major talking head for the Minnesota Vikings who recently quit or was fired from that role. The American Agriculturist Cyclopedia of Natural History from 1887 described “red-throated diver” birds as “wobbies”. One single reference used it colloquially to mean “shark”. But that’s about it, and that’s not a lot of results.

Google also suggests “woobie” in the search, which, while an unlikely option, does have an interesting history. Did you know that a woobie is colloquially a child’s lovey, and that this became the name of a popular item of military kit? Technically called the “liner, wet weather, poncho”, this item was originally produced in the 60s in the Vietnam War. Troops fighting in the jungle needed a lightweight poncho to serve the dual purpose of both rain protection and warmth. The poncho and liner were originally crafted from leftover camouflaged parachute material all the way from World War II, or so the story goes. This poncho was so beloved by the troops and so synonymous with comfort that it began to be called a “woobie”. Today, if you search for the term “woobie”, the dominant result is for this poncho. In a writeup on the US Armed Forces focused website, “Task and Purpose,” they described the woobie thusly: “Simply put, it is the greatest thing to ever be issued by the U.S. military.“

Ultimately, none of these possible meanings for the word appear to have anything to do with the theme park, leaving an open mystery for now. 

What Was Wobbies World?

Back to Wobbies World, then. Wobbies, spelled without any apostrophe as far as I’ve seen in my research. There was a “Mr. Wobbie” used as a mascot to promote the theme park in shopping malls, but the internet holds no details about what or whom he was. My suspicion is that he essentially looked like the Saggy Baggy Elephant based on some abandoned photos, but there’s no confirmation of this.

The park is said to have opened in or around 1980 on seven acres of land off Springvale Road in Nunawading. (The real opening year may have been 1978, based on a line item in the official “Survey of Post-War Built Heritage in Victoria” done by Heritage Victoria, the governmental heritage department. 1978 was also the year the park began acquiring vehicles. At least one internet commenter specifically notes a visit to the park in 1979, as well.) It was a place geared towards younger children and particularly those interested in vehicles and moving attractions. The owner was a man by the name of Robin Laurie, and he owned the theme park (or “children’s playground” in Australian) for most of the park’s operation. He’s remembered online as being a nice guy and good to work for, at least at first. 

Wobbies World was memorable for its handmade and unique, vintage rides, in particular. The aesthetic wasn’t much: “this place looks like it’s from the 1930s” is a quote from a visitor videotaping the park during its operating years. Overall, the theming was perhaps “transportation”, if anything at all. Here’s an album of photos in operation and a second album of photos. Kids remember the park for mailing free park vouchers on your birthday – quite the highlight to get a birthday card from a theme park as an under-10 year old, if I’m being honest. I like this policy!

Attractions at Wobbies World

Vickers Viscount

Perhaps the attraction with the longest history at Wobbies World was the big old Vickers Viscount airplane sitting with a staircase, waiting for guests to walk through it. It perhaps was not incredibly interesting for small children at a theme park, but had a deep history.

The Viscount, as a general model of plane, was one of the first turboprop planes. This plane was revolutionary for introducing a new type of engine, the turboprop engine: a jet engine with a propeller on the front, and incredibly fuel efficient. The engine it replaced was a piston-driven engine. 

Designed by a man called George Edwards, it was originally called “Viceroy” after the viceroy of India, Lord Louis Mountbatten. After India’s independence in 1947, the plane was renamed Viscount as it began production. The first aircraft entered service in 1950, a British plane. A comment from 1953 described the play as “an excellent shorthaul airplane and a definite crowd pleaser”. It was known for the smooth flight, lack of turbulence, and higher flying altitudes.  In Australia, the Viscounts were widely used by Australian airline companies, as replacements for the piston-powered planes favored a generation earlier. 

This specific Viscount was built in 1958. It was built for the Cuban state airline Cubana, registered as CU-T622 and CU-N622. Rumor says it served as the personal transport for Fidel Castro for some time. By 1961, after only a few years in service, it was seized for non-payment of debts and cannabalized for spare parts for other planes. The plane was intended to be sold until Cubana to South Africa Airways, but this deal never went through. Instead, the planes was eventually sold to Trans Australia Airlines (TAA) with the tailnumber VH-TVR in 1962. She was named as “John Murray”.

There is some discussion on Facebook posts that TVR was involved in an incident where a catering truck ran straight into the wing, damaging the plane. The March 2015 issues of the TAA Museum newsletter describes the incident as a forklift, and not a catering truck, running into the plane just after it had been completely rehauled to new condition. This was during the time when the Viscount was being retired, so spare parts were at a premium, having to come all the way from England. In a pinch, the wing from sister plan VH-TVP was removed and attached to TVR to allow the plane to continue to fly.

After a few years flying in Australia, VH-TVR was retired from service in April of 1970. 

In June of 1970, it’s said that the personal intervention of TAA’s chairman, Sir Frederick Scherger, saved TVR John Murray from being destroyed as a fire training aid. 

Instead, she was donated to the Australian Aircraft Restoration Group at Moorabbin,, but space considerations meant that she had to take a substantial detour first. Reportedly she languished in the Essendon graveyard for several years after the airplane wing incident.

In October 1978, she was delivered in a basic paint scheme with the name “Wobbies Airlines” to what the Vickers Viscount plane book describes as “a children’s playground”. Yes, our plane friend with that long history was now solely an exhibit for mildly interested children to tromp through. Well, tromp through isn’t quite fair. Apparently you got to pay an extra $0.50 in 1991 dollars to sit through a 25 minute video of a plane taking off and landing at Melbourne airport. (Walkthrough of the plane in its current incarnation at the Moorabbin Museum.) When they weren’t experiencing the other rides at Wobbies World, that is.

Rides at Wobbies World

A commenter online states “A place more schizophrenic between ‘awesome’ and ‘■■■■■■ awful’ than Wobbies World I have never seen.” 

Wob Cats

One of the attractions generally considered awesome were the real vehicles, like a real construction vehicle (a Fiat 4S1C Diesel Bull Dozer) and a real tractor (Kubota L246 Diesel Tractor) and a real Bren Gun Carrier from World War II that kids could drive. Collectively, they appear to have been called the Wob Cats.

Quote from an online commenter: “I was 12 and I was DRIVING A REAL TANK.  Talk about the best thing ever.”

http://www.mapleleafup.net/forums/showthread.php?t=20487 The tank (the gun carrier) had no actual guns on it, but the ride line was reportedly always long, indicative of its popularity. Children were able to drive an actual tank and get a token for their troubles. Imagine! Or a real tractor, or a real bulldozer – can you imagine the chance to do that as a child? The latter were rigged to a power grid like a supercharged bumper car in later years, and only those over the age limit could take their turn to drive the vehicles in jumpy mechanized circles across muddy ground. 

There were other rides too. Nothing was a “standard” theme park ride – everything had the aura of the custom and homemade. Take the entrance, for instance. By some bizarre reason, the entrance and offices were inside a boxy bulky castle facade. The park’s nominal theme could best be said to be transportation, so it’s unclear what “theme” this castle was intending to tie into. 

Carousel (Wobbies Whirls?)

A six-person swan shaped carousel (an extra $0.50 per ride in 1991) sat at the park, by all accounts appearing to be home brewed in most ways, as the swans were simply two plywood swan-shaped cutouts bracketing a basic seat. In one of the videos of the park in operation, we get a good view of this ride, with one single child glumly going round, mum chivvying them to smile and wave, trying to induce some excitement into the scene. The carousel appeared to operate at about the speed of your average airline luggage carousel. 

In the March 1992 issue of “The Fare Box” (which is a monthly newsletter for transportation token collectors) there is a description of “a beautiful ride token” which appears to have been for the swan merry-go-round (labeled carousel) –  “I’ve never heard of Nunawading before, so I guess it’s some sort of theme park with rides”. Very inspirational.

Wobbies Wheels

There was some sort of amphibious ATV type ride, bright red cars, called “Wobbies Wheels”. These were actually Sierra Trailboss vehicles, six-wheeled ATV type cars circa 1970. They went along a three rail track through the woods. There’s some debate online as to whether the cars were powered by motor or by the track it ran on; in my opinion, a motor seems most likely based on the other Sierra Trailboss vehicles out there, but this is only a guess. (Here’s a photo of the cars in action during the park’s operation.)

The ATV ride provided minor thrills like small puddles and a fake crocodile popping out at unsuspecting guests. These ATVs (and according to some commenters, all rides at Wobbies World) did not have any emergency stop zones – it was apparently solely up to the operator’s discretion to decide when each car should be released from the station. Clearly, this is not a situation that would fit with more modern standards of health and safety.

Splash Down

In the later years, in 1994, roughly $40,000 was spent to add a ride called “Splash Down”. This ride barely seems worthy of the classification of “ride”. It was literally just a small red boat with stick-on “Wobbies World” letters on the side. The boat was winched up maybe 7-10 feet on an incline and then splashed down in a small pool of water, coming to a stop almost as soon as the splash occurred. (It can be seen in this circa 1998 promo video: https://youtu.be/tQCkWIfaHAY?t=4) This appears to be the “log ride” that some refer to when describing the park. General opinion on the internet is that this ride was underwhelming, to say the least, with only a few former visitors exclaiming happily over this as their favorite ride. 

Fire Trucks, Mini Golf, and Other Rides

There was a vintage Dennis fire truck, and also a fire truck “ride” which ran on a small central rail track. It seems that there was a mannequin “firefighter” who sprayed the car as it went by at one point, and everyone who rode got firefighter hats to wear. The online commentary does seem to find this ride memorable, despite how basic it seems in the description. Perhaps it was the plastic hat.

Of course there were other rides. One was a vintage hand pump car on a small circuit (reportedly requiring much effort to operate) called the Push Pull Railway (an additional $0.25 in 1991). There a basic kids playground setup with several slides and sense-confusing spinning tunnels and a rope swing and a swinging rope bridge and a flying fox (that’s the name for the thing that’s essentially a heavy duty zipline). There was a ball pit of bright colorful plastic balls (reportedly 18,000 of them). There were large trampolines with injury-awaiting exposed springs. 

There was a mini golf course of no particular special theming – just basic blue surfaces surrounded by concrete gutters. But hey, mini-golf was an extra $1 per 18 holes. Apparently the final hole, #18, had a large rock wall or mountain facade of some sort, where a hole-in-one would earn you a free game.

Trams and Trains at Wobbies World

And there were several trams (which are sort of like trolleys to an American audience, and not my initial interpretation from the video of “train”) – actual commuter trams, formerly serving the Melbourne area. (In a minor tangent, I found it interesting in my research how trams are a huge form of public transportation in Melbourne, and that they have by at least once source the largest urban tram network in the world. Obviously given my accent, I’m an American living in this vast wasteland of terrible public transportation that is the majority of our nation, and I’m envious.) 

Briefly, trams in Melbourne have operated since 1885; electric trams operated irregularly beginning in 1889, and have been operating continuously for more than a century, since 1906. Where other cities shuttered their networks, Melbourne’s stayed in operation: factors included wide streets and gridded geometry of the city; union resistance; and successful argument from the MMTB chairman that it would’ve been prohibitively expensive to rip up the tracks in the streets. The tram network has expanded several times over the years, and today, trams form much of Melbourne’s character and occupy a large part of general tourism and travel advertising. 

The backbone of the Melbourne tram fleet between 1940 and 1969 was the W2 class, a model of electric tram introduced in 1927. More modern, wider trams began to replace the W2 series, with the final W2 being taken out of service in 1987. What’s fantastic is that the government maintains public records of each tram and where it went after it was sold from service.

As Wobbies World geared up to open, it was November of 1979 that they purchased their first W2 tram, number 302. The next spring, April 1980, they purchased another, number 283. Both of these were originally “W” models from 1924 which had been converted to W2s in the mid 1930s.

Five years later, in November of 1985, Wobbies World bought two more W2 trams: number 579 and 624, both manufactured between 1929 and 1930.

All of these W2 trams were stationary, serving as exhibits and places to have picnics, lunches, and parties. 

There was another set of trams said to have been installed in the late 80s, and these were a “ride” – a very slow-moving mechanized trip up and down a pathway. These were painted a very cheerful green and yellow, matching the paint scheme livery of their larger cousins. The miniature trams used a traverser – essentially an automated switch to move the tram from one set of tracks back to the other to allow a return trip. These trams had names after local suburbs: Vermont, Burwood, Nunawading, Forest Hill.

A Flickr album also notes a few other pieces of rolling stock set up together, originally having been displayed with the J550 locomotive at Mirboo North station. According to one commenter on railpage.com.au, they were called “The Crumpet Train” when they were at Wobbies World. One was a “BPL 59” painted pale blue (this was a “bouncing passenger lounge” or carriage); and a “ZL 539” (or perhaps 536?) painted bright red (wooden frame, built towards the end of the 1920s). The “Z van”, I learned, is what’s called a “guard’s van”, or a brake car, akin to a North American caboose, albeit with a different look. Originally, the only brakes on the train were in the loco and in the brake van, not continuously on every car, so you might see the importance of the guard’s van. As continuous brakes began to be implemented, the guard’s van fell out of use. 

Traverser miniature tram images: image one, image two, image three.

Helicopter Rides at Wobbies World

There were two other big rides at Wobbies World, though, and both involved helicopters. 

Bell 47J at Wobbies World

The first was the big Bell 47J helicopter, perched on a large piece of machinery in the middle of a field. Formerly registered as VH-INE, this Bell 47J with serial number 1772 once operated for Airfast and Ansett-ANA Airlines in the 1960s. The copter was said to be one of those used during the search when former Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt went missing in 1967. 

(Here are links to images of the helicopter in operation and sitting in the paddock post-Wobbies World; and a nice image from the National Library of Australia here and here and here. It was withdrawn from use in 1976, and from there made its way to Wobbies World.

It was positioned as a virtual reality simulator. For an additional $1 (in 1991 dollars) per ride, kids were able to “drive” the copter and experience what it would be like to fly one.

In reality, of course, the ride was nothing like the expectation. I suppose from a “guy builds amusement park from his workshop” sense, this ride was impressive. But compared to any actual theme park ride, it fell spectacularly short for all but the youngest riders. The copter rose up a few feet on its mechanical post and did spin in circles, but otherwise didn’t do much at all in the way of a proper simulator. Remembrances online are all about how disappointing the helicopter ride was in reality, and of guests trying to spin the copter in order to hit other guests still queuing up. Others recall simply riding the ride as an excuse to get frisky behind the blacked out front viewscreen.

Nonetheless, regardless of reality, in commercials and pictures, the big Bell helicopter cut an impressive figure. 

Whirlybird Copter Rail

The other helicopter ride featured miniature Whirlybird copters done up in primary colors, and was somewhere between a monorail and a roller coaster. From a layout and structural perspective, the ride was incredibly tame. However, given that this ride was essentially to the scale of, say, a beach ball perched on a string of yarn, the thrill came from the constant sensation that this ride was going to fall apart and kill you. Most visitors online recall this ride as quite scary.

A former visitor online sums it up, describing the ride as ancient and decrepit. The ride was said to shudder along, shedding flakes of rust. Some even described the I-beam rails as shuddering beneath the helicopter-shaped car’s weight or the entire apparatus, track and copter both, literally swaying in the wind. Quote: “the whole contraption just gave off a million-decibel ABOUT TO COLLAPSE AT ANY TIME warning.” 

The gentle turns and U-bends combined with the mild slopes to give a terrifying coaster-like ride, solely because of the wildly unsafe nature of it all. Every time a small copter took a gentle turn on the rail, the small two person capsule shuddered and wobbled, seeming to barely hang on to the rail. A 90-degree turn after a short downhill incline seems to have been the worst offender, terrifying many who rode it. Multiple reports and stories exist online of the cars stopping, tilting, dangling, or doors simply not opening, so it’s a fairly safe bet that this ride was not anywhere near modern standards of safe. One particularly vivid story described a day nearly to end of the park’s life, with a worker on a ladder, shoving at a dangling whirlybird car with a broomstick, attempting to right the car onto the track before the two screaming children inside puked or passed out. It sounded super safe.

In fact, none of the rides were close to today’s modern standards of health and safety.

Closure of Wobbies World

Wobbies World is long gone by the time I’m recording this in 2020, which I’m sure is unsurprising given what I’ve already told you about the park. One commenter online sums it up, describing their only memory of the park as the lingering sense of deep and utter disappointment.

A number of factors were involved in the closure, not the least of which were the typical: mismanagement, compliance with safety standards, and financial difficulties leading to audience decline. 

Costs

The park was said to be expensive for the time: $36 for a family of four admission in 1994 dollars, the oft-quoted number I saw. This is over $60 in today’s money. However, we could argue about the validity of that price quote. A 1991 price list I saw from a very reliable source (a legal proceeding) has adult admission at $3 and kids ages 4 and up $2, which is a very different pricing scheme. 

However, given the miniscule scope of attractions at the park, the increasingly unsafe maintenance, and the very short amount of time a person could find themselves entertained at the park, and you can see how the cost was high. Additionally, most attractions had an additional cost, as noted earlier. For instance, to walk through the Vickers Viscount, the 1982 price was an additional $0.50. (About $1.30 today.) Only the playground equipment, firetruck, vintage cars, and trampolines were “free” (included in admission price). 

Very late in the game, a “Red Baron” monorail type ride was added, featuring a single airplane on a very gentle slope. Most recollections of this ride are not particularly fond, and many describe it as “lame”.

Maintenance

Unsafe maintenance too seems to have played a large role. Urban Dictionary actually has a review or definition for the park:  “Located in the state of Victorian, Australia, Wobby’s World was a little kiddie’s theme-park hangover from the 80’s. Was run, until recently, with complete disregard for health and safety regulations: the rides were never oiled, many were structurally unsound such as the best ride there which resembled a Hills Hoist washing line, and the workers there seemed as if they either never slept, were hung-over or stoned. The last two options were definitely more likely.”

Many reviews and comments online from the latter years of the park’s history describe how poorly the park was looking – rides and attractions broken down, covered in rust, ungreased, and not working properly. The ride vehicles in general were said to all smell like sweat. Other comments talk about the overgrown landscaping, with stagnant water in the ponds and blackberry bushes overgrowing the paths. My general sense is that most people in the area found the park iconic, though often in a negative, run-down sort of way. 

One comment relates an anecdote about riding the Whirlybird monorail in the later years, with the Whirlybird tipping over on a curve and dangling from the rail; passengers reportedly had to be rescued with the help of a stepladder. Another commenter online talks about giant cracks in the minigolf course and a hedge maze that was more holes than maze. 

And of course, the park had to have broken so many health and safety laws. Or, perhaps if they didn’t actively break them, they didn’t upgrade to comply with new regulations. The rides certainly were relics from a different age, of common sense, burning hot slides, exposed machinery, and the like. 

Hand in hand with health and safety laws had to be the ever-rising cost of insurance for a park such as this, as we’ve talked about so many times. That certainly didn’t help the bottom line, especially as maintenance and advertising costs also rose, and as attendance began dropping.

Mismanagement

But the final nail in the coffin for Wobbies World was “mismanagement”. Such a small word to describe some rather large ramifications and shenanigans. 

Come the mid-to-late 90s, Wobbies World began having trouble staying in the black with the park – reduced attendance, larger spending on maintenance and advertising, and even new rides like the Red Baron airplane monorail (similar to the Whirlybird but not appearing to replace it).

In February of 1996, roughly $16,000 was spent to move the Vickers Viscount from Wobbies World back to Moorabin and the Australian National Aviation Museum (originally known as the Moorabin Air Museum). All pieces acquired by the museum are required to be directly related to Australian aviation history. And of course, as noted earlier, the Viscount was simply on loan to Wobbies World.

 Apparently there was some drama involved with the move, of which I wished I knew more details. From an account of the life of the plane, we have only this quote: “the aircraft was transported to the Moorabbin Air Museum ( a saga in itself)”. Perhaps it was simply a difficult job to get the plane out past the tight squeeze of the Whirlybird tracks and other attractions? I’ll include links to several photos of the plane on the move in the next paragraph. One comes with the caption “a sigh of relief”. 

To move the plane, the wings, engines, and nose were removed. A large crane hoisted the plane body up onto a very large flatbed truck, and from there, it presumably moved quite slowly to its new destination, some 20 km south. An album with four images of the plane being moved is located here; a different image of the plane being moved is here; another different image of the plane being moved with its faded Wobbies Airlines signage; an image of the plane being lifted off the stands at Wobbies World; the disassembled engine props. Here’s an image of the plane beginning to be reassembled at the museum.

In 1998, it still sat partially disassembled, as seen in this image linked here.

The plane still lives at the museum today, reportedly the only complete Viscount remaining in Australia. It is still on display, and is reportedly undergoing major restoration. 

But returning the Viscount to the museum in 1996 may have only hastened the public opinion issues with the park – one of the major attractions and pieces of background scenery, after all. By 1997, attendance was continuing to drop. Mr. Laurie, the owner, perhaps saw the writing on the wall, and put up the park for sale. 

By December of 1997, the sale was finalized. Laurie was no longer the owner: now, it was owned by a company called Crystal Auburn, changing hands for the tidy sum of $550,000. Remember that Australia is in the southern hemisphere – summer runs from approximately December through February – so the park was in operation at the time of the sale. 

And it seems that as they operated the park in the high season and went through the paperwork immediately following their purchase and acquisition of the park, Crystal Auburn began to smell a rat in the walls. Something wasn’t right. By March of 1998, three months after the purchase, they began seeking legal advice, and reportedly asked Laurie if he would take the park back. 

He declined.

Crystal Auburn put Wobbies World up for sale at the end of that month, March 1998, at a sum of $650,000. 

From a public perspective, the park was seeming increasingly run down, untidy, and simply not up to par. Things were dirty, rusty, moldy, mildewy, and broken. Descriptions of the park from former workers around this time paint a picture of an empty park and not much to do. Workers were primarily bored high school and university students, whiling away the days. There were said to be a bare handful of visitors on most days, with workers helping themselves to hot fries from the snack bar and passing the time with some hot book reading action (Stephen King! It was the 90s). Visitors weren’t being drawn in by the constantly running television commercials. The park had some irregular operating hours. It was circling the drain, in medical parlance. Ultimately, it was ingloriously shuttered the next year, in mid-1999, with fixtures being sold at public auction in June of 1999.

Of course, none of this tells the story of what really happened to Wobbies World.

It wouldn’t be until a series of three court cases, in 2000, 2001, and 2004, that the details came to public light. 

The problem was that the 1997 sale of Wobbies World had apparently been done under false pretenses.

(The remainder of this section is sourced from my interpretation of three court cases, linked in the shownotes. I’m not a lawyer, so I’ll apologize in advance if I’ve misinterpreted anything. Read the case for yourself here: http://www8.austlii.edu.au/cgi-bin/viewdoc/au/cases/cth/FCA/2004/821.html) 

So it seems when the park was put up for sale, attendance figures and a profile in a business magazine were used to promote the sale of the park, and were the basis by which Crystal Auburn chose to purchase the park. Only the problem was, it turns out that the business numbers – profits, attendance, etc, were determined to be falsified and misleading. The park’s income tax returns, even, were apparently incorrect for several years. 

Of course, this wasn’t known at the time that Crystal Auburn purchased the park in December of 1997, though they quickly seemed to be figuring it out. Wobbies World under Crystal Auburn operation reportedly had attendance numbers 60% lower than the previously provided attendance figures. It wasn’t until several months later in March of 1998 that they began to ask for legal advice, and subsequently put Wobbies World back up for sale.

In August of 1998 with no offers coming in on the sale of the park, Crystal Auburn took the advice of their lawyers, walking away from their contract, walking away from Wobbies World. Laurie and his associated companies subsequently re-occupied and re-opened the property throughout the summer of 1998-1999 (remember, southern hemisphere – what Americans would consider winter months). A major vandalism incident is reported to have occurred during this time, closing several of the rides; ultimately, this may have been the final death knell for the park and its visitors. 

By January of 1999, Laurie and his businesses had relisted Wobbies World for sale at a cost of $390,000. A buyer was found when the park land was finally auctioned in June 1999. The ad wrote: “Falling within an area zoned reserved living and in a predominantly residential district, agents believe the property is ideally suited to residential subdivision. But the site will be sold with conforming use rights, allowing an enterprising purchaser to continue to operate a theme park. McGees director Mr Richard O’Callaghan said the Wobbies World theme park commenced trading in 1980 and was a “source of joy for countless children. It would now appear that the site will be the source of much enjoyment for one successful residential developer.’ ”

A buyer was indeed found, splitting the theme park land up, so Wobbies World as it had been had to go. The park was shuttered. A public auction was set in July 199, one month later, to sell the park’s fixtures and rides. I’ll include a listing of the auction contents in the Appendix below. It’s said that Mr. Laurie himself personally bid on at least 24 different items.

By 2000, Crystal Auburn filed a legal proceeding against Laurie and his associated companies, seeking damages under the claim that Laurie’s companies had misrepresented Wobbies World when selling it. It took three cases and four more years before everything was settled. Ultimately, the courts came to a decision: apparently Laurie’s companies had knowingly misled, deceived, and mismanaged the sale of Wobbies World by falsifying data that led to Crystal Auburn’s purchase of the park. Crystal Auburn was awarded damages to the tune of almost $1 million dollars.  Again, I recommend reading the original case, linked here.

After Wobbies World

The land that was formerly Wobbies World, there on Springvale Road in Nunawading or Vermont South or Forest Hill, whichever Melbourne suburb you’d like to place it in, was split up after the theme park shuttered in 1999.

Half of the land was sold to property developers, and became just your average basic housing tract. The other half stayed nearly as it was, and this was the half with the “castle”. The castle, in fact, was one of the longest-lasting parts of Wobbies World, as this half of the theme park became….a garden center. A plant nursery! In fact, there’s an indication that for a period of time, the castle was considered a heritage site, though this is only an educated guess.

The name was “The Park Nursery and Pool Center” – after a few weeks of research with this name kicking around in my head, I’ve decided that perhaps it wasn’t as generic as it sounds – do you think “The Park” was a subtle Wobbies World reference, as in “theme park”? Maybe.

Anyhow, the garden center stayed there for several years after Wobbies World was broken up. A few internet commenters say the original owner and/or his companies remained the owner of this garden center, though this isn’t clear or well-sourced in the slightest. A surprising amount of the physical infrastructure from Wobbies World remained – posts, the snack building, the mini-golf setup, and of course, the castle. Google Earth extends back this far, and shows that pots and plants are simply organized in neat rows over much of where the parking lot used to be. For a time, it looked quite nice (thanks, Google street view).

Everything stayed for years, because I suppose if there’s one thing Australia has a ton of, it’s land. But finally, a sign went up indicating a new purpose for the site, and in September of 2012, it was announced that the Forest Hill police station was to be built there. The garden center closed, and the property began to be the target for graffiti artists, as seen in this album of gorgeous abandoned images of Wobbies World. An October 2013 Google street view shows the shuttered, graffiti’d former castle.

A few accounts exist online about explorations of the park at this stage, and even a short video round about the demolition timeframe. There are few images available of the abandoned property since most of the interesting items (the rides) were sold fairly quickly. One shows a dingy, decrepit section of the mini-golf course blue AstroTurf obscured by debris, while another shows folks looking at an original Wobbies World sign that had fallen in the grass. A sad, misshapen elephant (possibly Mr. Wobbie himself) perched on a ball remained as a peeling mural on the wall of a building (apparently the former “birthday hut”). What little infrastructure that had been left was in a sorry state: rotting wooden bridges and walkways, rusting metal, massive overgrowth of blackberries and other flora, muddy mucky pools of water.

Between January 30th and February 27th of 2014, the castle building was demolished. The ceremonial first shovelful of dirt was dug February 12, 2014. The $12 million Forest Hill Police Station went up in its place, opening in March of 2015 all shiny and gleaming and modern, but the outbuildings and the back quarter of the park remained in their decaying glory, until the entire site was finally demo’d in July or August of 2016.

Wobbies World in Culture Today

That was the end of Wobbies World as anything resembling a physical site, but the park remains to this day as a concept in Australian cultural parlance.

Back in the 90s, it was the height of the late-night sketch comedy show. One of these was the short-lived but well-remembered show, aptly named “The Late Show”. Based out of Melbourne, this was a show appearing to be similar to America’s MADtv or Canada’s The Red Green Show. One of the recurring segments on the show was “Pissweak World”, where fake commercials were shown promoting a theme park called Pissweak World. Video showed bored-looking children (known as The Pissweak Kids) experiencing disappointing rides at a terrible “theme park”. Voiceover provided exuberant commentary about the terrible-looking rides and attractions: “travel on a real golf buggy”, “roll down a slope”, etc. The exciting-sounding descriptions were obvious send-ups: for instance, the voice-over of “ride a bucking bronco” showed a child sitting calmly on the back of a golden retriever, Marine World was a swimming pool, and one of the Air World rides involved wearing ski goggles in front of a small fan. Ultimately, there were seven Pissweak World episode segments: Pissweak World, Pissweak Colonial World (also known as Ye Olde Pissweak Worlde), Pissweak World Fun Park, Pissweak Western World, Pissweak Marine World, Pissweak Movie World, and Pissweak Air World. (Here’s a playlist of the Pissweak World segments, linked here!)

(And in a brief sidebar, the voiceover narration was provided by one Tony Martin, who today has his own podcast, Sizzletown, among other things.)

It’s generally accepted that this segment for the worst theme park ever was directly inspired by and parodying Wobbies World in particular. Depending on your point of view, it’s a direct example of how influential, inspiring, uninspiring, or unexceptional Wobbies World actually was. Today, Pissweak World is perhaps even more well-known or commonly referenced than Wobbies World, evidenced by its regular use on Twitter and other social media sites.

The park also reportedly was immortalized in an episode of the Aussie TV show Prisoner. If anyone has any leads on which ep (there are 692!), I’d love to know! 

And of course, Wobbies World remains a talking point in discussions today, including political debate. From online notes, we find at least two references to Wobbies World: April 2016 comments by the Premier Andrews to the opposition leader during legislative assembly: “The Leader of the Opposition ought to get down to Wobbies World because he might have the numbers there. He should not waste his time on me; he might have the numbers down at Wobbies World. They might need a leader down there — he will be unopposed.” And Parliament of Victoria Legislative Council, Mr. Leane, April 2013: “I am glad I have parliamentary privilege because Wobbies World was probably the worst amusement park you could ever imagine in your lifetime. Sorry, Mr Wobbie, but it was pretty ordinary.”

And on YouTube, in addition to all the vintage commercials, don’t sleep on the “Jurassic Wobbies World compilation.

Wobbies World: the Physical Remnants

Of course, physical remnants of Wobbies World still remain, even with the park long-shuttered and the castle demolished.

The miniature trams remained onsite for some time – one commenter online posted a picture of them said to be circa 2005, still in their former storage shed, now much overgrown and dirty. At least one of these mini-trams was sold at auction, and the remainder are said to have been gifted by the former owners to the same person who now owns the iconic Bell 47J helicopter, on a farm near “Frankston-Dandy” road. 

The copter sits in the front paddock next to a busy road, delightfully visible to all traffic passing by. According to an online comment, the local council fought the owners about it for several years after they’d purchased it at the Wobbies World auction, but finally settled. Reportedly the copter is unlikely to fly again, missing the motor and gearbox – an expensive proposition to get it in flight-worthy condition. Today, the copter’s paint is peeling and there have unfortunately been some vandalism incidents. However, it remains safe from the scrap heap, and a reminder of good times gone by for the regular traffic on the busy Frankston-Dandy road. Link to Google map view of the helicopter here.

Another copter, one of the Whirlybird monorail cars, is also visible at a house on the road to Healesville Animal Sanctuary. Link to the Google map view of the helicopter in Healesville.

The W2-class trams are all now said to be in the hands of private collectors or restoration enthusiasts. And as recently as 2018, the 6-wheel Sierra Trailboss “Wobbies Wheels” ATV cars could be found for sale up on Facebook Marketplace. Little bits of this decades-gone theme park still remain, and there’s something infinitely charming and melancholic about that. What remains when we’re gone into obsolescence, and what meaning is left for those looking back?

Conclusions

 “It’s great at Wobbies World!” 

I can’t close out this episode without bringing the discussion back around to the wildfires raging in Australia right now. Half a billion animals are dead, millions of acres have been destroyed. It’s bonkers. 

Climate change is real and causing massive, problematic weather, amongst other things. You can combat this. You can make small changes like reducing your car and airplane usage, eating less or no meat, supporting policies that control and reduce large companies’ emissions, and by talking about climate change to others. Climate change is relevant to us all, even if you’d rather be talking about defunct theme parks. 

For many, Wobbies World remains a place of good memories, especially for those who visited at a very young age or with young kids. It was a place for birthday and holiday parties, and a place for the young at heart who wouldn’t necessarily see the flaws. For the older folks, it seems as though Wobbies World was more mixed – everyone seems to remember the constantly-running TV commercials and the iconic sights of the park as they drove by, but the general sentiment was of misconception, disappointment, and a fairly sad theme park experience. “I think the ad was more enjoyable than the real thing.” and “So bad, it was good” and “the worst theme park ever, which was what made it great.” No matter what, Wobbies World was memorable. And it inspired the parody “Pissweak World”, a concept which I might be incorporating into my own vocabulary. 

And you know, for all that I said at the beginning that this park was about misconceptions, Wobbies World was actually a whole lot of fun to research. I think given the right frame of mind, or the right age, it would’ve been a fun place to visit, too. Even if it was really a bit of Pissweak World underneath.

“At Wobbies World, there’s heaps to do / bring your friends, and Mum too / visit the castle, or fly in the sky / Wobbies World has lots of rides: helicopters, fire engines, trams, and slides.”

Appendix: Auction Listings for Wobbies World

These lists are taken from the 2004 legal case regarding Wobbies World, and are presented here to help the interested understand the types of rides and equipment which used to be at the park.

References

1. Trams Downunder. https://tdu.to/m/242547/wobbies-world-vic. Accessed December 17, 2019.
2. Trams Downunder. https://tdu.to/33738.msg. Accessed January 3, 2020.
3. Trams Downunder. https://tdu.to/m/242547/wobbies-world-vic?insearch=1. Accessed January 3, 2020.
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6. Laves YM Laves – Guess who went to Wobbies World today!!!! Woo Hoo! https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=1542542755963550&set=bc.AbrLFoGZqfxbigqBAu92kjcX6MR1tJX-rIvBEPbXmVArPSyH-gIYpdkxNlSrrfHUGQ5lTdd5ChVGEt5Dy6n9f7-yCM8EXgWI9IO_GWdiE57DYfMUpQVJvXe9xAv1Jxfh_JNsCsHpmQNIjcp9lzWAsctW&type=1&opaqueCursor=AbpYvcsl2f3VY85aNcpBGAvNhy_-eRh4U0HIg6eo8JeBgPCNoHf_zQU5S5OF500e6f7fo2IZk4D0stzxJGJQz94N0DwUe31qZEHa3haSkjVwUb8X0HANk3_o2u_O43-K1hc7jcaMmrlqLTkPUE6aVKbwjvPjGhr8vQUrwBmNnh-ZPJd0vlT4onVDq6KAkS6x7hyXg3TiUU17q1p0x-GIVdMHbvpW3V2byPVTSt_-tQpaxwopH1tisXCA7UdqZFIbCYvlo_RIQUjxb5ZxnuNwbNAl6-kSV9n9Dv_t0n1ZDdQVkiSWuWLA7HPzGoaWmYyq-wTCFOQaMo7XILuM0SJj49GuvBCeG5y7inHWjlb5f6gTKRHnmil60i9uYeD1O_sFC5IkQnAe0k5gxJ0cZmzHaYrwjU7L50JEHXIKt43SpI-9FPaknzhIu5S-E2dbbhqYv3WYawqCDeFzZwq5TrN2nQYzagKH0j3rUh68F7JrZY-QaA&theater. Accessed December 31, 2019.
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17. Check out this vintage ad for Wobbies World. https://www.timeout.com/melbourne/blog/check-out-this-vintage-ad-for-wobbies-world-041516. Accessed December 18, 2019.
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Podcast cover background photo is by 4045 on freepik.com. Image of the Opera House is from the collection of Bob Carroll and used with permission. Theme music is from “Aerobatics in Slow Motion” by TeknoAXE. Incidental music includes “Olde Timey” and “Plucky Daisy” by Kevin Macleod / incompetech.com. “The Ballad of Gaslight Village and Frontier Town” by Brian Dorn, Addison Rice, and Jahnavi Newsom (aka The Love Sprockets), used with permission. Additional audio clips are from the collection of Bob Carroll’s Gaslight Village memorabilia and are used with permission. All are available in full on his YouTube page, and include a clip of Warren Boden, the Gaslight Village commercial jingle, audience “boos” from a mellerdrama, and part of the Heckler sketch.

Well, it’s been some time since we were last in the Adirondacks, but we’re back. You might remember my episodes on Magic Forest (still operational, with some changes) and Time Town (long gone) back in the single digit episodes of TAC. Well, here we are, all the way in episode 25, back again in upstate NY, back in Lake George, this time to talk about a shining gem of the past. Let’s go back to a time of cool summer nights, brightly lit rides glowing in the twilight, music spilling out from the speakers and the shows at the Opera House. Gaslight Village, yesterday’s fun today.

Charles Wood

To start today’s story, you need to know about the man behind it all: Charles R. Wood, dubbed by the IAAPA (the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions) as the “grandfather of the American theme park”. Born in 1914, Charles was an entrepreneur who made his own opportunities. 

He started out his investments at a young age – he bought two houses at the age of thirteen, unthinkable and impossible in today’s world a century later. As he became an adult, he worked in aviation as an aircraft technician throughout World War II.

After the war, it was an article in Reader’s Digest, of all things, that planted the seeds for his future in the amusement industry. See, Charles read about the Knotts and their berry farm over in California. An article in Reader’s Digest led him to Southern California to see Knott’s Berry Farm. “I fell in love with what he had done,” says Charley. “Mr. Knott had created the boysenberry, and Mrs. Knott cooked chicken and made boysenberry pie. People would swarm this place. Mr. Knott built a chapel and a volcano to entertain people while they waited for the dinner. He had started an amusement park. I came back full of beans and wanted to get into the amusement business.”

The story goes that Wood visited Albany, NY after seeing an ad for a skating rink for sale. The rink deal fell through, but he saw an ad locally for some land about 60 miles north, up in Lake George. When he asked for directions, he was told to take Route 9 north. As he later said, “It was just so pretty,” says Charley. “And I could just see nothing but opportunities.” It was a fateful trip.

Some consider Wood the pioneer of the tourism concept in Lake George. He started by purchasing property near Schroon Lake (30 minutes north of Lake George) and developed a resort there called Arrowhead Lodge. Then came a second property. Originally called Erlowest, it was a Queen Anne-style stone castle that Wood developed into Holiday House, right on Bolton Road in Lake George, now called Sun Castle. After years of development with these two summer resorts, Wood saw an opportunity. He’d realized something important about his audience – they were looking for more than just summer basics like tennis and boating. The resort wasn’t fulfilling enough for the guests. They were looking for amusements.

In 1954, then, a year before Disneyland opened, Charles Wood invested $75,000 in five acres of land off Route 9 between Lake George and Glen Falls. It was called Storytown USA, themed after Mother Goose stories, and is generally considered one of the first true theme parks in the US. 

We’ll get into the history of Storytown in another episode, but without a doubt, Storytown was a success. Guests came in droves, and one quote from Wood remembering opening day illustrated the fervor: “When we tried to count the money it was blowing all over the place.” Wood invested the profits right back into the park. His success with Storytown paved the way for Wood’s future endeavors and future successes, including the topic of today’s episode, Gaslight Village. 

Pottersville and the First Gaslight Village

In the tales of Gaslight Village, it’s an under-reported fact that Gaslight Village in Lake George was not actually the first Gaslight Village. Instead, the park had its beginnings in the hamlet of Pottersville NY, some 28 miles north of Lake George. From the 1870s through the 1960s, the small town hosted a variety of amusements drawing thousands of people, due to its proximity to the transportation of the time. These were things ranging from religious fairs in the early years, to dance halls, roller rinks, circus acts, and finally, the precursor to Gaslight Village. Specifically, by 1950, the town was promoting itself as “the home of Gaslight Village” in newspaper advertisements. 

According to a 2007 retrospective article by Andy Flynn, the local Chestertown paper, “The Summer Sentinel”, reported on the opening day of the original Gaslight Village: “June 30, 1950 with the headline, “Gaslight Village, Gay ’90’s Spectacle, Opens this Evening.” ” They described the opening, and noted that the famed creative genius Arto Monaco had a hand in the design of Gaslight Village.

Now, not to get too much into a second tangent, but we should talk about Arto Monaco briefly before we move on. I’ll talk more about him when I get into the other area theme parks he was better known for. But he was an important guy – a Hollywood designer, working for Warner Brothers and MGM and Walt Disney. He made toys for companies like Mattel, and designed theme parks, lots of theme parks. He’s best known for his work on Storytown and The Land of Makebelieve, but he had his hands in many different parks in one way or another, including, as it turns out, Gaslight Village. 

A July 1950 article clearly notes that the park was designed by Arto Monaco. Additionally, a sketch is floating around with an original layout and concept for Gaslight Village, attributed to Monaco, with his trademark designs – perfect, charming, and a little askew at the same time.  And the original buildings, too, bear his aesthetic.

Back to the amusement park. Milt Selleck was the man behind the original Gaslight Village, owner of the nearby Glen Manor hotel for 5 years prior to opening the new amusement park. It was located at a resort called Under the Maples, which was later converted to a campground called Smoke Rise. Described by the paper at the time: “a movie set quality pervades the place, and you find yourself transported to an old village square complete with a candy shoppe, village store, firehouse, and jail.” There was an outdoor music hall with live entertainment, a carnival for children, and a miniature train called The Adirondack Limited. The park served all kinds of food and drink, including cocktails and steins of beer. 

There was also, of course, a carousel. The 2007 retrospective calls it “Clint Swan’s 1903 merry-go-round from Kansas”. The July 1950 article describes it thusly: “vintage of 1890, complete with prancing steeds powered by steam, no less.” The train and the carousel were both set on terraces above the road to attract the eye to the park, between which led a wide gravel-paved road. 

Another article from June 1950 goes into greater depth, describing much that would be familiar to any fan of the later version of the park: keystone cops, photo studios offering old-fashioned tintypes, a penny arcade, museum, dueling pianos, a barbershop quartet, and of course, a magician. The evening program began with the “Lamplighter’s Serenade”, where the gas lights around the village square were illuminated, followed by a “Gaslight Waltz” routine and then an evening play.  

The July 1950 article concludes by saying that the park is “too good to miss!” 

Despite this delightful description, the Pottersville Gaslight Village reportedly lasted only a single season. That summer was apparently wet and cool, and that was a death knell for a park relying on primarily outdoor entertainment. Just over a year after its glowing report on the park’s opening, the Summer Sentinel published another article about the park, calling it a ghost town. Quote: “Today the square, a false facade in the Hollywood style, stands grey and mournful behind Glen Manor. Only the entrance, visible from Route 9, still glistens, but even that is neglected, forsaken in the greenery creeping up its very sides.”

One person has posted images of this place to a historical FB group, from a grandparents’ album, and they’re available on Facebook. In his description, the photos are noted as dating from 1949, which does conflict a bit with the information given in the paper articles. Perhaps they were from prior to the park’s opening? Nonetheless, the park didn’t survive for long in Pottersville by any account.

As the Adirondack Almanack describes in a 2009 blog post, Charley Wood purchased the Pottersville Gaslight Village “kit and kaboodle” in 1958, seven years after its reported abandonment. He would’ve been very familiar with the original park – not only was he friends and business associates with designer Arto Monaco, but he would’ve driven past Gaslight Village in Pottersville as he drove to his Arrowhead Lodge on Schroon Lake property. How exactly the buildings made it the 28 miles south isn’t quite clear, but move they did, to their more familiar location: Lake George.

Preparing the Site for Gaslight Village in Lake George, NY

By the time Gaslight Village officially opened in Lake George in 1959, Charles Wood had reportedly invested over half a million dollars in the park. Not only was there the cost of moving property from Pottersville. No, Charles Wood actually had to move a small mountain. 

The location of Gaslight Village in Lake George was on the site of the former Delaware and Hudson (D&H) Railway’s Freight House, where the D&H terminated and trains turned around on the “balloon track”. Charles Wood purchased the former railroad property some time in 1958. On the site was also a sawmill with a huge sawdust mountain. Under Wood’s direction, the sawmill was moved. The sawdust pile and large hill or mountain on the south side of the property were taken down with heavy machinery, finally lending a lake view to the now-level site. A May 1959 article describes it thusly: “the visitor sees only beauty where unsightly products of early industry had been before. Moving the hill revealed the unforgettable beauty of Lake George.” Now, then, Wood had his blank canvas for building his newest theme park: Gaslight Village.

Gaslight Village: Opening Day, 1959

It was, from the outset, an adult-oriented amusement park. 

Wood’s first theme park, Storytown USA and Ghost Town, had already been opened for five years. This park predated even Disneyland (by a year) and was themed around Mother Goose rhymes, as I’ve already mentioned. Storytown, though, as the theme might suggest, was aimed at younger children, and was open for the earlier hours of the day, closing by 5. Gaslight Village at its heart was the complement to Storytown, aimed at adults and older children, open after noon through the late evening. 

The earliest press release I could find is from a July 1959 “Queensbury Hotel & Motor Inn News”, posted on the invaluable Gaslight Village Lake George NY Facebook page. The park was described as combining “the fun of an amusement park, the entertainment of stage and screen, the enjoyment of participating [in] activities, the educational value of a museum, and all the romance of the gay 90’s in an authentically recreated setting”. 

Gay Nineties

I suppose I’ve breezed past it enough times that we ought to have a brief discussion on the term “Gay Nineties”, since it’s the park’s theme. Obviously this term has a bit of a different conotation nowadays (yes, there’s a gay bar by this name in Minneapolis now in 2019). The term in its historical definition was coined in the 1920s and 1930s to describe the decade of the 1890s, with people at the time longing for a comfortable past in the midst of the Great Depression. In the UK, the decade is referred to as the “Naughty Nineties”.

It was a time thought of as decadent, full of scandals, as well as the beginning of the suffragette movement. It was a time when Oscar Wilde was at the height of popularity. 

Despite the plight of the massive lower class, and the actual poor economy of the decade, including the 1893 panic and the depression that set in for most of the decade, popular culture remembers the period for its pleasant aspects. It’s remembered for the icons of a new age in steam-driven machines, the 1893 invention of the Ferris wheel, nickelodeon movies, vaudeville, and of course, glimmering gas lighting. 

(Gaslights were initially introduced in the 1810s, but did not reach widespread use until the mid-1850s or later. The invention of the “gas mantle” in 1891 and commercial production of the same in 1892 are likely the reasons behind our association of gaslight and this era, as the mantle was rapidly adopted, remaining an important part of street lighting until the widespread adoption of electric lights in the early 1900s.)

Other more broad names for the same gay nineties era are the Victorian era (1837-1901), the Gilded Age (1870s through 1900), and the Belle Epoque (1871-1914).

Summer 1959 at Gaslight Village

Given all this, then, we can move back to Gaslight Village with a better sense of historical context.

The catchphrase? Yesterday’s fun today.

The park in its initial conception, seen in the Pottersville version and in the Arto Monaco sketch, was solely about the village aspect, without any rides. Blueprints reportedly called for the eponymous gaslights every 40 feet along the park streets. There were horse-drawn trolleys and horse and buggy rides for guests to experience, and a vintage double-decker bus. A 1912 steam locomotive was reportedly shipped from Louisiana up to the park via Chicago and then to Glens Falls.

The 1959 version of the park had a 1900 drug store, reportedly purchased complete with interior furnishings, cabinetry, and old pharmaceuticals. Then there was a Bicycle Shop, featuring over 30 bicycles, some as old as 1867. Reportedly, the shop contained an example of almost every type of bicycle to date, “from the first glider […] to the old high-wheelers”. Many of these bicycles were purchased from the Tracy Killiam transportation collection in 1958, previously on display in Sandy Creek NY, 200 miles due west.

There was a Musical Museum, featuring “many rare and priceless music-making devices of the old days”, such as lap organs and melodians from the 1830s, as well as an 1891 Edison home phonograph. Something called The Ladies Emporium featured the “only known matching collection of fashion dolls”. These were not paper dolls or toy dolls. They were actually more than 50 life-sized figurines, displaying clothes of the decade, “showing what Fifth Avenue grand dames wore in the time of our grandparents”. 

And then there was the Antique Auto Collection, some of the cars that would later be part of the Cavalcade of Cars. In the early stage, there were 1908 buggies and 1922 and 1925 model Ts, as well as 1882 horse drawn firetrucks. 

The Penny Arcade featured old but playable penny arcade machines.

The Palace Theater was the home to silent films on endless loop, at the outset reported to be from the “original Edison collection”.

And then there was the Opera House. It reportedly had the largest dance floor in the area, roomy enough for 1000 people. The Opera House from the outset had both an indoor stage and an outdoor stage. The latter looked out onto a vintage beer garden, where guests could enjoy a beer stein with their stage show. The outdoor stage, though nice in concept, was reportedly difficult for everyone in rainy or cold weather (as had been the issue with the Pottersville park), so after some time, it was closed and only the interior of the Opera House was used. The stage shows themselves were old time “mellerdrammer”, or melodramas, where there were heroes and villains. The audience was expected to participate at minimum with boos and hisses, shouts and catcalls. 

This was the park as it was on opening day in 1959.

Rides at Gaslight Village

On May 31, 1791, Thomas Jefferson wrote in a letter to his daughter, “Lake George is without comparison, the most beautiful water I ever saw; formed by a contour of mountains into a basin… finely interspersed with islands, its water limpid as crystal, and the mountain sides covered with rich groves… down to the water-edge: here and there precipices of rock to checker the scene and save it from monotony.” Lake George is a small summer resort town up in the Adirondacks. Its population as of 2000 was 985. However, summertime population is reported to swell over 50,000 – 50x the normal population. 

It might not be surprising, then, the high concentration of theme parks in the surrounding areas of Lake George, especially in the days before inexpensive air travel, when most vacationing was done via car. A three and a half hour drive from NYC was no big deal back in the day, and even now, 3.5 hours isn’t that far away to drive. 

Charles Wood’s Gaslight Village in Lake George saw success after its first year, and was able to continue on as an amusement park. 

One of the immediate additions though was rides. As noted earlier, the park was originally intended to be “just” the village, with its museums and displays, shows and entertainment. There was always a boardwalk with sideshow type attractions, like the Wild Man of Borneo and fun house mirror mazes. However, with his theme park knowledge given the years of experience Wood already had from Storytown USA, it’s not surprising that rides were soon added. 

Some of the rides at Gaslight Village may have always there. It seems likely that the carousel and the small train both were purchased from the Pottersville Gaslight Village, though that’s not clear. Some of the articles about the park date the carousel back to 1800 which is almost certainly not correct, given that the first steam-powered carousel wasn’t invented until 1861. However, it does seem that the park did have multiple carousels in its lifetime, with a unique “rocking horse” carousel in colloquial history reportedly sold in parts across Europe prior to the park’s closure. One online commenter references this as a Parker carousel, while another calls it a Dentzel carousel. The world may never known.

The auction catalog for the park’s eventual demise, dating to 2000, does seem to combine some Storytown rides as well as Gaslight Village rides; while multiple carousels are listed, none were this unique-sounding one. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s get back to the operational history of the park and talk about rides some more. 

In or around 1968, after the park had already been open for over a decade, the Steeplechase Bicycle Carousel came to Gaslight Village. This was said to be one of the oldest operating flat rides at one point, dating back to the Steeplechase Park at Coney Island. The ride was likely purchased sometime after Steeplchase’s ultimate closure in 1964. However, it’s actually much older than that, possibly dating back to early 1900. It was originally located in the Pavilion of Fun at Steeplechase in Coney Island. I’ll include a link to pictures of the ride at Steeplechase, as well as the ride at Gaslight Village. The concept was simple – a carousel powered by human action of pedalling bicycles. The faster you and your fellow riders pedaled, the faster the carousel went. The ride was quite the draw, finally being removed from Gaslight Village only when someone fell off and got hurt while the ride was in operation.

The rides started coming fast and furious, with a Paratrooper and the Green Monster (an octopus ride) coming in 1969. Then there were the usual parade of theme park staples, moving in and out of the park: a Ferris wheel, bumper boats, a scrambler, a Tip Top (which seems to have been called the Shaving Mug), a roundup, a tilt-a-whirl, and a trabant. There were kiddie rides like “the turtles” and a classic Red Baron airplane ride. There was a swinging boat “space shuttle” ride and a classic Flying Bobs ride and bumper cars and a flying trapeze swing ride. Apparently Wood was notorious for moving the rides around, not just physically at the park, but between Gaslight Village and Storytown, as well, adding to some of the confusion when researching the exact rides at the park.

(If you’re interested in a rabbithole, you can do some research into the spaceship-like Futuro House, which once sat in the Gaslight Village parking lot between the park and the Waxlife attraction Wood owned across the street. Despite not technically being part of Gaslight Village, many fondly remember the “spaceship”. Of Finnish design, less than 100 were built in the late 60s and early 70s, and there’s a delightful website dedicated to tracking the once and current homes of these spaceship-like houses (here’s the link for Lake George’s Futuro). I recently saw one while driving down I-55 in Illinois, at Pink Elephant Antiques (which also has a Muffler Man among many other cool giant fiberglass figures). Here’s an article with a dynamic map for every known remaining Futuro.)

Antique Car Ride

An iconic ride at the park was the antique car ride, right up front – think Disneyland’s Autopia, but with cars from the 1890s. The cars were built by Arrow Development Corp, and were there at the park from the beginning, advertised in a 1959 Billboard magazine. According to a history of the company, the official description for the cars from the company was “Open-topped antique cars, reproduced to five-eighths scale, provide a pleasant ride through an old-fashioned country setting. Each car seats up to five, and anyone 10 years or over can drive. A single pedal – accelerator and brake combined – controls the one-cylinder engine that pushes the cars along at a top speed of four miles an hour”. 

In the early days, there wasn’t even a guide track; alas, when a guest tried to take a car on a joyride off the track over to the Opera House, a guide rail had to be installed. Online recollections often mention this ride, including the thrilling aspect of a young child being able to drive a real car.

Employees remember the car ride as being a fun place to work, particularly compared to the monotony of the Kiddie rides. One story from a former employee on the Gaslight Village Facebook page tells of how the cars had very small gas tanks, often running out of gas in the middle of a drive. Employees would then have to run out with a gas can to refill the tanks. However, the engines were very hot, and the common slight spills during the fill process would catch the cars on fire, much to the consternation of the guests. Reportedly it was no big deal – the flames were batted down, the guests were on their way, and everyone would cheer.

Mystery House

The next attraction to discuss was a here again, gone again sort of deal. It was called the Mystery House.

Of course, you know I love a good rabbithole here on The Abandoned Carousel, and we have that with the Mystery House. See, one theory is that it originally was called Casa Loca, and that it originally lived at Freedomland, in the Bronx.

Now, I will tell you that Freedomland has a future episode lined up for it, and it has since the moment I heard of the place. This park was only open for five seasons, but has an incredible Facebook page, fan page, and even a 300+ page book about its history. 

Casa Loca was a classic disorienting walkthrough attraction, designed to trick the senses. From an article on patch.com, the attraction was described thusly: “We went in one end not knowing what to expect and came out the other amazed by what our senses told us was impossible. Simple disorientation and gravity created an illusion that had cans rolling up a table and out a window as well as pool table balls that went uphill.”

Freedomland closed in 1964, only five years after its 1960 opening. There are some strong connections between Freedomland and Lake George, as Charley Wood purchased many rides and placed them in Storytown USA. It’s speculated that Casa Loca went to Gaslight Village, where it was renamed Mystery House. 

Ultimately, however, this all turns out to be speculation and coincidence. I’ve been in contact with Mike Virgintino, who wrote the book on Freedomland’s history. He’s learned that Gaslight Village already had a crooked house (the Mystery House) in 1964, when Freedomland was still in its last season. Therefore, it’s only coincidence, and Freedomland’s Casa Loca didn’t actually go to Gaslight Village after all. 

Still, though, a delightful attraction, a crooked house, in any iteration. A former guest commented online about the Gaslight Village version of the attraction, saying “Hey, does anyone remember the ‘Mystery House’? From what I remember, first you passed by some ‘funny mirrors’ where you saw yourself either short and fat or stretched out. Then you entered a room where everything was lopsided and out of proportion, and you got dizzy walking through it. I really enjoyed that one,”

The attraction was said to have been removed a few years prior to the park’s closure, perhaps in 1987 or 1988.

“Gaslight Jamboree”

Some recollections online mention a singing bear, with some degree of uncertainty. It’s true, however, that for a period of time, a set of animatronics operated at Gaslight Village, going by the name “Gaslight Jamboree”.  It operated in the Palace Theater during its later years (where the silent movies ran). One was called Friendly Freddy, a 1977 animatronic black bear with a guitar. He performed with two of the so-called “Wolfpack 5” characters: Wolfman, who was a wolfman, and Fatz Geronimo, a keyboard-playing gorilla. 

This was actually a surprising rabbithole for me to go down in my research. All of these animatronics, and there were many, were predecessors to a show called “Rock-afire Explosion”, which was an animatronic band that performed in Showbiz pizza places as well as other restaurants and shopping centers between 1980 and 1992. You probably don’t remember ShowBiz Pizza, but you probably do remember what they became. Between 1990 and 1992, all ShowBiz Pizza locations were converted to Chuck E Cheese. 

(It’s far beyond the scope of this podcast, but there’s some great details about the process of “Concept Unification” where ShowBiz became Chuck E. Cheese, worth spending five minutes on if you’ve got them. The remaining animatronics are still popular today, as YouTube sensations. Who knew that there was such a huge fanbase for thirty year old animatronic bears?) 

Cavalcade of Cars

By 1974 the Cavalcade of Cars opened at Gaslight Village, to display Wood’s collection of automobiles. At one time, the Cavalcade and Gaslight Village were two separate attractions with two separate entrance fees, but Wood wasn’t seeing the numbers that he wanted. The story goes that one day, Mr. Wood came in and had the prices changed for Gaslight Village, and bam, suddenly the Cavalcade of Cars was part of the Gaslight Village admission price. Visitor numbers shot up.

Now, I’m not really a car person, but apparently the cars were quite special, especially for their time. There was a 1933 Duesenberg once owned by Greta Garbo. There was a car shaped like a giant can of V8 juice, which by some accounts once also dispensed juice, too. An Evel Knevel motorcycle was a big draw, and a former Pope-mobile, though that might not be the correct name. 

There was a car from The Munsters and a car with two fully functional barber shop chairs. There were three large model ships from the 1970 film Tora Tora Tora, and one from Ben Hur. And there was what I think is the coolest of them – one of the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang cars, used in the 1968 movie. This was the version with “wings”, and featured wax models of Dick van Dyke and the other cast members. According to enthusiasts, this was the model used in all the promotional imagery, posters, and merchandise. The model was also used for most of the scenes for the movie. 

Flight to Mars at Gaslight Village

One of the most unique rides at Gaslight Village was the Flight to Mars. This ride was quite rare, and has a fun history worth talking about. The “Laff in the Dark” dark ride history page has a nice article on the ride. Produced in Europe by Anton Schwarzkopf, better known for his incredible roller coasters, there were only a few of these dark rides ever imported into the US. They came by way of a man called Mickey Hughes, who liked to showcase new rides at his theme parks in order to encourage imports of the rides. The Flight to Mars was a delight – a two story dark ride with a coaster dip visible from the exterior. Theming was vaguely “outer space”, with some versions of the ride more elaborate than others. Riders rode in small two person space cars through a twisty turny track – the thrills came from the spooks and spectres ready to pop out at you in the dark. Think about Joyland’s Whacky Shack from one of my previous episodes.

Like I said, there were only a couple of the rides ever actually brought to the US, and I actually can’t find any info on the rides operating elsewhere. It’s known that one went to Astroland in Coney Island in 1964, and another went to Palisades Park in New Jersey. Palisades Park will be a great topic for a future episode, with a long and interesting history, but for today, know that it was one of the most visited parks ever. It closed in 1971 and was bulldozed for high-rise condos. Astroland also is said to have sold its Flight to Mars around this same time, in 1971.

One of the rides, the Astroland/Coney Island one, went to Adventurer’s Inn, a small park in Flushing, NY. There, it was notable for always having a typo in the large letters spelling the ride’s name: FLIGTH. This park shuttered in the mid-70s, leaving the rides in place, abandoned, until everything was bulldozed in 1978. I’ll include a link to a sad abandoned image of this Flight to Mars. 

Gaslight Village purchased the Flight to Mars from Palisades Park. It was placed in between the Ferris wheel and the bicycle carousel, and there it thrilled guests for years. Here’s a great twilight image taken in 1981. Guests remember it for being scary to a tween, and a nice little dark ride for two for an older set.

Ultimately the Flight to Mars was sold prior to the closure of Gaslight Village. It’s reported that it may have gone to Columbia; others say the ride was demolished before it ever left the park. Unfortunately, it’s not clear what happened to this model of the Flight to Mars.

What I haven’t yet mentioned is that there was also a Flight to Mars that went straight to the west coast, built for the 1961 World’s Fair in Seattle. It went into storage after that year, but by the late 1960s, it had been rebuilt on its original site. That Flight to Mars stayed in operation through the late 90s, until the decline of the surrounding Fun Forest Amusement Park and replacement by the Experience Music Project. This Flight to Mars was sold and now operates to this day at the State Fair of Texas in Dallas, TX (though some accounts say it is in storage in the late 2010s). The theming is a little different from the elaborate detailing that was once present in the Gaslight Village version, but it’s nice to be able to have this tangential piece of the park still today.  

People: the Heart of Gaslight Village

Every story about Gaslight Village talks about the aspect that made the park special: the people and the sense of community. 

The park was truly about the performers, the performances, and the shows. They were the heart of the park and what made Gaslight Village unique. 

During its heyday, the park ran a 13 week season, from June until a week after Labor Day, operating 2PM until 11PM daily. The “olio” acts began performing music (such as piano or guitar) right at 2 PM. Then there were singing waiters and waitresses that would begin to sing, until the first show began at 2:30. The entertainment then ran continuously, revolving around the different areas and stages at the park.

 There were people like Joe Jackson Jr, the “clown on the bicycle”. Joe was famous for his broken bicycle act, which he’d inherited from his father, and was particularly popular in Sweden. He performed at New York’s Radio City Music Hall; La Scala in Berlin; Moulin Rouge in Paris and Tivoli Garden in Denmark; and appeared on many television shows, including Ed Sullivan’s.

There were the plethora of ice skaters, performing on the small ice rink in front of the interior Opera House stage. Far too many to name, so please forgive any I don’t mention. Howard Bissell and Jerry Farley performed together, sometimes with Joe Jackson Jr; they did something called a “death spiral” on the small ice rink that was breathtaking. The ice rink was filled with skate shows of all varieties: Randy Choura and Elyn Tia, Kim Reale. One year there was “South Pacific on Ice”. There was Ron Urban’s Ice Revue, a video of which can be seen here. According to a magazine article from the time this was the first ice show to ever visit the White House.

There were animal acts:  Kay Roseiere and her big cats, Carol and her bengal tigers; Frank Mogyorosi and his lions.

Of course, there were other acts: Mario Manzini, the escape artist. The Jumpin Jack duo, performing amazing trampoline acrobatics that included at one time a “hair-raising” high dive onto a giant sponge. Though perhaps not culturally correct, a popular act at the time was the midget wrestling championships, and Bob Hermine’s Midgets show. Magic and ventriloquism from people like the very fine Bob Carroll. 

Bob Carroll

Let me stop here and talk about Bob for a minute. If you look into the park enough, you’ll see a common name pop up, and that’s Bob Carroll. Bob worked at Gaslight Village for 20 years, beginning in 1969 with a few seasons at Time Town in between. I’ve been privileged to have the opportunity to be in contact with Bob, discussing Gaslight Village and what made the park special. He’s one of the people in charge of the Facebook page “Gaslight Village Lake George, New York”, and it’s his photos that will appear on the show notes page and social media posts for this episode. 

Bob wore many hats throughout his twenty years at Gaslight Village, from doing the old time pie fights, emceeing at the Opera House, doing park announcements, etc. He eventually became Opera House Manager, and performed his act 3 or 4 times a day on the outdoor stage or inside at the Opera House. He’s had a very successful career as a ventriloquist and magician, since then, including a stint in the Guinness Book of World Records for telling jokes for over 24 hours straight. Bob told me he wouldn’t be where he is now without the start at Gaslight Village that Charley Wood gave him back in the day. 

Keystone Cops and Pie Fights

Back to the performances at large, there were keystone cops. The Keystone cops, themselves a holdover from the Pottersville version of the park, continued to be a constant presence in the park. They provided skits and guest interactment throughout the park, much to visitors’ delight. At one point, Bob Carroll did a medicine show “selling” guests the magic tonic of a bottle of water. Slapstick comedy on the lawns of the town square! 

The Keystone cops along with other entertainers were also a key part of the daily pie-in-the-face skits: whipped cream or shaving cream pie fights staged messily between the various performers, with reportedly as many as 70 people involved at a time. 

Of course, the pie fight was a vaudeville staple, from a time of silent movies when jokes needed to come across without sound. They were popularized by comedians like Laurel and Hardy and The Three Stooges. I don’t have the time for it here, but I’m going to link to a fascinating article on the history of the pie fight – worth the read. Pie fights appeared on-screen as early as 1909, so they were perfect for the gay nineties theming of Gaslight Village. 

As the story was told, the pie fight unfolded thusly:

“So every night at 7 PM, we put on a skit about a lady getting her cat stuck in a tree. A drunk happened by, a keystone kop, a baker, a passerby and the park announcer all took a pie in the face. They all were driven away in the old paddy wagon. Those were the days. The longest running pie fight in the history of show biz!”

Opera House and Mellerdrama

The Opera House was the center of the park. Physically, yes, because it was originally the only location for the bathrooms in the park. It was the main place to get food (such as the waffles with strawberries that one guest online remembers). It was the shortcut to get to the Cavalcade of Cars attraction. And it had room for over 400 people, so it was the place to wait out the rain. The Opera House for a long time was the heartbeat of the park. Metaphorically, as well, since the Opera House was the home to the mellerdrama, said to be the last vaudeville house in the US.

An article in 1976 described the Opera House as “dedicated to the production of the 1890’s comic Melodrama art form. Encouraging the audience to “hiss and boo” in true Melodrama fashion, the talented acting troupes present a comedy sketch based on American satire“. Magazine copy from the 80s wrote that the Opera House was the last remaining theatre left in the US “dedicated to the production of the traditional comic melodramatic art form”.

A mellerdrama calls for over-the-top hero and villain stories, with intentional corny jokes, the worse the better.

And there were a variety of musical acts in between the star mellerdrama, like the Sunshine Express show band and banjo acts from the inimitable Warren Boden. 

The evenings would often wrap with Warren Boden playing his banjo. He’d end with a fast polka, as one former band member recalled on the FB group. Warren would look at the bandstand, and “then say “To the ______” – and name the Bar to go to that night.”

The shows were a huge draw for the “non-ride” crowd, and a person could sit with a beer and watch without repeating an act for over two hours. One person in the Gaslight Village FB group remembers the shows as the best part of visiting the park, describing it: “The family eating pizza and getting a pitcher of soda with the plastic Gaslight Village mugs watching the ice revue and other great acts.”

People Are What Make Gaslight Village Special

As I’ve alluded to several times now, it wasn’t the rides that made Gaslight Village special or memorable. It was the sense of community you felt when you visited. 

“One big reason Gaslight Village was so special was its employees. They were always friendly and helpful,” said one person online. ”One thing you noticed is although everyone was working hard it always looked like they were having a good time.”

The park was always sparkling clean, it seemed, and this was due to the hard efforts of the “grounds boys” – the cleaning staff, the lowest rung on the totem. They often moved up the ladder in their tenure at the park, as well. Why, the inimitable Bob Carroll started out as a groundsboy before he became an official entertainer at the park.

Another person, a former employee, said “It was not like a real job. You left work at 11:30 PM and then went out to the bars or went to dinner. We had employee ride nights and Entertainment nights.” They contrasted it with the more standard theme-park atmosphere over at Storytown, saying, “It was a different atmosphere. People met friends, got married to each other and just had a grand time. I know at least 8 people who met their spouses there!” Bob Caroll echoed this sentiment, saying “We all had parties, birthdays and a lot of us met our spouses there. It is now 45 years of marriage to Deb…my wife who I met when she was the parking lot attendant there. The Keystone Cop married the French translator and several other people married there too!”

General sentiment is that working at Gaslight Village was unlike any other job in the world.

Employee morale was often high, it seems. Employees had fairly free rein to make the guests happy. The Gaslight Village FB page describes the importance of events like Ride Night and Entertainment Night, which were held annually for the employees to mingle and get to know one another. On Entertainment Night, the entertainers performed for the rest of the park employees, while on Ride Night, the shoe was on the other foot, with the entertainers able to ride all the rides. Of course, there were plenty of free refreshments: hot dogs, beer, and soda. 

Even though Gaslight Village was located in the village of Lake George, it’s remembered for being its own separate place, a true small village. “Gaslight Village employees were a Gaslight Village Family no matter what you did.” 

The tone came from the top, from the inimitable Charles Wood. I really appreciated the story one person told online, about his reaction to the historic first steps on the moon. Of course, this occurred July 20, 1969, and was broadcast live across the United States. It would’ve occurred around 4 pm in New York. Wood reportedly closed down all of the rides and shows in the park for 20-30 minutes, and had the moon landing broadcast throughout the park’s speakers. “All over the park, families and small groups of people stood, mesmerized by the voice describing man’s first steps on another celestial body.”

Transition from Gaslight Village to Lake George Ride and Fun Park

As always, what goes up must come down. Nothing gold can stay.

Gaslight Village saw a small handful of accidents, with the notable incidents from my research being broken bones on the original fun house slide and on the Ferris wheel. A more well-known incident was a broken car on the Paratrooper in the 1970s, injuring one person and requiring the entire ride to be slowed down, losing its thrilling nature. But none of these had any significant effect on the park as a whole.

1974 saw attendance worries due to the gasoline crisis, but by all accounts, the park bounced back. 

Truly, it wasn’t any one incident that led to the closure of Gaslight Village.

As the 1970s rolled into the 1980s, large theme parks were beginning to take hold, drawing people from far away across the country. No longer was the regional theme park king – people were being drawn to massive theme parks with larger and larger thrills, and flying larger distances for it with the rise of increasingly inexpensive airfare. People simply weren’t staying locally in the area anymore.

The late 70s and early 80s saw the rise of the Six Flags theme park franchise as they acquired and expanded their parks. Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, as we talked about last episode, opened in 1971, and EPCOT opened in 1982. Between 1982 and 1983, the nearby Storyland USA acquired at least eight major adult thrill rides and rebranded as The Great Escape.

Against this background, the gay nineties theme of Gaslight Village too seemed more anachronism than “yesterday’s fun today”, as the slogan went. The rides were older, standard at most every theme park, and the shows weren’t having the same draw they once did. There was no room for ride expansion to include a bigger coaster that might draw more folks. 

And the weather, the weather was always a concern. Yes, there was the Opera House, but by the time a few hours had passed, a guest would’ve seen all the shows. Accounts from the Gaslight Village FB page describe the park and the village as a ghost town after a day or two of rain. And there was the age of Charley Wood, who would’ve been in his mid-70s by this point, perhaps with his passions turning to other things. 1989 saw him selling Storytown USA (now called The Great Escape).

Attendance numbers for Gaslight Village in the mid to late 80s reportedly dropped way down. Something had to be done, or it would be the standard story here on The Abandoned Carousel – not profitable to keep investing money in the park.

According to an account over at the Gaslight Village FB page, the operation budget for the entertainment alone in the late 80s was tens of thousands of dollars per week. That was a big line item that could be used to balance the books…

So the decision came down that in 1989, Gaslight Village as it was known would be closed. The entertainment acts were told first. See, it wasn’t the whole park that was closing, it was the Opera House and the Outdoor Stage that were closing. The park would now be rebranded and would only include rides. In an account from the Gaslight Village FB page: “it was the end of Vaudeville. I think it was what it felt like when the last theaters closed “. They went on to say: “The shows started at 2 PM and ended at 10:50 PM. 7 days a week. It was like an engine of a train. It was the lifeline of the park. Yes, the rides were a big part of it but the real soul of the park was the people who came to the park to see the shows. A lot of people came week after week to see the shows. We got to know them by name.”

The Gaslight Village FB page sums it up, saying “we knew that it wasn’t going to be Gaslight Village because without the Opera House, it was just rides.”

Lake George Ride and Fun Park / Lake George Action Park

Funnily enough, there’s not a lot of clarity online about the most recent iterations of the park post-Gaslight Village, despite being more recent. Most of my online research about the place doesn’t even mention the Ride & Fun Park name. I’m thankful to the enthusiasts for The Great Escape in particular, who’ve kept tabs on the park.

Lake George Ride and Fun Park

What is clear is that from 1989 on, “Gaslight Village” as it was was split in half, with half remaining a theme park, and half becoming a parking lot for the new boat on the lake that docked close by. 

What remained was known as Lake George Ride & Fun Park first, reportedly from 1990-1992. During this time, a few more rides were brought in – I’ve seen reference to two different swinging boat rides: both a Pirat that later went to Great Escape, and a “Space Shuttle”. A Balloon trip spinning flat ride and a Dumbo-type elephant ride were also added. Now some of these might have been added in the later years of Gaslight Village, it’s just not clear.

To be honest, there’s not much to say about Ride and Fun Park. I’ll include a link to the one single image I’ve found of a brochure for this aspect of the park.

Lake George Action Park

After Ride & Fun Park shuttered in 1992, it sat closed for several years. In late 1994 or 1995, a Sea Dragon swinging boat ride moved from The Great Escape over to what we’ll now be calling Action Park. And there it reportedly sat, “racked up” for two years until the short-lived Action Park opened in 1996. (The Sea Dragon at Action Park was praised in the forums I found, for having such an exceptionally good swing, for what it’s worth.) It’s known that there was a powered dragon coaster at Action Park for at least a short time (this is listed on the RCDB with pictures), one of Zamperla’s more common models.

The go-kart track was one of the main features of Action Park. A guest remembers online: “The Action Park had really decent rides. The Bumper Cars were one of the best, and both [go-kart] tracks were top notch. The oval track in the back was cool, because you were actually enclosed in the car, and we would pour baby powder on the turns so the cars could skid.”

Another guest remembers: “The majority of the crowd was always at the front gocart track. The line would usually be about 30 mins or so; that’s how crowded it was. Plus, the timer was set for 9 mins, so you actually got your $4 worth.” They go on to say “The park was cool, because it really was never all that crowded.”

At the end of the 1997 season, possibly unsurprisingly, after only two years of operation, Action Park closed.

And that was it.

Auction for Lake George Action Park

With the turn of the century into the 2000s, it was time for another classic theme park auction. As always, I am eternally grateful to the enthusiasts who not only save things like auction catalogs, but also post and caption them and share them freely with others. In 2000, Norton’s auctioned off the remaining Action Park items. It was a huge auction based on the catalog’s listings. Not only were Action Park rides sold, but also things from Storytown USA, and even Charley Wood’s old car collection and the original bicycle museum collection from Gaslight Village.

Thus comes my favorite part – the genealogy of the theme park attraction.

Some, as we’ve discussed, were demolished or are simply unknown prior to the closure of Gaslight Village – the Mystery House, the Bicycle Carousel, Flight to Mars. 

Others went to Wood’s sister park prior to the auction, back to the still-operational Storytown, now called The Great Escape. In this category are the Pirate boat ride, the Flying Trapeze swing ride, the Trabant. The last of these was moved to the Great Escape around 1993, where it operated until it was forced to be removed “due to age” in 2011. The Pirate ship operated at TGE from 1995-2013, according to Wikipedia. The Flying Trapeze still operates today.

Several of the rides went to Delgrosso’s in Tipton, NJ. This includes the balloon ride and the Sea Dragon, both of which are located next to one another at DelGrosso’s. Or were, because some time between 2017 and 2019, both rides are reportedly no longer in operation there. 

The carousel was reportedly purchased by a private buyer and has been in storage somewhere in Vermont since then.

Of the cars, I could only find information on Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, though it appears several of the other cars have moved through multiple auctions. This was auctioned in 1990, and was displayed at a Chicago restaurant called “The Retreat” for several years until the restaurant went bankrupt. In 2007, it was auctioned again, and went to live with a collector in Florida, where it’s currently undergoing restoration.

Beyond this, the buyers of the remaining rides and attraction components aren’t readily available online.

With the rides sold, nothing but the buildings remained.

Abandoned Gaslight Village

As the buildings sat, moldering through long New York winter after long New York winter, let’s again ponder the park’s closure.

Why the drawn-out years of this smaller, sadder park? Wood was getting older, and his interests were turning away from amusement parks towards philanthropy. Some suggest that there were legalities in Charley Wood’s contract with the village, preventing him from passing the park on. However, the details for this are unclear. Even the process of making the conservation park, which we’re about to get into, took decades and plenty of local political squabbles. As early as 1988, there was a local news article reporting that Wood was in negotiations to sell the site for a convention center. (The convention center never went forward.) 

Gaslight Village, or Lake George Action Park as it was last known, sat abandoned, for a decade. The rides were all gone. A sign remained for some time, as did the bold blue and white paint on the entrance. Grass grew, rain fell, and the buildings went ever further into disrepair. 

It’s always the same story when it comes to abandoned parks, it seems, with flaking paint, overgrown grass, broken things…especially when the rides have been removed, it’s often hard to see the charm of the original site. From the exterior, it all just looks like sad shabby buildings.

As of 2008, the land was purchased from the Charles R. Wood Foundation. It was a joint purchase, with the town and village of Lake George took 19% ownership of the land, with the county taking 62% ownership. Three environmental groups held a conservation easement on the property, and plans were in place to convert the former Gaslight Village into a “wetland treatment facility to improve the water quality of West Brook and Lake George, while also creating a staging area for festivals.” It took almost a decade to get the purchase to go through in order to get the various groups on the same page about the funding and the future for the property.

The delays continued after the land was purchased, with newspaper reports describing delays due to disagreements between the multiple parties with ownership stake in the land. The news reports about the park once it was opened called it a ten-year collaboration, but it seems that the multi-decade operation was often more contentious than collaborative.

According to the paper, the original plans had called for restoration of the Opera House and other structures on the property. The town invested tens of thousands of dollars in the buildings, partially re-roofing the Opera House and tearing off the sides to begin preparation for an open air building to be used for festivals and events. In early 2010, however, demolition plans moved forward despite the money already invested; investigation had deemed the structures too badly damaged, saying that it would cost the same or less to build a new modern building than try to repair the decaying original structures.

Ultimately, mother nature took care of it: snow collapsed part of the roof for the Opera House in February 2011 before the demolition crews could even begin. The remainder of the buildings were demolished later that spring.

Charles R. Wood Park

Originally, the park was to be called West Brook Environmental Park. After an offer from the Charles R. Wood Foundation to donate three quarters of a million dollars to the park, the name was changed to Charles R. Wood Park.

We haven’t gotten to it yet, but towards the end of his life, Wood turned to philanthropy as a more major focus. He was known for wanting to own places where people were happy, and this began to broaden beyond the theme park scope. “‘I made money here and I want to leave it here,”” Wood was once quoted as saying. In the early 1990s, Wood got in touch with Paul Newman and boldly requested money to begin the Double H Ranch, a free camp for children with serious illnesses. He also founded the Charles R. Wood Foundation, which “focuses on assisting children who are critically ill and furthering culture for future generations.” Before his death in 2004 and afterwards, through his foundation, he donated millions to hospitals, clinics, libraries, and otherwise invested in the lives of the people in his area.

On the 12 acres where Gaslight once stood, are now 2.5 acres of festival ground, waterways, a skateboard course, a kid’s playground, and hiking and fitness trails. The bulk of the land was returned to wetlands, which the area once was prior to being filled in for the timber mills and railroads. Though some find the wetlands unsightly, they apparently serve as natural filters to maintain the clear water quality of the eponymous Lake George.

A local man donated his vintage Gaslight Village memorabilia sign, and it now stands on the site of the conservation park, marking what was once there, making sure that the memory of Gaslight Village lives on.

Gaslight Village Was Special

One account online called Gaslight Village an odd and wonderful place, which is a phrasing I love. “The secret of Gaslight’s appeal to me is the notion of a temporary community involved in one enterprise: Show Business. It’s like a play or building a sand castle: you rehearse, memorize, screw up, in the name of ephemeral art that will wash away. But we were there. We sang, told jokes, booed the villain, juggled, swallowed fire, did toe loops. We worked with skating chimpanzees, poodles and doves. There were clowns and brass bands and a guy who played with Paul Whiteman. It wasn’t all good: We fell for the wrong people; our bosses were petty tyrants; we lied and snuck out for a drink and too many people are gone.”

But in the end, Gaslight Village remains something special: a community, a place that’s more about the people than the buildings or rides or even the land. Charles R. Wood is quoted as saying “We do what we can for society, but it must come from our heart.” And Gaslight Village seems like it did embody that. It was a unique moment in time: yesterday’s fun, today.

Acknowledgements

Thanks for listening to this episode of The Abandoned Carousel where I talked about the history of the unique Gaslight Village, yesterday’s fun today. I’d like to particularly thank Bob Carroll for being an inexhaustible resource on the topic of Gaslight Village. He’s got an incredible archive of videos on his YouTube page and on the Gaslight Village FB page, and I recommend you check them both out. He’s also the source for several of the audio clips used in this episode, and graciously allowed me to include his photos on this episode page. I’d also like to thank all the admins and members of the Gaslight Village FB page. It’s an incredible resource on the topic of this delightful park, and I’m so grateful there’s a place to gather and share memories of this special place.

Additional thanks to Brian Dorn, Addison Rice, and Jahnavi Newsom (aka The Love Sprockets), for allowing the use of their song about Gaslight Village and Frontier Town. Their work beyond this song is delightful to listen to, so check them out!

Remember what Lucy Maud Montgomery once said: nothing is ever really lost to us, as long as we remember it.

References

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2. Bernath J. 001 Gaslight Village-Summerworkers_filtered.; 2006. https://www.flickr.com/photos/jannetie/8705506816/. Accessed November 15, 2019.
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When I started my research for the last episode, Takakonuma Greenland, I got a lot of results for Okpo Land. Sites like to compound the two, putting images of Okpo Land in a Takakonuma Greenland piece or vice versa. Several times, I came across references to Okpo Land as the true “scary” park, which is why I scheduled it for the week of Halloween.

Of course, in my research, I realized that the truth is quite a lot murkier than the internet rumors suggest. So let’s dig into the story of Okpo Land.

History of Okpo Land

Much of the actual history of Okpo Land is shrouded in mystery and rumors. It’s not helped by the language barrier: again, I don’t speak Korean, and Google Translate apparently has a much harder time with Korean compared to Japanese (from Takakonuma Greenland). This includes things like the actual opening date of the park. While the closing date is consistent (1999), the internet disagrees on the opening date.

Nearly all of the articles about Okpo Land online are a form of internet telephone, simply copying the same story idea and embellishing it without any efforts at verification of fact. These rumors call the park once one of the most popular theme parks in Asia, which seems hard to swallow. Some claim the park had been operational for decades prior to its 199 closure.

The truth seems a bit different. A local Geoje article explicitly gives the opening date as 1996, as does a different local news source. Another local news source describes the park as having only been open for two years prior to its closure. This makes sense – the park decor is all very 90s. 

But I’m getting ahead of myself, a little.

(If you want to start off with a few lesser-seen galleries before reading on, check out this one from johnwjohnson on Flickr and this one from Jordan/streetbeat85 on Flickr.)

Okpo Land: Geoje, South Korea

Okpo Land was located in Geoje, South Korea. Geoje is the name of the city, and Okpo-dong is one of the many neighborhoods within the city. And of course, given the name, you can see that Okpo Land was located in Okpo-dong.

It sat on the top of a hill, overlooking the harbor. Geoje is home to some of the largest shipbuilding in the world, including Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering (DSME), one of the largest shipbuilders in the area. 

At the time, Okpo Land was the only amusement park on Geoje Island, so it did have a captive audience.

Okpo Land and South Korea’s Economic Crisis

However, the audience apparently wasn’t particularly interested in visiting Okpo Land. One of the news articles describes Okpo Land as having “sluggish business”. Another article describes the park as having an “operating deficit”. As lawinsider.com defines it: “insufficient cash flow from the Improvements to cover normal operating expenses and maintenance”. A third article blamed the “IMF cold wave”.

I’m not an economist, nor do I play one on TV. But from my understanding, this is how it went. See, in late 1997, there was a financial crisis in East and Southeast Asia, stemming from the financial collapse of the baht in Thailand, which spread and caused financial distress to a number of other countries. South Korea was one of the countries hardest hit by the crisis, and in December of 1997, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) stepped in with a $58.4 billion dollar plan to help stabilize South Korea’s economy. In return, the country had to undergo financial restructuring. “IMF programmes normally seek to reduce current account deficits, keep inflation in check, and keep domestic demand constrained.” 

The economy continued to shrink throughout 1998, but seemed to rebound in 1999, with president Kim Dae Jung declaring the crisis over in December 1999.

It was too late, however, for Okpo Land. 

It’s clear that against this background of financial crisis, the people of Geoje probably didn’t have the means to be spending money, and if they did, they were going to go to a different, bigger park. Okpo Land, which seems to have been started in a time of financial prosperity in 1996 or earlier, most likely couldn’t draw the paying crowds it needed in the hard times of 1997 and 1998. Before the park could try again in the summer of 1999, it was too late. 

The Geoje Times gives May of 1999 as the closure date for Okpo Land, and nearly every other source agrees with this year of 1999.

The Legend of Deaths at Okpo Land

Of course, what I haven’t told you at all is the dark side of the Okpo Land legend. 

You know, all the deaths.

Many internet legends talk about the one or more deaths at the park in its early years. And almost all internet legends about Okpo Land talk about the final death, the death in 1999.

See, we haven’t really talked about the park itself – we’ll get there – but there was a duck ride. Not a rollercoaster, as many descriptions say, but a monorail sky cycle business, another of the fun two-person visitor-pedalled rides in the sky. This one had a duck theme, a horrifying, horrifying duck theme. 

How can a duck theme be horrifying, you might ask? 

The duck on the front of each pedal car had an overly large head, a wide gaping mouth, and two comically large cartoon anime eyes, each pupil staring vacantly in opposite direction. I’ve seen a lot of spine-tingling things in my fascination with abandoned theme parks, but the duck heads from Okpo Land still remain at the top of my “creepiest things” list.

The legend goes that the final car on one train of the duck ride derailed, dangling from the tracks and dropping its rider to the ground, killing her instantly. Furthermore, the legend goes, the owner disappeared overnight, leaving the girl’s family without compensation or apology. The park was then reportedly shuttered by the authorities and declared unsafe, with all the rides still left in place. 

This, then, is the urban legend that surrounds Okpo Land.

Truth to the Rumors of Okpo Land?

I spoke over email with urban explorer Jon Dunbar, who runs the site Daehanmindecline. He is a well-known urban explorer in South Korea. He has an Instagram full of cute cat pictures, too. Jon’s images, used with or without permission, are some of the most common images you’ll see of Okpo Land in its abandoned state. I’m including a few of Jon’s images in my shownotes page and in social media promos for the episode with permission, and I encourage you to follow the links back to his site for more images. 

Jon told me over email about his history exploring the park between late 2007 and mid 2011. According to him, there was a single blog by a German photographer prior to his first trip which contained a version of that urban legend – lighter on details, with a death at the park followed by a second death which ultimately shuttered the park.

Jon went on to tell me about his first visit in late 2007, finding one of the duck rides hanging from the track. He imagined the rumored second death happening there, with the owners hypothetically leaving the ride broken, in situ, in the hurry to close the park permanently.

As Jon goes on to say, the German blog is long gone (and believe me, I’ve tried to find it! Not even the Wayback Machine could help with this one). So if you’re wondering where this rumor came from, about the girl dying after a fall from the duck ride, here’s how it got started.

The truth is probably somewhere in between the prosaic – not enough visitors, not enough money – and the salacious – deaths and quick park closures to escape a bad situation. And of course, we’ll likely never really know.

Abandoned Okpo Land

After its sudden closure in 1999, Okpo Land sat completely in place, abandoned, a magnet for urban explorers.  

The Geoje Times article from 2006 calls the abandoned park the “city’s monster”. Whether this is a mistranslation or accurate turn of phrase, I’m delighted by the description. 

City’s monster, let’s talk about this city’s monster. 

Okpo Land was small. 

Perched up on a hillside, it had great views, but not a lot of land area. This meant that, like Takakonuma Greenland and many of the other parks I’ve talked about on TAC, there were only a handful of rides. There were sort of three main areas – the swimming pool area (down below) and two separate hilltop areas, each anchored by one of the elevated rides.

Rides at Okpo Land

I’ve found a few park signs, but as I alluded to earlier, Google Translate has a harder time with Korean than it did with Japanese. However, I’ve spent some time with multiple images of the single park directional signs (two pink signs pointing one direction, two blue signs pointing another) and with the one image I’ve found of a park guide map, and I think I’ve gotten it mostly correct. (Unsurprisingly, AFTER I went through the trouble of sketching off a broken park version, I found a nice version from a guidebook. Ah.) Of course you know I’ve sketched my own version of the park map to help you understand the layout of the park. As always, if you’ve got corrections, comments, clarifications, or opinions, you can find my contact info at my website.

Going from least well-known to most well-known, let’s talk about the rides at Okpo Land.

Small Attractions at Okpo Land

There were these two large high top shoes. Not actually shoes, of course. These were miniature basketball hoops inside shoe facades, branded as “hightops”. It was an arcade game, classic and very cool, apparently manufactured by Skee Ball. I’ll link to a sale listing for a brand new one as well as an image of the very destroyed, very abandoned version.

Of course there were basic arcade game staples like air hockey.

And then there was a motion simulator, a Doron Precision Systems SRV brand. You’ve probably seen it at a carnival or a theme park near you. Here’s a video of one in motion. Of course, the simulator at Okpo Land was not in such fine shape after its years of abandonment, covered with graffiti in the available images online. 

In the park’s abandonment, all of these arcade games were outside in what appears to be an entrance plaza. This likely wasn’t their original home – the arcade building (labeled as “carnival” on the signs and map) seems to have been targeted by arsonists in June of 2011, according to a newspaper article.  Here’s a view via teaching engrish https://teachingengrish.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/img_74461.jpg https://teachingengrish.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/img_48811.jpg https://teachingengrish.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/img_74651.jpg However, that being said, these items have always been outside in the plaza in every image I’ve seen of the park, including the earliest images from 2007 and 2008, prior to the fires.

There was also once something called “battery”. I’ve checked and double-checked the translation, and Google’s so proud of this one, they give it a check mark when I run it through the translation site. This was located within the fenced square right off the entrance plaza, concrete painted green (here’s an image). I’m not sure what this actually was. One theory I’ve got stems from an early picture showing the view from the top of the coaster. There can be seen two large foam-looking items sitting off in the vegetation under the coaster, adjacent to the green battery square. Perhaps this attraction was a gladiator type thing, where guests could put on giant foam fighting gloves of a sort and “batter” one another? I don’t really know. The other idea, based on the two sets of bumper cars and the stack of bumper cars adjacent to this area, is that originally this was also a battery-operated bumper car area. 

Things That Go: Train, Bumper Cars, Rocket Ship at Okpo Land

Of course there was a miniature train. It’s an episode of TAC, which of course is more likely to feature a train than a carousel. 

Not much is known about the train. It ran in a small circular track roughly directly behind the main entrance, beneath the squirrel coaster. Here’s a promo image from the brochure: https://www.uer.ca/locations/viewgal.asp?picid=254356. There are almost no pictures of it, but the train and the tracks were left to decay with the rest of the park. Jon Dunbar photographed a rusted shell of an engine on a rusted and overgrown train track during his last visit in 2011. The rest of the train cars and the majority of the engine parts were long gone, though possible remnants of the train in a better state in late 2007, early 2008 can be seen in Jon’s images from an article on Dark Roasted Blend http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2008/01/abandoned-amusement-parks.html.

There were plenty of other things that go, as well. 

There were bumper cars too. Actually, there were two sets of bumper cars. One was sort of your basic sleek bumper car. The other set had a more vintage, old-timey overlay. The sleek bumper cars originally ran on a circular area underneath the rocket ship ride, while the vintage looking cars were stored away under a tarp in a storage building. Based on the park map, there was only ever one bumper car area, so perhaps these sets of cars could be switched in and out as themeing dictated. 

And then, making good use of the small land area, the flying rocket ship ride. The bumper cars were on a circular area at ground level, and the rockets sat on a circular platform above them, higher up in the air. 

It’s your standard “spin and go up and down” ride, like Astro Orbiter or Dumbo at Disneyland. The park’s guide map has a pretty good name for this one – it translates as “space warplane”! I love it. Though this ride was visible from the city, there’ not terribly much to say about it – simple “spaceship” cars that originally had small canopies. Reportedly for some years of the park’s abandonment, the cars were able to move around still. (See a photo of that here.)

Carousel and Viking Ship at Okpo Land

The carousel at Okpo Land is actually right next to the entrance gate and ticket booth. It’s not particularly special, in my opinion. The carousel structure itself is nicely detailed, but the horses are rather horrifying. Most of them have red eyes and leering grins, and there’s not much in the way of other detailing. These are low-budget carousel horses, not made from a particularly nice mold. 

Of course, you can call it a merry-go-round, too, if you like. I may not have touched on this in my episode on the Floyd J Moreland carousel, but there’s no true difference between a carousel and a merry go round. Some say that one has only horses and the other has many animals. Others point to the spin direction (clockwise or counter clockwise) or whether the twinkle lights are clear or colored. No matter what the point of comparison, there are as many rides that break the “rules” as fit them. So choose whichever name you like.

In the park’s abandonment, the horses are one of the more persistent amusements to be repurposed. They appear to have rusted out from the base carousel structure fairly quickly. Therefore, they were not only used for a photo prop in the standard way, but were carried around the park, placed in bumper cars, and general had a fun time with. Some were painted black, as if a vat of black paint were dropped over the top of them, and honestly it’s an improvement.

The abandoned carousel at Okpo Land is incredibly eerie – a rusting-out base, often filled with pools of water; tilting, fallen-over horses; knocked-in decorative panels; and still-bright, fiberglass decorations, broken but gleaming under the rust and creeping vegetation.

There was also a viking ship, a classic two-headed dragon themed swinging boat, much like the ones we’ve already talked about that existed at the abandoned Yangon amusement park and at Takakonuma Greenland. The swinging boat ride is a staple of many carnivals, fairs, and theme parks, so I don’t really need to go into detail. (Though I will add the interesting sidebar that the predecessor of this type of ride was called “The Ocean Wave” and was invented all the way back in the 1890s!)

The ride at Okpo Land was simply called “Viking”, which it proclaimed in big, English letters right on the sides of the ride. 

Interestingly, the Viking ride itself was positioned at nearly the apex of the hilly park, visible from many parts of the city. I’ve read several reports from urban explorers who had authorities called on them after people spotted them climbing the Viking structure even from outside the park.

Swimming Pool and Other Buildings at Okpo Land

Before I get to the two “big” rides, let me talk about the swimming pool and the other buildings at Okpo Land.

Per the park map, there were a variety of other buildings in Okpo Land. In the park’s abandonment, this isn’t really clear – one completely graffiti’d and destroyed building without any remaining signage pretty much looks like another. But according to the map, there were multiple buildings labeled “store”, a place for karaoke, and several “restaurants” and “restrooms”. A fairly large building on the map that isn’t ever seen in the exploration photos is the roller skating rink, which would’ve been behind the Viking ship. Maybe it wasn’t a building but just a flat concrete area? #6 on this promo brochure from the park shows what could have been the skating rink.

And #7 on that same map shows just a beguiling field of green. It’s really hard to accurately capture in any photo. But there was something called a “four seasons sliding range”, otherwise known as a long concrete slide down the hill, from the roller coaster area down by the swimming pool, all painted brilliant green, and perhaps originally covered in astro turf. Were there inner tubes or slick mats to slide down on? It’s not clear, and those small artifacts are long gone, or simply uninteresting, to any of the urbex photos available. 

Of course there was also the swimming pool complex, located down the hill from the other areas of the park, geographically closest to the squirrel coaster. The promo brochure for the park shows a variety of activities, including bowling and handball – it isn’t clear that these were available based on the abandoned photography I’ve seen, but it’s possible. There was definitely a variety of swimming pools, hot tubs, and saunas, however. In the abandoned stages, of course, the main lap pool was filled with stagnant, horrifying water.

Squirrel Roller Coaster and Rok ‘n Roll at Okpo Land

Squirrel Coaster = Fantasy Express

The squirrel coaster is the park’s second-most famous ride. The RCDB doesn’t know the name of it, just calling it unknown coaster. It took me a long time to find a name for it – the map I found that once was displayed in the park has the coaster shown but not captioned! Can you believe that? It was a struggle, folks. But eventually I found another map with one additional line in the key, and the name: Fantasy Express. I love it. Squirrel coaster = Fantasy Express. 

Anyhow, this is a cute little basic coaster. The track itself isn’t particularly noteworthy – just a simple shape without any inversions.

What IS noteworthy is the location (up on a hill, overlooking the harbor, adding to the thrill, and the theme. This coaster has a squirrel theme, or perhaps a chipmunk theme. A fat, gleefully chubby animal decorates the front of the car. He clutches what is presumably a nut or acorn in between his clasped hands. However, the casual glance makes it look perhaps a bit more salacious. I’ll leave it at that. 

This coaster is also somewhat notable in that the coaster train (singular) is permanently stuck on the lift hill, unable to move either forward or back at the movement of explorers. This has led to some striking photos of Okpo Land taken from the top of the coaster’s lift hill, looking back down: a gleeful woodland animal smiling back up at you almost menacingly, halfway up the lift hill; the blue roofs of the pool and sauna complex glittering with reflected light from the nearby harbor on the left; and the green, tangled climbing vines on the right, taking back the coaster and the rest of Okpo Land.

Rock ‘ n Roll OR Squirrel Buckets

Nestled up above the squirrel coaster by the Space Fighters and the ducks was another often photographed ride. This one probably has the best name of them all, and I double-checked my translations multiple times. That’s probably what made research for this episode take so long. Anyhow, Google Translate tells me the name of this ride is…Squirrel Buckets. 

Yep, squirrel buckets. I don’t even know about the etymology of that one. This is a beautiful version of the classic Rock ‘n Roll / Looper ride that was popular a couple decades ago. You’ll remember it disassembled at Takakonuma Greenland and semi-operational at the abandoned Yangon park. And of course, you can find an operational version of the ride at Knoebel’s in the US. Still not ringing a bell? Tuna cans on a carousel frame, and they all go round and round. I think it’s such a picturesque ride, but I would never ever ride this one.

In the park’s abandonment, climbing vines took over this ride most of all, and in many pictures, you can only see the decorative finial at the center post of the ride, surrounded by subtle mountains of green.

Duck Sky Cycle at Okpo Land

Of course, the park’s most famous, or infamous, ride is one we’ve already touched on, so I’ve saved it for last. Referred to on the guide maps simply as “Sky Cycle”, this is the supposed killer ride, the eerie, duck-themed ride that still gives me the creeps every time I scroll past an image of that gaping duck mouth.

Why, why would someone ever make a ride with such an eerie, chilling duck-faced overlay? Why is something simple like a children’s themed duck ride so unsettling in a world of admittedly much worse horrors? I can’t explain it.

Whether or not the duck sky cycle actually killed someone, what IS clear is that one of the sky cycle trains is on the track … wrong. 

Let’s back up a little. This is different from the sky cycle at Takakonuma Greenland. There, you had spindly little individual cars. Here at Okpo Land, the sky cycles have a solid overlay of duck theme. At first glance they appear to be connected in trains, but closer inspection of the photos indicates that the cars are separate, with bumpers on the front and back of individual cars to keep them from coming too close to one another.

Anyhow, there are many duck sky cycle cars in repose at the station at Okpo Land. It appears that there’s a side spur, where cars can be switched on and off the main track when higher capacity is needed. 

All of the ducks face the same direction, going clockwise around the track. 

Except one.

Two cars, two ducks, face the opposite direction (counter-clockwise). The front car is on the station platform, and the back car is missing its’ duck head facade, dangling, chick butt facing the ground.

Let me stop and tell you right now. That story, about the car derailing and killing the girl, and being left to dangle in place in the spot where she died?

Impossible.

Let me tell you what I think, and fast forward if you’d rather I not squash your theories about the legend of Okpo Land. 

There’s no possible way that a sky cycle car would be placed on the track going the wrong direction (counter-clockwise) when all the other sky cycle cars are going clockwise.

My hypothesis is that a person visiting the park in its abandonment decided, for whatever reason, to turn a car or two around. Is this possible?

Looking closely at the pictures, I think it is. The lead car is off the track, on the station loading platform, with one “wheel” in between the track and one on the station platform; the back balanced on the station. The car clearly has two Miller patented underfriction wheels in front, the kind used on nearly every modern coaster to keep cars from flying off the track during fast turns. The wheels are meant to go on either side of the track, keeping the cars in place.

In the back, however, from looking at other cars, we can see underneath the “duck butt” where passengers would sit and pedal, there’s simply some flimsy-looking metal arms, guiding the car roughly on the track. Likely, the car’s weight and the passengers’ weight were presumed to keep the car in place.

Here’s a close up view of the dangling, supposed killer car. It’s held onto the track by one single wheel in front, and everything else dangles.

I think what happened is that some people were having a good time and tried to turn two of the cars around. Or, perhaps not that, but were trying to “get the cars off the tracks” presumably to have fun with them in various places around the park. So these imaginary people lifted the backs of the cars up and wriggled and wrenched them until they could swing the cars around off the track. 

Then what? You can’t carry them down the stairs – too heavy. So they pushed the cars backwards along the track and tried to push them over the edge of the station. But for whatever reason, they couldn’t, or didn’t, finish the task. So one car was left cockeyed at station level, and the other was left dangling over the edge by a single wheel. This one they tore the duck facade off. 

From there, rumors could easily spread, as it is easy to imagine a horrific fate from such a wrenching-looking situation. But truly, the ride in operation would not have derailed this way, with all of the other cars the way they are.

This is only a theory about what happened to the sky cycle, but I’d say it’s a guess close to the truth. 

A girl may have fallen off the duck ride and died, I don’t know about that – it is awfully high. But the car wasn’t left dangling in its place – that’s just not how the ride would be set up. The final, ominous positions of the broken duck cars were most certainly done after the fact. 

Demolition of Okpo Land

It wasn’t until late 2011 that the park was actually demolished, over a decade after its closure. 

In the meantime, plenty of urban explorers visited and photographed the park. You can find all kinds of photos and trip reports linked in my references section (below). Seemingly on each visit, the beheaded duck facade was in a different place – was it on a visitor this time, was it on a carousel horse, was it tucked away in the vines to try and spook someone? 

Ultimately, it appears the park became a target of vandalism and arson until the city and the ownership companies couldn’t ignore it any longer. It was called the “city’s monster”, collecting trash and garbage, becoming increasingly rusted and blighted up on top of the hill right over the harbor.

Though some reports claim a single company purchased the land and then did nothing with it for years, other reports differ. One local news source actually breaks the sale of Okpoland down. The article states that “Short-term mortagages were set up by three people”, and they note the park was sold again to a Mr. Park in November of 2000. Then there were two “seizure and claims for transfer of ownership”, but the article notes that these were “eliminated”. Ultimately, that large shipbuilding company DSME purchase the site in November of 2006. The article reports that the company had plans to redevelop the site and build something else (a hotel, residential complexes, etc). However, considering that as of the time of this recording, the land is still bare as far as I know, I’m guessing something went wrong. The main article I’m referring to right here talks about urban management plans, and I think a little something is lost in translation – perhaps there were issues with zoning or other city ordinances. 

So like I said, ultimately in 2011, the park was demolished and returned to bare earth. 

A video from 2017 is available on YouTube from user A Million Toms showing a hike up to the site of the former theme park. It appears easy to access the site, with broken down fencing blocking the road from cars but not stopping an adventurous pedestrian. You can see primarily bare land and vegetation in the video, although A Million Toms does come across a broken piece of fiberglass decoration – a former buffalo plaque from the Viking ship. 

Here’s a great image from one of the park brochures, showing an artist’s rendition of how the site was supposed to be https://www.uer.ca/locations/viewgal.asp?picid=254354. 

Conclusions

People love to come up with rumors, and sensational stories certainly build upon themselves when passed from person to person in urban legend format. Such is the case of Okpo Land. In the later years of its abandonment, a broken duck-themed sky cycle, placed just so on accident or purpose by a visitor to the park after its closure, spurred rumors of death, of an owner who left everything in place and ran, or perhaps he was killed in a car accident, but certainly he gave no recompense to the girl’s family.

It’s all rumor. 

The park closed due to lack of money in the background of the poor economy of the late 90s. A series of different owners and bueracratic issues delayed the demolition of the park and still have stalled any new redevelopment there. 

The truth, of course, is kind of boring.

Okpo Land seemed like a charming small park with some truly bizarre theming. The duck face from the sky cycle is honestly one of the spookiest things I’ve seen, with haunting eyes that stare in either direction and seem to follow you as you move. 

But ultimately it was just a simple amusement park. A fun place for kids and families while it lasted, with boring and expected reasons for closure. Too, it seems to have been a fun place to visit in its long abandonment, even if the deadly rumors stem from staged rides and word of mouth. 

It is Halloween season when this episode is released, so of course you can imagine whatever urban legend you like. The truth is boring and fictional stories are much, much more thrilling.

Remember that what you’ve read is a podcast! A link is included at the top of the page. Listen to more episodes of The Abandoned Carousel on your favorite platform: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | RadioPublic | TuneIn | Overcast | Pocket Casts | Castro. Support the podcast on Patreon for extra content! Comment below to share your thoughts – as Lucy Maud Montgomery once said, nothing is ever really lost to us, as long as we remember it.

Okpo Land Guide Map

1. 회전목마 merry-go-round
2. Restaurant
3. 카니발 코너 carnival corner
4. 수영장 swimming pool
5. 사 우 나 sauna         (missing – fantasy express – the COASTER) either spelled like this 판타지 표현 or 환상특급
6. 미니기차 mini train
7. 밧 데 리 카 battery?
8. 노 래 방 karaoke
9. 매점 store
10. 바 이 킹 viking
11. 관리사무실 . 화장실 administrative office, restroom
12. 분식코너 food corner
13. 롤러 스케이트장 roller skating rink
14. 매점 store
15. 사계절썰매장 four season sledding range
16. 음식점 . 화장실 restaurant * restroom
17. 스카이 사이클 sky cycle (ducks)
18. 범퍼카 bumper cars
19. 우주전투기 “space fighter” (rockets)
20. 다람쥐 통 squirrel bucket
21. 휴게실 “Rest area” (bathroom?)

References

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The post Okpo Land appeared first on The Abandoned Carousel.

Listen or read this episode of The Abandoned Carousel. Both versions are below.

Podcast cover background photo is by 4045 on freepik.com. Theme music is from “Aerobatics in Slow Motion” by TeknoAXE. Incidental music is “Long Note Two” and “Cryptic Sorrow” by Kevin Macleod / incompetech.com.

The Creepypasta: “Takakanonuma Greenland”

In Japan’s Fukushima Prefecture, there is an abandoned amusement park known as Takakanonuma Greenland. It sits in the outskirts of Hobara, a section of the Japanese city of Date. Very little is known about this park, and its exact location is largely unknown. You can’t find it on any Japanese map, as it simply isn’t there. Supposedly, its coordinates are 37°49’02.16″N 140°33’05.78″E , but if they are put into Google Maps, the search will be directed to the center of Hobara. This is inaccurate, since the park is hidden in a mountainous, rural area.

The only major information known about Takakanonuma Greenland is that it opened in 1973, and closed two years later. Some claim that this was due to poor ticket sales and needed renovations, but locals say that it was because of a significant amount of deaths on the rides. Miraculously, the park reopened in 1986, but struggled to remain open due to increased competition from bigger parks such as Tokyo Disneyland, as well as financial trouble. Finally, in 1999, Takakanonuma Greenland closed for good.

Following its closure, the amusement park was left to rot. Photographs from urban explorers who have infiltrated the area show a massive amount of decay. The ferris wheel and the roller coaster are covered in rust, the entrance is covered in graffiti, and the premises are being reclaimed by plants. The most notable feature of the park is the dense fog that always looms over it, giving off a Silent Hill feel. Like the information about the area, there is very little photography and video of it.

Allegedly, Takakanonuma Greenland was demolished in 2006, and now sits as an empty lot. However, in 2007, a citizen of the United Kingdom named Bill Edwards claimed to have visited an untouched, completely intact park. Supposedly, he took numerous pictures that were identical to those taken before the park’s supposed demolition, showing the same rusty, forgotten rides. However, according to rumor, when uploading these photos, only one appeared on his computer. This picture shows the entrance to the park on a foggy night, illuminated by the flash from the camera. In the center of this picture, you can barely make out the figure of what looks like a six year old girl in a white dress. She appears to be staring at the photographer with a serious, indifferent face. The girl has never been identified, and the whereabouts of Bill Edwards are currently unknown…

Creepypasta.com, April 26, 2013

Many elements of the story I just told you contain truth, like some of the best stories, but parts are fiction. What I just told you was a creepypasta, posted on Creepypasta.com on April 26, 2013. 

What is a Creepypasta?

Before we can get to the truth behind Takakonuma Greenland, let’s talk about “creepypasta”. What is a creepypasta? 

I’ll be drawing heavily in this section from an excellent article by the phenomenal Aja Romano, now at Vox and formerly at the Daily Dot. I encourage you to read the whole article.  

Creepypasta is one of those internet-y portmanteau words. It’s a spin-off of “copypasta”, a portmanteau of “copy/paste”. Copypasta was first used as a term online around 2006 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copypasta). This was essentially blocks of text that were copied and pasted around the internet, often with a spam or troll intent. Wikipedia gives examples of the “Navy Seal” copypasta and the script from the Bee Movie https://www.inverse.com/article/25329-bee-movie-memes-explained-script-youtube-videos. 

Creepypasta, then, began as a similar idea – text that is easily copied and pasted – but with the intent of sharing realistic horror stories. These often have a basis in reality/fact, and are presented as a journal entry or a “hey I was there” type story. Yep, they’re modern urban legends, modern versions of the “Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark” series that was the height of popularity when I was a kid (and how’s that for dating me?). 

At their most basic form, creepypasta are only a few paragraphs long, just enough to send a little or big shiver up your spine. Others have expanded the bounds of the genre, with multiple updates, images, realistic social media account postings, etc. Think Blair Witch Project. 

Creepypasta.com was created in 2008, and the related subreddit r/NoSleep was established in 2010.

Originally, the stories were anonymous. That was kind of the point. Jessica Roy in Time points to early stories shared around the depths of Usenet and chain emails in the 1990s. Aja Romano points to the story of Ted the Caver as the earliest true creepypasta, appearing on Angelfire in 2001 and telling the story of an explorer and an increasingly frightening system of caves.

Today, authorship is more important. Ironically, copying and pasting of creepypasta is less common now, as a result, being seen as IP theft. Some creepypastas have been spun into original novels or other media properties. Truly, today, they are simply collections of horror-themed stories more than the anonymous, realistic paragraph they originated as. 

In Romano’s article and the Wikipedia article for creepypasta, both linked in the episode’s references section, you can find a few of the more popular creepypasta. These include Slender Man, a story that has not only been referenced in pop culture since its creation, but which also has influenced a real life murder.

The Real Story of Takakonuma Greenland

The story I read at the beginning of the show was posted to creepypasta.com in 2013. Much of the tale does ring true. Let’s dig in and separate the wheat from the chaff of the “real” story of this mysterious abandoned theme park, and debunk some of the taller tales. It’s both interesting and challenging that most of the information available about this park is in the form of fiction.

So, Takakonuma Greenland. One of the most popular abandoned or haunted theme parks is this one, and it regularly appears on lists around the internet.    

Before I even get into it, one of the interesting things is the differences between English-language posts about the park, and Japanese-language posts about the park. It’s really only in the English posts that the wild tales abound; the Japanese posts recount some of the wilder English tales but all seem to comment on how Americans (or “foreigners” sometimes) always place the park on the lists of “top most haunted places” and so on. 

The Name: Takakonuma Greenland vs Takakanonuma Greenland

First, the name. American sites including creepypasta frequently spell the name as Takakanonuma Greenland. Surprisingly, not actually the name. The site Bloggitos helped clarify this topic. Locally, the park appears to simply have been called “Greenland”. As the park picked up steam with Americans, the kanji were mistranslated. Now I don’t speak Japanese, but here’s what Bloggitos says. There’s a joining particle in Japanese, “no”. However, proper nouns wouldn’t use this (example: Indiana-no-University would be any university in Indiana, not Indiana University specifically). 

So instead of Takakanonuma, the correct name is Takakonuma (Takako, a place (marsh), and Numa or Numanishi, another place).

Occasionally you’ll also see references to the place as Kokonuma Greenland, but I’ve not been able to find any clear etymology on that one. 

Location of Takakonuma Greenland

You might’ve missed it from the creepypasta I read at the beginning, but the location of this abandoned park also features heavily in some later versions of the story. You will alternately see the city referred to as either Date or Hobara. Hobara is the old name; along with 20 other towns and villages, the area has been known as the modern city of Date since January 2006.

Date, though, is located in Fukushima Province. 

Many listeners of the podcast will immediately be familiar with that name. Fukushima of course is the site of the 2011 nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima I nuclear power station.

2011 Nuclear Meltdown at Fukushima Daiishi Nuclear Power Plant

In brief, in March 2011, the “2011 Tōhoku earthquake” occurred. It was the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan, and the fourth-most powerful earthquake ever recorded in the world. The quake triggered tsunami waves which swept across the islands. The quake and subsequent tsunamis are said to have killed over 10,000 people. 

One result of this natural disaster was the failure of the cooling systems at Fukushima’s Daiishi Nuclear Power Plant. This failure is the most severe nuclear disaster since the 1986 Chernobyl meltdown. Chernobyl and Fukushima are the only two incidents to be labeled Level 7 on the Nuclear Event Scale (with a 7 being the worst level, “major event”. For a comparison, the 1979 Three Mile Island incident was labeled Level 5). 

With the failure of the cooling systems, three of the reactors at Fukushima Daiichi experienced nuclear meltdowns and hydrogen explosions. As with any nuclear incident, the concern is for the spread and release of radioactive materials. An initial 20km evacuation zone was set up, and has since come down. Contamination of the Pacific Ocean with radioactive cesium has been the primary concern from this incident.

As of 2018, radiation inside the reactor buildings is reportedly still too high to safely enter. However, despite controversy, various world organizations do not predict any significant ongoing health effects from the accident.

Fukushima Daiishi Meltdown and Takakonuma Greenland

While this nuclear accident was a huge one, it didn’t affect Takakonuma Greenland. 

The nuclear power plant and the theme park are located about 100km from one another, far apart. (That’s 62 miles, American friends.) 

The reason this is relevant is because many of the versions/rumors of the park’s history claim that the park is soaking in toxic radiation from the 2011 power plant meltdown. Based on geography alone, this is completely untrue.

The True History of Takakonuma Greenland

With some basic facts established, let’s run through a more complete, true history of Takakonuma Greenland.

Takakonuma Family Park

Takakonuma Greenland opened as Takakonuma Family Park in 1973, on the side of a small mountain or hill. At the time it opened, the town the park was located in was called Hobara. 

(https://goo.gl/maps/3ZsCpuFowVdcEvyT7)(“Numanishi Senouemachi”)

From what I can understand, Hobara is a place out in the countryside, rural, though considered densely populated for a rural area. The area is full of rice fields and fruit orchards. At the time, there were no other amusement parks in the area, so the park did reasonably well.

On Facebook, in fact, I found photos from the park’s operation during this time. The album is titled “Around 1975 at Takakonuma Greenland” and there are two pictures. One shows the chain tower (swings) and the other shows a petting zoo.

However, it didn’t last. Business deteriorated, and the park shut down after two years. 

Not only did it shut down, it stayed closed for almost a decade.

Takakonuma Greenland’s Operating Years

After its closure as Takakonuma Family Park, the property was sold. I’ve seen references to both Nankai Kogyo Co., Ltd. and Tokyo Real Estate. Either way, the property stayed closed until the early 80s, undergoing refurbishment and upgrades. I’ve seen two different sources for the reopening date: spaicy.jp gives April 1982, and the RCDB gives 1985 as the date. Either way, the park reopened under the new name, Takakonuma Greenland.

Reception of Takakonuma Greenland

The park quickly gained popularity and notoriety for being the only park with a roller coaster in the area. (Spoiler: it actually had two!) It’s not entirely clear whether the coasters were installed during the reopening and rebranding, but this would seem most likely. The 1975 photos I mentioned earlier do not show any coasters on the hill, lending support to this theory.

For the next few years, things went well. Admission was relatively cheap – 700 yen ($6.50) for adults, and 500 yen ($4.50) for kids – though each ride inside required tickets, purchased at additional cost. 

However, mega parks began being built – Tokyo DisneySea and Tokyo Disneyland, 3.5 hours away. Universal Studios Japan, 6 hours away. And plenty of other, newer small parks were even closer. Instead of visiting Takakonuma Greenland, guests started to go elsewhere. It wasn’t convenient to get to Takakonuma Greenland using public transportation.

Because at the same time, the amenities at Takakonuma Greenland were rapidly aging. Some sites describe the place as “severely outdated”.

The area is humid, moist, and sees regular rain and snow. Rides required constant maintenance out in the elements. With the problems introduced in the economic bubble collapse of the 90s in Japan, they weren’t getting the maintenance they needed. There were no upgrades, no new rides. In fact, rides began to be taken away before the park itself closed. 

And the location of the park on the hillside was difficult – there was constant maintenance needed to trim back the vegetation, and there are also reports about erosion and partial collapses of some areas.

By the end of the park’s operation, the park’s schedule was erratic. Some months only open on Wednesdays, others only open on weekends. 

It seems that the park also constantly changed management over the short period it was open. One source reports five different owners between 1982 and 1999.

Closure of Takakonuma Greenland

Ultimately, the reason given for Takakonuma Greenland’s closure in 1999 is the same reason we see for so many parks – “management difficulties”, aka “it was no longer profitable to operate the park”. Yes, the owners could keep running it, but investing additional money in the park in the form of maintenance or new rides was a losing strategy. (Click for an image of the closure notice.)

You see, zooming out more broadly, Japan’s economy had hit a rough patch. In the second half of the 20th century, Japan’s economy was strong, perhaps overly so. The economic bubble burst at the start of the 1990s with a stock market crash, leading to the “Lost Decade”. The GDP fell, real wages fell, and the country experienced a stagnant price level that took decades to recover from.

Against this economic background, it’s not surprising that the choice was made to shutter Takakonuma Greenland.

The descriptions in translation from the Japanese sites are beautiful – the park was “left in the wind to wave”, says one site. Reportedly, the park owners literally just left. They didn’t want to pay to dismantle the park. They simply walked away. Other sites describe the situation differently, saying that indecision on the future of the property was the reason for the park’s long abandonment.

It took almost another decade before the park was demolished, leaving plenty of time for urban explorers to visit, and for rumors to fester.

Abandoned Takakonuma Greenland

Incorrect Coordinates of Takakonuma Greenland

It’s not clear why all of the stories about Takakonuma Greenland include the incorrect longitudinal coordinates. I’ll include a direct link to the streetview of the site as it stands today (or at least, 2014, which is when a Google car last drove by): https://goo.gl/maps/mEf7xAg23mZ3XQBp6 and https://goo.gl/maps/6rNGVfiDF4oj1UUC6. Type in “Numanishi Senouemachi” into Google Maps, and you’ll be in the right place. 

I suppose including directly false information in the creepypasta makes the tale more mysterious, but I do hate to see it. 

Where Are the Photos of Takakonuma Greenland?

One of the other big parts of the Takakonuma Greenland legend is that there are no photos of it, or few photos of it. You might think of the few very popular images: a rusty coaster in the fog, orange red rust dripping down over peeling white paint. In another of the images, a strange, small Ferris wheel looms in the background of the rusty white coaster, ominous in the fog. And a third, from a different angle: a green, grassy hill with a sign in large white Japanese characters. At the top center, the Ferris wheel, faded behind fog clouds. And to the right, a white roller coaster, on incredibly high supports, looking like something out of a horror movie as it looms over the hill in the fog.

Or, as the creepypasta states, despite many photos taken by an urban explorer by the name of Bill Edwards, only one photo ever would upload, featuring a haunted girl in a white dress on a foggy night.

Of course, none of this is true. The history of the park is well-documented if you look in the right places.

The thing is, despite the modern legend about the park, the place was originally just a small local theme park that was open for a couple decades. Not many people visited the park, and many of the touristy, operational pictures and videos of the place are likely shoved in closets and dusty photo albums. 

That’s not to say that there aren’t photos and videos, though. Today’s modern Google Translate makes it (while not perfect) a lot easier to search for things in other languages. And boy howdy, it’s probably not surprising that on Japanese language sites, there are a lot more factual details, fond commenters reminiscing about their childhood at the park, and of course photos, and videos of Takakonuma Greenland. 

 In fact, I’m going to shape the majority of the rest of the episode around a photo tour from an urban explorer “Kuke” who visited in fall of 2004. In addition, those primary images I described that you always see floating around the internet? Most of those are by “Jens of Japan”, and you can find them on his Flickr page or his website. I’ll include links to each relevant image in the shownotes. We haven’t really talked about the park in any detail, only about it as an abstract concept. So let’s take a visit to Takakonuma Greenland as it was. 

A Visit to Takakonuma Greenland

Of course, there was a car park at the front of the park, though the park was reasonably accessible by train and bus. After you got out of your car, you could walk with your fellow visitors up to the park gate. This was shaped like a castle gate, with a ticket line on one side and a park office on the other side. At one time, the park’s name would’ve been proudly spelled out across the top of the gate archway. By the time of the park’s abandonment, this had long fallen down. Of course, the whole thing is done up in a rather ugly shade of teal green, with red roofs on top of each turret tower.

To the right of the gate as you face it, there was the park map, up on a very large billboard. This remained after the park closed, and I’ve drawn my own version of the map to include throughout this section. Scroll down to the very last section of this post for the map key.

The map is our first indication of the park’s decline even prior to its closure. Several of the rides were apparently closed prior to the park’s closure, as their names were scraped off the painted sign. 

Enterprise and Looper at Takakonuma Greenland

In fact, the most obvious closed ride is missing. It would’ve been immediately in front of you as you entered through the park’s gate. First, of course, was the general ticket booth, small and non-imposing, where guests could purchase more tickets for each ride. The rides were listed with the number of tickets each took.

Behind the booth, there once was an Enterprise ride. You might remember this ride from the abandoned Yangon Amusement Park episode (theabandonedcarousel.com/9) – it’s a flat ride that starts out like a merry go round, and then raises up at an angle more like a Ferris wheel once it’s up to speed. 

The Enterprise is clearly visible in the park map – it’s an incredibly distinctive ride. But there are no photos of this ride, not even a hint of its demolished state. Perhaps it was planned and never added? The space does appear quite tight. Or perhaps it was removed.

To the left of the main entrance plaza was another classic flat ride: this one is called the Looper or the Rok n Roll. The Takakonuma Greenland version might have been called “Twister”. You might remember me describing this one in the abandoned Yangon park episode as well – “tuna cans on a carousel frame”. I’ve learned a wee bit more about these rides since then. In the US, you can find a refurbished version of this ride at Knoebels in PA. The style of ride is also called the Rok ‘n Roll. 

You essentially spin your tuna can back and forth (or 360) while the whole carousel of tuna cans also goes around in a circle. Vomit comet might also be an appropriate name. An image from Jens in 2006 shows this ride well-demolished, one of the tuna cans sitting askew on top of a circular platform full of rubble. Kuke over at Biglobe.ne.jp saw some of the tuna cans sitting on the ground, disassembled. An even earlier visit shows a more clear picture of this area: image 1 / image 2.

As you stood there in the entrance plaza, one thing stood out: how steep and hilly this park was. The entrance was at the base of the hill, and the ferris wheel stood at the pinnacle. The rest of the park rose up the hillside in front of you, terraced paths and platforms making space for the rides in front of the trees. 

Merry-go-round, Swings, and Train at Takakonuma Greenland

Let’s now turn to the right and take a look at one of the most photogenic parts of Takakonuma Greenland: the young children’s area, with a train, swings, and a merry-go-round.

During the park’s operation, the merry-go-round stood out. I’ll include a link to a photo of the operational merry-go-round from a visitor at the time right here. Even in its abandonment, the merry-go-round stands out, with beautiful, elegant horses, all white with colorful saddles and bridles. (I have to say, despite all my carousel research last week, I can’t quite tell which style these horses would be categorized under. Guess I’d better keep studying.) There were ornate decorations on the central column of the carousel, as well – gold-colored leaf on fanciful carvings around several mirrors. 

By the time the park was abandoned and had begun to be visited by urban explorers, the brilliantly-colored canopy was long gone, faded and hanging down from the skeletal support structure in tatters. This link is to an incredible image of the sunset over the carousel. Some of the horses had been stolen, their supports beginning to rust and break. And that gold-leaf had long since flaked away, leaving behind sinister black carvings with, oddly enough, red roses remaining.

Next to the carousel stood the Chain Tower, a menacing name for a standard swing-type ride that had been at the park since the beginning in the 70s. Originally, photos show it was painted in a colorblock yellow and blue scheme. By the time of the park’s abandoned days, the ride had clearly been through a number of different paint schemes. During the ride’s operation, the children sat in chairs that were attached by two ropes to the triangle “handle” of each swing position. By the time the park was abandoned, the seats were long gone, leaving behind only the eerie dangling triangles.

Surrounding this area was the SL, or steam locomotive. Yes, of course there was a miniature train. It took two tickets to ride, according to a 2005 image of the sign. I’m starting to think that I should’ve given this podcast a train-themed name instead of a carousel-themed name. Our friend, explorer Kuke, has images of the train station, showing a nice shaded spot to wait for the small little train. Of course, by the time of the known urbex images we’ve got, in 2004 and 2006, the train itself was yes, long gone. This image from an overpass over the train tracks shows the structure of the children’s area, including its proximity to the gate.

Buildings at Takakonuma Greenland

Walking from the overpass up the hill, one sees a tan building, nicely built, but yes, painted tan all over, including windows and clocks. Perhaps more camoflauge than straight up tan. Anyhow, this was a multi-purpose building. During the park’s operation, it served as both a haunted house and as a natural history insect museum, though not at the same time. This is one of the items scraped off the guide map, so it clearly closed some time before the park itself.

Inside, not much is left by the time of the abandoned walkthrough in 2004, just oddly painted walls and a few broken game consoles. This building was used for the filming of the movie Kamen Rider 555, thus the camo paint job. 

In the center of the park, across from the former haunted house, sits the largest building in the park. This too got a camo paint job for the movie filming. I was unable to translate the actual name of this one, but explorer Kuke calls it “free rest area”. Inside, a mishmash of broken game consoles again, as well as a store. There’s some comment that it might have been a theatre or stage. Across from this, a small shop that was a snack house. This also included a storage shed, in which were stored a box of skates and a sad Zamboni. At one time, the park hosted ice-skating – it’s not clear if there was an artificial rink somewhere or if the skating was done on the marsh for which the park is named. 

Sky Cycle and Go Karts at Takakonuma Greenland

Going out of the buildings and you’re already at the left-hand side of the park. Yep, it’s a small park. There stood a Sky Cycle, the next ride you’d come across. Sky Cycle, how fancy is that? This is a two person monorail-type ride, where guests pedal themselves around an elevated track at their own pace, overlooking the park below. It’s a simple ride but sort of easily terrifying – there’s nothing but a basic seatbelt to keep you in place, so far above the ground, and only your own feet can move you along. The cars are spindly and fragile looking, like odd bird skeletons.

By 2004 and 2006 when our urban explorers visited, a section of the Sky Cycle track had fallen down, or perhaps had been removed. This led to some excellent photos, where Sky Cycles were guided to the end of the track over time and pushed off into large piles. Images: image one / image two / image three. I’ll link to a video of the Sky Cycle still in operation at a different park – this was apparently a viral thing a few years back.

The Sky Cycle track ran right above the small Go-Kart track, vastly overgrown by the abandoned days, go-karts long since stolen and stripped of parts. Not much remained to be documented, just a few empty shells of cars looking like forlorn and rusty lawnmowers.

Behind the go-karts, we walk up the hill to the stars of the park: the Bobster, the Adventure Coaster, and the Ferris wheel.

Bobster Roller Coaster at Takakonuma Greenland

The park gained popularity and notoriety for being the only park with a roller coaster in the area. In fact, it actually had two, though this isn’t clear from the basic abandoned photos. I’ll link to an image which sets the scene nicely, showing the entrance to the Bobster, with the Adventure Coaster just up the hill out of frame. Bobster was made by Togo, and some pictures can be found at the RCDB, as well as at our abandoned explorers blogs. Although there were only three Togo Bobsters ever made, one is still operational, at Shirakabo Resort Family Land, also in Japan. These coasters were all manufactured in the early 1980s, and feature a single car with three riders all in a row. If you’re listening and haven’t had a chance to click over to the pictures, think about the Jet Star and Jet Star 2, and that general genre of 1980s retro-futuristic design, and you’ve got the Bobster. The front of the car almost looks like a face with a big oval mouth and two lights for eyes.

The Bobster remained waiting for riders to the very end, with a spare car parked on a side track, and two cars left waiting at the station, exposed to the elements, cushions faded and peeling. In the abandoned state, the grasses and small pines grew up around and through the Bobster track, leading to some incredibly eerie photos. Images: image one / image two / image three.

Jet Coaster Adventure Coaster at Takakonuma Greenland

Up the hill was the bigger coaster, and this is the more iconic one in our abandoned knowledge. It was called by two names on official park signage, both Jet Coaster and Adventure Coaster. It featured a white track and red cars with three white stars painted on the fronts. The RCDB suggests that this was a “non-looping” version of a Meisho Amusement Company coaster.

Most indications are that this coaster was installed in 1982 when the park was renovated.

This coaster looks particularly thrilling in photos, especially in the often-foggy environments of the Date hillside. The track itself doesn’t seem to have been particularly exciting, but with the coaster up on a hillside, the track itself is particularly elevated, adding an extra thrill element, as well.

And in particular contrast to the claims about the lack of imagery of the park in operation, we have video of this ride in operation: a 1990 compilation video which primarily shows the roller coaster from a variety of different angles, including an on-ride view. Guests can be seen queueing for the ride along the entire length of the lift hill. The park was certainly built in a different time period, safety-wise, as there is nothing but a short stretch of 3’ chain-link fence separating curious guests from the first drop on the coaster. The ride itself seems fairly tame, without significant drops or airtime, and the coaster seems to go quite slowly. Take a look at a less-often seen image: sunset over the coaster.

In its abandoned state, this coaster is one of the primary stars of the park. The rails are incredibly rusted after only five years of abandonment, which must speak to how poorly the coaster was maintained to begin with. Reddish orange streaks drip over the entire structure, like an ominous icing.

Ferris Wheel at Takakonuma Greenland

Finally, up at the top of the hill, past the Bobster and the Adventure Coaster, sat the Ferris wheel. I love the look of this wheel, with round cars dangling like teardrops from the circular frame. All of the urbex photographers have oodles of photos of the wheel.

By the time of our photographers’ visits some five years after the ride last spun, vines and other climbing plants had overtaken the wheel, climbing up the support poles and wrapping around the lower gondolas. Kuke states that the manufacturer of the wheel is “ Toyonaga Sangyo”, apparently the same maker of the wheel at the abandoned “Koga Family Land” park in Japan, which we’ll get to someday. (Image of the manufacturer’s plate: http://www.uer.ca/locations/viewgal.asp?picid=89239)

The wheel is small, reportedly only 25 meters in diameter, but it’s incredibly charming looking. A nicely-kept version of the wheel still operates today at Kamine Park in Hitachi.

Missing Rides at Takakonuma Greenland

Of course, as I mentioned, certain rides were shuttered before the park itself closed. We’ve already mentioned a few of these – the Looper and the Enterprise both had their names scraped from the park map. Other things, like a picnic area and a places where kids could ride motorized cars like those you might find at a mall, were also scratched off the map.

Labeled but rarely seen is the “ducks”, number 5 on the park map, and across from it, the flying elephants, number 4 on the map. The map image for the ducks appears to be children riding in a dog. Kuke saw a pile of rubble in this spot, including a sign showing a goldfish and a turtle. I’ll include a link to the image – if you can read Japanese, take a look at the sign on the front of the booth and see what you can make of it. Kuke also comments that the other spot, for the flying elephants, was just grass and concrete at the time of his visit. It’s possible that the common translation of “ducks” is incorrect; a different site calls it “Dachs”, as in dachshund, which would make much more sense with the image of children riding on a dog. Image of an unknown set of parts: http://www.uer.ca/locations/viewgal.asp?picid=182731

Urban explorers report a concrete slide down the side of the hill, which has not been labeled on the map. Perhaps this was a part of the children’s outdoor picnic area?

If you watched the video of the park’s operation, you can also see an impressive Viking boat, this one themed to a dragon theme with two ferocious heads. This was marked on the map but not visible in any urbex images, so this ride was likely sold. 

And up beyond the haunted house, there was once an outdoor petting zoo, said to have featured reindeer and bunny rabbits. This too was scraped off the sign, indicating an early closure. Kuke photographs an unknown building which may be restrooms or related to the zoo operations. Again, with the castle theme. 

It seems that the resource-heavy rides requiring staff manpower were closed early, to save staff hours and to make some money back when the writing was already on the wall (the enterprise and the Viking boat). 

Of course, in its abandoned years, the park was memorialized not only by urban explorers, but in a few pieces of media, including a music video (the opening theme for the “Freedom” OVA which plays the the song “This Is Love” by singer Utada Hikaru), a videogame called Siren 2 which was not released in the US, and the already-mentioned Kamen Rider 555.

Demolition of Takakonuma Greenland

Rumors about the demolition of the park abound. The creepypasta describes a still-extant park looming out of the fog in 2007. Other sources even claim the park stuck around through 2010 or beyond prior to demolition. 

But this is all hearsay and rumor.

What we actually know is from another photographer, user historicist on Flickr. They photographed a partially demolished Ferris wheel on January 20, 2007. Not only that, but they also include an image of an excavator, beginning to demolish another ride, artistically in front of the partially disassembled wheel, taken on January 22, 2007. Their comment: “By the next day the whole park had been demolished.”

After it had all been scrapped, the park sat empty and lifeless for the better part of another decade. Users who download the desktop version of Google Maps can use the time feature to see the land back through 2010 – empty concrete circles, torn zig-zags in the earth. Urban explorers describe very little left but park benches, concrete curbs, and this eerie frog-shaped abandoned sign for the Jet Coaster.

In 2014, work began on the site anew. Soon after, and still to this day, the former site of the Takakonuma Greenland Amusement Park is now covered in solar panels, gleaming shiny and silver in the rare sun.

The source of some of the modern rumors is the single abandoned urbex video we’ve got, a shaky, snow-covered, pixelated video of the rusty Adventure Coaster. The more popular version of the video is actually a repost, claiming that the posting date of the video supports a still-extant park in 2014. However, it’s a repost. The original video clarifies that this is a video from an urbex in 2003. Here’s a link to the original video. I recommend you click through – it’s fantastic and eerie to see the rusty coaster and theme park environs in greater detail, especially in the strange snowy environment. 

Legend of Takakonuma Greenland

The legend of Takakonuma Greenland still persists today. 

People often write of deaths at the park, though there’s no clear available factual information to this point. There are stories of suicides, of people thrown off the roller coasters, of couples dying together. They all seem to stem from English-speaking top ten lists about abandoned and haunted places, with each site trying to top what other sites had written. Every Japanese site writing about the park almost seems politely mystified by the park’s popularity, greater in the absence of the park than it ever was in life.

There’s no evidence for any foul play or bloodshed at the park.

But still, the legends persist. Ghostly voices heard near the site of the former coaster, ghosts said to be seen by the former haunted house. Strange feelings in the head after visiting the park. 

Perhaps it’s that original creepypasta story which seeds the English-speaking perception of the park. Perhaps it’s the relative lack of photos and videos. I think a lot of it lies in the language barrier, where all the fond remembrances from visitors to the park are in Japanese. (Not only fond remembrances, of course – I’ve seen people complaining about the small size of the park, the amount of insects, and the way people got injured on the Chain Tower swings.) And until recently, not a lot of pictures of the park were easily available to find.

Those that are common show a desolate park, ravaged by the elements. They bring to mind thoughts of the world without people, that eternal imbalancing feeling that abandoned theme park images inspire. This was once a place of laughter and fun, a bustling spot of activity. But abandoned, it’s eerie, empty, rusting into pieces, overgrown with nature.

Whatever it is, this park continues to be one of the parks that is most popular when people are searching for abandoned theme parks, despite the relative lack of concrete information about the place. 

Everyone, after all, loves a good spooky story story, especially around Halloween. 

After all, when you’ve looked at these Takakonuma Greenland pictures, did you see a ghostly figure of a girl in a white dress, peeking out of the fog? 

Are you sure?

Remember that what you’ve read is a podcast! A link is included at the top of the page. Listen to more episodes of The Abandoned Carousel on your favorite platform: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | RadioPublic | TuneIn | Overcast | Pocket Casts | Castro. Support the podcast on Patreon for extra content! Comment below to share your thoughts – as Lucy Maud Montgomery once said, nothing is ever really lost to us, as long as we remember it.

Thanks and References

This week, I’d like to recommend the original photographers to you. I’ll put the links in the reference section of the shownotes, but I’ll call them out here as well. Many of my references are in Japanese, so please use the auto-translate function of your browser (like Google Chrome).

The 2004 visit of Kuke: http://www5f.biglobe.ne.jp/~punch-ht/haikyo/h042009.html 

Jens’ visit in 2006: https://www.flickr.com/photos/jensofjapan/albums/72157625053218600 and his blog post about the visit: http://jensofjapan.blogspot.com/2006/11/takakonuma-green-land.html; and his video containing even more still images: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0M-PnUmhRiA

And the images of user historicist on Flickr, in late 2006 and early 2007: https://www.flickr.com/photos/historicist/albums/72157594493640319/with/182581308/

You might also check the multiple galleries at uer.ca: http://www.uer.ca/locations/show.asp?locid=22541

References

1. https://www.knoebels.com/rides/looper. Accessed October 8, 2019.
2. Kamen Rider 555. In: Wikipedia. ; 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kamen_Rider_555&oldid=919719235. Accessed October 9, 2019.
3. なつかしま、福島. https://www.facebook.com/groups/167469633435418/permalink/175649069284141/. Accessed October 10, 2019.
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58. どらやき on Twitter: “すごーく近所にあった、高子沼グリーンランドっていう遊園地の話を聞きました。 閉園してからの廃墟っぷりがすごくて、検索する手が止まるレベル･･･ https://t.co/mp8jvRsZ6A” / Twitter. Twitter. https://twitter.com/dorarararayaki/status/801794010213847040. Accessed August 24, 2019.
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60. 之 裕 之 on Twitter: “Takakonuma Greenland in Fukushima, famous as an abandoned amusement park. Even if a solar panel is installed, the ground will collapse due to rainwater and the new solar panel will be abandoned. Since it will become, please note → https://t.co/vrTcT29iyZ https://t.co/b9nuioanmp “/ Twitter. Twitter. https://twitter.com/electricdaddy/status/851555677344378881. Accessed August 24, 2019.
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Map of Takakonuma Greenland with Key

1. Ferris wheel (観覧車)
2. Jet Coaster / Adventure Coaster (アドベンチャーコースター)
3. Bobster (ボブスター)
4. “Flink Elephant” (Flying Elephants) (フラインクエレフアント)
5. “Ducks” or “Dachs” (クックス)
6. Go Kart (ゴーカート)
7. Sky Cycle (スカイサイクル)
8. Game corner (ゲームコーナー)
9. Twin dragon (swing)
10. (house? Shops or snacks?)(caption unclear)
11. (enterprise)(no caption)
12. (looper)(no caption)
13. (information booth)(unclear)
14. (gate)
15. Merry-go-round (メリーゴーランド)
16. SL (train)
17. Chain Tower (チェーンタワー)
18. “Little child open space” (ちびっこ広場 (電動遊貝))
19. (Haunted house and later insect museum)(no caption)
20. Picnic Square (ピクニック広場)
21. (outdoor play area) (no caption)
22. (deer and rabbit garden) (no caption)

A video of still photos from the park’s operation: https://youtu.be/PRLrAvDPjiE

This episode might be called Americans are dumb or lazy, honestly.

The post Takakonuma Greenland (高子沼グリーンランド) appeared first on The Abandoned Carousel.

Audio credits: Podcast cover background photo is by 4045 on freepik.com. Carousel cover photo is by James Loesch, Flickr, CCBY2.0. Theme music is from “Aerobatics in Slow Motion” by TeknoAXE. Incidental music is from “Olde Timey” by Kevin Macleod / incompetech.com. 

Coney Island

Our story today begins almost 200 years ago.

In 1829, Coney Island, a peninsula with sandy beaches, was linked to NYC by road. The first resorts there opened up as a result. Along with the resorts came something that we ironically rarely talk about: a carousel. 

“Balmer’s Carousel” at Coney Island opened in 1875, featuring hand-carved wooden animals and powered by a steam engine. This carousel was designed by a man named Charles Looff. 

Looff was German, with the birth name  Carl Jürgen Detlev Looff .He immigrated to the US at the age of 18, in 1870. At Ellis Island, he Americanized his name from Carl to Charles. 

He moved to Brooklyn. There, he reportedly worked as a furniture carver during the day, but took wood scraps home with him and in his leisure hours began carving animals. After a few years, he had sufficient carousel animals carved that he set them up on a platform. Attached to a motor, the platform went around in a circle: et voila, a carousel. Looff set them up at Vanderveer’s bathing pavilions on Coney Island. It was Coney Island’s first carousel and according to some, its first amusement ride.

History of the Carousel

Now, the carousel as a ride has its origins in many cultures, centuries and centuries back. I won’t go too in-depth into the nitty-gritty details, but we might as well have a bit of history.

In brief, you can find carousel-like concepts in many cultures, as far back as 500 AD. 

The name carousel itself has its roots in the Spanish word “carosella”, meaning little battle. This word has it roots in the Italian word for chariot, which in turn ties back into the proto-Indo-European “carrus”, meaning “to run”. In Europe, between 1500 and 1800, the meaning of a carousel evolved from jousting practice to showy horseman dressage to carved wooden animals on display on the carnival circuit.

In the 1800s, the steam engine was invented, refining the carousel into what we know it today. Carousels in the 1800s and most of the 1900s were incredibly popular rides on the fair circuit. A contemporaneous writer from the mid-1860s described the ride as such: it “whirled around with such impetuousity, that the wonder is the daring riders are not shot off like cannon- ball, and driven half into the middle of next month.”

And in the United States moving into the 1900s, the carousel industry was booming, led by immigrants like Gustav Dentzel and our friend Charles Looff, both from Germany. The turn of the century was the golden age of the carousel. 

In the golden age of carousels, each horse and animal were hand-carved; several different dominant styles arose. Country Fair style was the hallmark of popular amusement names Allan Herschell and Edward Spillman, characterized by simpler horses often without saddles. These Country Fair style carousels were often easy to move.

Philadelphia style was the next major style, the hallmark of names like Gustav Dentzel and the Philedelphia Toboggan Company. These carousels were often menagerie carousels (horses as well as non-horse animals) and had realistic saddles and detailed carvings.

Finally, Coney Island style, characterized by flamboyance, mirrors, lights, elaborate saddles, and jewel-bedecked animals. Looff was the biggest name in this style, and taught many others, such as Illions.

At the height of the carousel’s popularity, over 5,000 carousels are said to have simultaneously operated in the US. 

In general, it seems as though every amusement park, even nowadays, has a carousel – it could be one of the most popular rides at a theme park. 

Looff’s 18th Carousel

As noted, Looff not only built the first carousel and first amusement park attraction for Coney Island, but went on to build many carousels, a theme park, oh, and the Santa Monica Pier (the Newcomb Pier side). 

I already mentioned this, but it is worth emphasizing his renown for being the premiere carver in the Coney Island style, where carousels were decorated flamboyantly and elaborately, from the carousel structure all the way down to the saddles on the horses.

Looff’s 18th carousel was built around 1910, in conjunction with Gustav Dentzel. Different sources place one or the other of the carvers as the true designer. For the purposes of this story right now, I’ll refer to it as Looff’s carousel. 

Around the same time, the Manhasset Realty Company was formed for the purposes of purchasing the Seaside Heights beachfront property in New Jersey. 

The 18th carousel didn’t go directly to the newly-formed Seaside Heights, however. Instead, it went to a small park on an island in the Delaware River, near Philadelphia. It was called Burlington Island.

Burlington Island

The island had originally been named Mantinicunk Island by the original inhabitants, the Lenape people, Mantinicunk meaning Island of Pines. It changed hands many times after the first European settlement there in the 1600s, as well as names: High Island and Verhulsten Island were names prior to the modern Burlington Island.

Eventually, it was granted to the city of Burlington for primarily farming use. The residents reportedly often campaigned for a bridge to be built between the island and the city of Burlington on the mainland, which never did happen. 

In 1900, the first family picnic resort opened on the lower half of the island. (And here, I’ll pause to say that if you remember back to the Rose Island episode (theabandonedcarousel.com/10) you’ll see many parallels to the story of Burlington Island, as they are contemporaries.)

The developer put in picnic tables and a bath house, built a pier, and had sand deposited in order to form a beach. There was also an ice cream stand. All told, this was a huge draw at the turn of the century. Reportedly, 4,000 people visited the island in just a single day at the peak of the 1902 season. An early contemporaneous description of the park was “An ideal temperance picnic resort”.

Around 1907, with things going so well, the park owners reportedly talked to the owner of another park – Rancocas Lake Park, in Mount Laurel, NJ. That park was a trolley park. 

A Brief Sidebar on Trolley Parks

We haven’t really discussed the concept yet here on TAC, but trolley parks are an important park of amusement park history. In the latter part of the 1800s, working hours were reduced, disposable income was on the rise, and rapid industrialization was occuring. Trolley or streetcar lines sat idle on the weekends, much to the dismay of their operating companies. In an effort to increase weekend ridership and therefore profits, the companies began building “trolley parks” at the end of the lines. These were were small amusement and resort areas, often near lakes or beaches, with picnic grounds, carousels, and other small mechanical amusement attractions. 

Trolley parks, then, are the precursors to the modern amusement park, and in some cases some are still operational (you might know about Lakemont Park in Altoona PA or Kennywood in Pittsburgh PA. Most famously, you might know Lake Compounce in Bristol CT, built in 1846 and considered the oldest continuously operating amusement park in the US).

Development and Downfall of Burlington Island Beach Park

Back to Rancocas Lake Park, as we were talking about, was located about 12 miles south of Burlington Island. It was opened by a man named George Potts in the early 1900s. Rancocas Park was a classic trolley park. There were picnic groves, a dance pavilion, a midway, and a carousel and other amusement rides. 

This is an episode about a carousel, so let’s enjoy ourselves, and briefly talk about that carousel, there at Rancocas Lake Park. It was described as a “classic Philadelphia carousel”, housed in its own building to keep off the elements. It reportedly had beautifully carved horses and was quite popular with the visitors to Rancocas Lake Park. 

The owners of Burlington Island came to a deal with Potts around 1907. In a move to generate additional revenue, Potts relocated several of his amusement rides to Burlington Island for several years. These rides joined a set of large swing cages already present on the island.

After an unknown time, Burlington Island management purchased updated versions of the rides they had onsite, and Potts’ rides were moved back to Rancocas Park in Mount Laurel. 

It was somewhere in this timeframe that the 18th Looff carousel was built, between 1908 and 1910, and subsequently delivered to Burlington Island. The carousel featured chariots and animals that were carved by Looff, as well as by other big names in the carousel world: Dentzel, Morris, Carmel, and Illions. This carousel is reportedly considered unique in that it was worked on by so many of the master carvers. There were 35 jumping horses, 18 standing horses, a lion, tiger, mule, two camels, and two chariots. Some of its animals are even reported dated to the 1890s. 

(Click this link to see images of the carousel at Burlington Island.)

The carousel was reportedly quite popular, as was Burlington Island. Visitors came in droves from both sides of the river: from Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

New Ownership at Burlington Island

In 1917, the island was sold, and the new owners, George Bassler and Robert Merkel, began up the amusement park, giving it the longer name of Burlington Island Beach Park. The newly updated park was described by one source as “elaborate”. A 1921 Bristol Daily Courier article described the owners’ goals for the park were to become “one of the biggest and most popular pleasure resorts in the East”.

(The same 1921 article devotes more than one paragraph to the food served at the meeting between Burlington Island management and the local communities. Roast pig was served, garnished with an oyster dressing. On the side, roasted sweet and white potatoes, hamburg steak, corn, celery, bread, pickles, coffee, pie, and cheese. Hungry?)

New attractions were set to be opened May 15, 1922, including “a roller-coaster, a merry-go-round, whip, airships and Venetian swings,” according to the newspaper article. Other sources mention a Ferris wheel, a boat swing, an “ocean wave”, a Tunnel of Love, Steeplechase, Tumblebug, Dodge-em cars, bumper scooters, caterpillar, a fun house, a rifle range, and a pony ride.

The centerpiece of the updated park was a delightful wooden coaster called “The Greyhound”, which had already begun construction in fall 1921. This was a lovely out-and-back coaster. From the article, described by a representative of Baker & Miller Company: “It is to have a 4000 feet run, with a height of 55 feet and eight dips. […]   There will be a 400 feet tunnel at the beginning of the ride. This will be dark and suitable for lovesick couples. The coaster will be the very latest thing of its kind.” 

This coaster was designed by John A. Miller, the “Miller” in Baker & Miller Company, and built by Harry C. Baker, the “Baker” in Baker & Miller Company. (Miller and Baker were a dynamic duo, responsible for many popular coasters of the era. Miller is considered by some to be the father of the modern high-speed coaster due to his design for the underfriction wheel, patented in 1919 and used on nearly every coaster in the world today.) 

(a great view of the coaster here and here) 

Of course, there was a miniature train, too, this one called the Reading RR. 

The carousel too got an upgrade. A Wurlington military band organ, model 146A, was shipped to Wissahicken Station in May 1924, to entertain the guests with delightful music as they whirled on their horses.

Reportedly, the Burlington Island Beach Park became the hit of the river under new ownership. 1927 ad copy described the park, saying: “Nature’s beauty and modern amusement devices combine to make Burlington Island one of tho most popular pleasure parks. ” Thousands took river excursions up and down the Delaware, leading to 6 or 7 steamers idling at the pier at a time. Some would come by train and take the ferry. The ferryboat was called the William E. Doron, and shuttled people back and forth from Bristol to the island. There was a promenade and a midway, lighted walking paths, and multiple rides. As the industrial age came into full swing, this was the place to be.

Two Stories of Fire at Burlington Island

Now, there are two semi-conflicting stories about the flaming end of Burlington Island. The common point between both is the method. The end came with fire, the nemesis of many early parks; at quibble is the dates.

The first is the most common, and is repeated almost everywhere, including the Historic American Buildings Survey, number HABS NJ-1141, through the Library of Congress. It tells of two fires, the first and most destructive in 1928. It goes like this:

In 1928, a fire is said to have begun at 2 am. As the park was on an island, the firefighters and firefighting equipment had to be ferried across. As such, nearly all of the rides and amusements had burned to the ground by the time the firefighters were able to begin fighting the fire.

The fire more or less destroyed the amusement park, and a second fire in 1934 sealed the fate of the park. 

The other story is newer but reputable, making it worth describing here, and comes from historian Paul W. Schopp, to the Riverton NJ Historical Society. At the link, you can see the original rectangular carousel building as well as the newer round building. 

Schopp maintains that no fire occurred at Burlington Island in the 1920s, and especially not in 1928. He points out the timing (the Great Depression) and the closure of Delaware River steamboat traffic as factors that lead to the closure of the rides and concessions at the amusement park by the end of the 1920s. 

Schopp describes the conflagration similarly to the previous story, and references the date April 24, 1932. 

There is a freely-accessible OCR text available for the Daily News in New York for this day, describing multiple fires that broke out in the area the night previous; however, this describes only a small fire on Burlington Island (“Two small houses and several barns were -destroyed in a blaze that covered a wide area on Burlington Island in the Delaware River.”) and otherwise describes a fire destroying the scenic railway and concessions at Bayonne Pleasure Park, a different lost NJ theme park.

However, an alternate article from the Asbury Press from the same day provides a clearer view. The paper describes how the fire swept through the entire island, causing a loss of over $100,000, including summer homes and most of the amusement park buildings. 

Schopp then gives the dates of January 28, 1934 for the second fire, which can be backed up by an article from the Bristol Daily Courier. The paper describes how the firefighters from Bristol and Burlington were ferried to the island to put out the blaze, reportedly accidentally caused by two young boys. “One of the amusement concessions, the scenic railway, partially wrecked by the flames, can be seen on the right. In the foreground are firemen battling the blaze with buckets of water and chemicals.” The image being referenced does show the half-burnt scenic railway coaster Greyhound, visible even in the free public-access view. Another article from “The Mercury” charmingly describes the firefighters rowing themselves across the Delaware in rowboats with buckets to attempt to fight the fire.

Mystery of the 1928 Fire

So based on newspaper reports – primary sources – we know there was a fire in 1932, and another fire that sealed the deal in 1934. What about 1928? Well, a 1972 retrospective in The Philadelphia Inquirer on the history of the island gives the date of 1928 for a first, damaging fire. And as mentioned earlier, nearly every single secondary source discussing the carousel’s history mentions a 1928 fire. However, I’ve been unable to find any newspaper reference to a 1928 fire at Burlington Island.

Whenever exactly the first fire occurred, the hero of today’s story, Looff’s 18th carousel, miraculously escaped the blaze nearly unscathed, and was only partially damaged by fire. 

Burlington Island, however, was done for. Merkel, without the interest or funds to rebuild, sold the land (this to the VanSciver Sand Company) and began selling off any salvageable amusement rides. In the 50s, the sand company began mining sand and gravel from their half of the island, where the former amusement park used to be. This created the large lake that can now be seen in aerial views of the island. Currently, the city of Burlington now owns this half of the island. The other half is owned by a Board of Island Managers, a trust that actually predates the formation of the US, back to 1682. Their charter states that any development on their portion of the land must be “educational, conservational, historical, or recreational ”.

Currently in 2019, Burlington Island is undeveloped.

Seaside Heights: the early years

Now, let’s pause for a moment and head 60 miles due east from Burlington Island, to Seaside Heights, NJ, going back in time. When I last mentioned Seaside Heights a few minutes ago, it was the early 1900s, and a development company had just purchased the property with the intent to build. This was exciting, because the land is and was a barrier island, not useful for farming or producing any food). The general opinion at the time was reportedly that oceanfront property was unattractive, though developers were trying to change this. Excursion trains (trolleys) began running to the area on the weekends to the newly built resorts. By 1915, the land was changing hands at a public auction. At the same time, the first carousel opened at Seaside Heights – a steam-driven Dentzel carousel located on pilings only a few hundred feet from the shoreline.

The land took its first steps towards becoming a tourism and amusement mecca. A man named Joseph Vanderslice and the Senate Amusement Company built a gasoline-powered carousel, among other amusements. This failed within a year, lasting from 1915 through 1916.

The next summer, 1917, local builder Frank Freeman installed an electric Dentzel carousel in a building right on the water’s edge, reportedly with figures carved by Daniel Muller. The National Carousel Association describes Muller, saying that he “is generally recognized as the greatest carver of carousel animals, carving very realistic and artistic animals.” Reportedly, his only remaining carousels are at Forest Park (in Queens, NY) and at Cedar Point (in Ohio).

Freeman not only added a carousel, but other amusements as well: an indoor dance hall, an arcade, a skating rink, and a pier for fishing. It was named the Freeman Amusement Center, and became a successful trolley park.

The Carousel at the Heart of Casino Pier

This brings us back to the timeframe of Burlington Island and its 1928 fire, which had more or less destroyed the park. 

There was a man. A man named Robert Merkel. He had gotten involved with the development of Seaside Heights. The name might sound familiar, as he’d been the previous owner of Burlington Island. 

Merkel facilitated the sale of the Looff carousel to a Princeton contractor, Linus Gilbert. Gilbert wanted to bring some competition to the popular Freeman’s Amusement Center in Seaside Heights.

Some of the horses on the Looff carousel from Burlington Island were missing or damaged, but overall the carousel was in reasonable condition. Gilbert, of the L. R. Gilbert Construction Company, purchased the carousel and moved it to Seaside Heights. The carousel was restored, and the missing and overly damaged horses replaced with horses from other carousels.

The Wurlitzer band organ moved with the carousel, as well. With serial number 3673, the band organ is a style 146A.

In 1932, the carousel was officially opened at Seaside Heights. Gilbert had brought the original cupola building from Burlington Island, as well. The 10-sided unenclosed building did little to keep the weather off, and made the neighbors complain due to the noise of the Wurlitzer organ. Additionally, the Looff carousel was smaller and less elaborate than the neighboring Freeman carousel at the other end of the boardwalk. It was also completely detached from the other established amusements in the area. At the north end of the boardwalk, there was only the Looff carousel and a fishing pier, nothing else. The first few years were tight.

Not only locally, but nationally. It was the Great Depression. The economy of hand-carved carousels was collapsing – it was too expensive. Starting from the 1930s onward, fiberglass, aluminium, and plastic molds were the regular order of the day.  

Within five years, however, Gilbert built a larger surrounding complex around the carousel, including an Olympic-sized chlorine swimming pool. This was called the Seaside Heights Pool, and was reportedly a really “big deal” in the community, according to a later owner of Casino Pier. This drew thousand of people and gave reason to build more attractions along the pier. A fishing pier was built oceanwards with a few more modest attractions.

The Early Days of Casino Pier

In 1948, a man named John Fitzgerald and his business partner John Christopher purchased Casino Pier from Linus Gilbert. Carousels were beginning to fall out of favor. The younger generation was seeking thrills, and the older generation couldn’t make up the gap. The audience for slow-moving carousels began to dwindle. Oftentimes, the most efficient way to dispose of a carousel at a theme park looking for space was to literally set it on fire. Can you even imagine.

The town of Seaside Heights began to expand after the war, with veterans coming back for the good jobs and pleasant inexpensive oceanside housing, and this meant expansion for Seaside Heights amusements, as well. Kenneth Wynne Jr had married Fitzgerald’s daughter. Wynne was a lawyer and a lobbyist, and later worked for a TV station. 

Meanwhile, down the beach, catastrophe visited the Freeman’s carousel, that glorious Muller carousel with its beautiful details. Yes, another fire. The wooden carousel burned to the ground, completely destroyed. Floyd Moreland references a “phantom carousel” in a letter to the site Carousel Corner, saying it “operated only half of the summer of 1955 with the Carmel and Borelli animals on it”. An Illions carousel, formerly the Chafatino Carrousel from Coney Island, replaced it in 1957. This was a truly spectacular carousel – check out this image for some details. With the new carousel came a new pier and name – Funtown Pier.

In the late 50s, Fitzgerald came to Wynne to take over some of the park management and operations. Christopher had passed away in 1959, and Fitzgerald inherited full ownership rights. Wynne, Fitzgerald’s son-in-law, accepted the offer to manage the park, somewhere between 1958 and 1960. ”I liked the idea of coming to the Casino Pier here because it was show biz, something with a flair to it,’ he said in a newspaper interview.

Expansions and Firsts at Casino Pier

Wynne quickly expanded the pier eastward, and began adding amusements and rides. Our hero, the Dentzel/Looff carousel, got an upgrade to its Wurlitzer organ, with the conversion from a single-roll to a double roll. A fascinating 2001 article from Carousel Organ details exactly how Wurlitzer rolls are made, including photos. Well worth reading!

Wynne met up with Zurich-born Eddy Meir, who sold amusement rides on the behalf of the manufacturers. Meir and Wynne built up a good and regular relationship. “each year he would bring another spectacular ride”, Wynne is quoted as saying.  The first true rollercoaster at the pier was a Schiff wooden Wild Mouse coaster, opened in 1958, though, a kiddie coaster is said to have been at the pier in both 1952 and 1964.

In 1963, the first Himalaya ride in the US opened, right here at Casino Pier. You might remember the Himalaya from a different episode on this podcast, the Elektrenai episode, where I went a bit more in-depth into the Caterpillar and Music Express rides (Himalaya is another name for Music Express). 

1964 saw the installation of the Skyride, taking visitors from the pool area all the way to the east end of the pier at the time. This was essentially a Skyway-type ride, offering excellent views and a mild thrill. The Skyway had been a novelty and a marvel stateside when it opened at Disneyland in 1956, if you recall back to the early episodes of TAC. Parks around the country jumped to follow in Walt’s footsteps, and the Disneyland’s imported European Skyway began a US boom within the next decade.

1965 Fire at Casino Pier

1965 saw the expansion of the pier, 320 further feet out into the ocean. Additional things were to happen, though. On June 10, 1965, a major fire whipped up by the wind on the pier destroyed many of the rides. In particular, the Wild Mouse was absolutely burnt to a crisp. Interestingly, this was all caught on film and is available on YouTube. In the video, you can see the fire burning on and around the ferris wheel, wild mouse, that two-year-old Himalaya, and a scrambler. The video continues as firefighters put out the blaze with patrons looking on. A later article describes how the fishermen were so intent on having their fishing pier back that they reportedly chipped in free labor with Casino Pier-provided materials to begin the rebuilding effort.

A second wild mouse was brought in for the remainder of the 1965 season, running at a different place on the pier. By 1966, a third wild mouse was brought in and placed on the site of the original Schiff Wild Mouse. An image of the coaster during this time can be seen here. However, this wild mouse also only lasted the year, and it wouldn’t be for another 30+ years that another wild mouse would be installed at Casino Pier.

1970s at Casino Pier: “Firsts”

A small metal Zyklon coaster operated for a few years, between 1967 and 1969. 

In 1970, a Schwarzkopf Jet Star was purchased new and installed on the pier. You might remember a sibling of the Jet Star we’ve already discussed on the podcast: the Jet Star 2, SBNO at Children’s World in Elektrenai. (Though it may not be SBNO for long; internet hearsay is that some of the rides at Elektrenai have already been demolished between the time of that recording and the time of this recording. How about THAT for a live update?) 

In 1975, the first Enterprise ride in the United States was installed, right here at Casino Pier. Remember, Wynne was notably interested in the European ride circuit. You might remember the Enterprise ride from the Abandoned Yangon Amusement Park episode here on TAC. 

In 1976, the Wurlitzer organ on the carousel received a major rebuild from the BAB Organ Company. At the same time, mirrors featuring sculpted horseheads were added to the center pole of the carousel. Originally, there had been paintings in this position; however, these were destroyed in the 1950s (cause of the destruction unclear) and cartoon prints had been in place there between the 1950s through 976. The mirrors + horseheads are still in place today.

In 1979, the “Love Bugs” indoor/outdoor coaster was added – this was a ride built in 1959 for a travelling German carnival, known then as the Broadway Trip. This coaster operated at a number of different parks before arriving at Casino Pier, including Fun Forest in Seattle, Cedar Point in Ohio, and Palisades in New Jersey. This coaster was renamed to Wizard’s Cavern in 1988, and finally demolished in 2003 – a good long run for a once-travelling coaster.

1984: Floyd Moreland Saves the Carousel

In 1984, Wynne nearly sold the Loof/Dentzel carousel. By this time, the carousel was in need of repair, and a sale had reportedly been arranged to the tune of $275,000. Individual horses were selling for up to $100,000 at that time, as private collectors saw value in carousel horses in their living rooms and not at theme parks. Down the beach, the Illions Chafatino carrousel had been broken up and sold at auction, to be replaced by a Chance Rides fiberglass carousel.

Ultimately, Wynne decided not to sell the Looff carousel.

Why?

Enter Dean of the City University of New York, also a classics professor, Dr. Floyd Moreland. He’d ridden the carousel as a young child every summer. In his later adolescence and college years, he worked at the Casino Pier, operating the same carousel, coming back from school in California to operate the ride. “It paid my way through college. It paid my way through graduate school,” he is quoted as saying to the paper. He began campaigning to save the carousel when rumors began to spread about its demise.

Ultimately, he succeeded, and with a group of dedicated volunteers and private donors, began to refurbish the carousel in the unheated building during the pier’s off-season. Members of the community were able to donate to support the restoration, and many of the animals are inscribed with the names of particular donors.

One of the prominent people involved in the restoration was veterinarian Dr. Norma Menghetti. She assisted Dr. Moreland in patching and painting: the animals, the chariots, even the original paintings on the center pole. Menghetti operated the ride on weekends for many years. Moreland later described her as having “put her heart and soul into the renovation, upkeep, and operation of the carousel at Casino Pier”. Moreland’s partner, Elaine Egues, also was heavily involved, and Moreland and Egues ran the carousel-themed shop on the boardwalk together, as well, called the Magical Carousel Shoppe. 

1980s and 1990s at Seaside Heights

After the successful preservation of the carousel, things seemed to be going well, both for the carousel and for Seaside Heights.

Glockenspiel bells were added to the carousel’s Wurlitzer organ in 1986, a cheerful upgrade to the sound of the now 62 year old organ.

In the late 1980s, Wynne and Bennett remodeled the original Arcade building and pool area. The original structures had caused a traffic obstruction, requiring motorists to detour around the Casino Pier structures. By tearing down the arcade and remodeling it, Wynne and Bennett granted the municipality the ability to continue their road. This wasn’t just kind-heartedness. This made it easier for people to get to Casino Pier and park, creating more business. ”It is the smartest move we ever made,” Mr. Wynne said, ”because it opened up the town, made everything more accessible, and also made us the middle of the boardwalk, rather than the end.”

The “Water Works” opened on the site of the former swimming pool, with water slides and a lazy river, and the new arcade building was renamed the Palace Amusements building. The centerpiece of the Palace Amusements building remained the original Looff/Dentzel carousel. By 1988, it was said to attract 150,000 visitors per year, and was valued at $750,000. 

In 1988, Wynne sold his family’s share of the business to Robert Bennett, already a partner in the park since the early 80s. Wynne cited excessive governmental regulations and difficulty finding college-age employees as reasons for choosing to sell. It wasn’t as fun in the late 80s as it had been in the mid 60s, was his general opinion at the time as described to the papers.

An E. F. Miler mouse coaster was installed in 1999, some 30+ years after the last time a mouse coaster operated on the pier. It was demolished in 2012, but we’ll get to that in a minute. 

The other big coaster, the Jet Star closed in 2000 and was removed. The only currently operational Jet Star coaster is at Luna Park La Palmyre in France.

Restoration (Again) of the Carousel

Our good carousel friend, the Floyd Moreland Dentzel/Looff carousel, was round about 90 years old at this point, and the Wurlitzer organ was 76 years old. Unfortunately, it was showing its age. In the fall of 2000, the organ was described as “like a poor soul on life support”. That winter, then, the organ was shipped off to Carlisle PA, to the Mechanical Musical Instrument Restoration shop. There, the organ underwent a complete restoration, involving multiple skilled artisans and almost every part re-created, re-machined, or re-built. The restoration is detailed at this link. I strongly recommend reading this article, even if you don’t give a fig about the technical details of Wurlitzer organ restoration. The eight month saga of the restoration involves a sudden death, the mourning of a friendship, and the rebuilding of lives along with the rebuilding of the instrument. When the Wurlitzer organ returned to the carousel in 2001, a new plaque was also added to the carousel, memorializing the artist gone too soon.

More Changes to Casino Pier in the 2000s

In 2002, Bennett sold his portion of Casino Pier to the Storino family. 

You might remember I told you that a ride called the Jet Star closed in 2000. Confusingly, the Star Jet was added in 2002. This isn’t a typo or a misspeak, it’s a different coaster, coming from E & F Miler. Only two of these 52ft tall coasters were made. The other has been at three different parks, currently sitting disassembled at Fun Spot America Atlanta, waiting to be rebuilt. This one was called the Star Jet, and entertained riders for a solid decade with roller coaster thrills right at the end of Casino Pier. 

We’ll get back to the Star Jet in a moment.

In 2004, Water Works, the Casino Pier-associated waterpark, was remodeled, and renamed to its current branding, Breakwater Beach.

2010 saw the 100th anniversary of the Floyd J. Moreland Dentzel/Looff carousel. TV’s “The Cake Boss” (Carlo’s Bakery) was reportedly on hand with a cake depicting the carousel. The carousel continued to do solid business with carousel enthusiasts, though videos and photos show half-empty rides more often than not.

And then we reach 2012.

A Hurricane: 2012’s Hurricane Sandy

Here in 2012 is where I’d originally intended this story to start. Remember how I was telling you this would be a quick story? Yeah, I’m funny.

So if you do searches for abandoned amusement parks (https://www.google.com/search?q=abandoned+amusement+parks), you’ll see a few really popular images – the creepy decayed caterpillar train, the ghostly spiral of the coast at Nara Dreamland, the radioactive rides at Chernobyl’s Pripyat and this. The image of a roller coaster, sitting in the middle of the ocean. 

Remember the Star Jet?

The deadliest, most destructive hurricane of the 2012 season was Hurricane Sandy. Superstorm Sandy. Between October 22 and October 29, Sandy battered the Bahamas, Cuba, the eastern US, and specifically, the Jersey shoreline. She currently stands as the forth-costliest hurricane in US history, estimated at around $65 billion. 

The Jersey Shore and Seaside Heights in particular were among the worst-hit areas. “You can’t even imagine,” was said of the damage. 

The flooding and massive waves caused collapses and damage to both Funtown Pier and Casino Pier. This iconic image, the Star Jet “floating” in the ocean, all by itself from some perspectives. Day after Sandy video shows the immediate aftermath for the coaster and pier: https://youtu.be/y6Xsdx0KGfI?t=117 

All told, eighteen rides, including the Star Jet coaster, were destroyed by Sandy. 

Cleanup took quite some time, not surprisingly. The Star Jet sat in the ocean for almost 7 months before it was finally demolished in May 2013. This has led to incredible images and video of the “abandoned” coaster – search Flickr, Youtube, or Google, and you’ll find them, from incredible photographers and videographers.

This, then, is the source of that mysterious, strange image of a rollercoaster in the ocean, seemingly perfectly intact. Not so mysterious after all, but certainly sad, and iconic.

2013 Seaside Heights Fire

After the hurricane, business along the Jersey shore slowly began to recover. Casino Pier and Funtown Pier began cleaning up in the off-season. 

The century-old carousel was still standing, structure untouched by the ferocious winds of the hurricane.  The pier’s basement had flooded, however, leaving the ride’s mechanics in standing water for some time. There was no way to determine whether the ride had been damaged.

But when electricity to the pier was finally turned on again before Memorial Day, almost seven months after the hurricane? The carousel came to life. It was open for Memorial Day weekend that year, 2013. 

Down the beach, despite surviving the hurricane, in 2013, the fiberglass Chance Rides carousel burned down, along with more than 50 businesses nearby, in a six-alarm fire. The fire was due to a spark from compromised electrical wiring, corroded by Hurricane Sandy’s floodwaters. The Freeman’s Carousel and the Futown Pier end of the boardwalk didn’t reopen. As of a 2018 article, several attractions were in the planning process but had not yet come to fruition. As of the time of this recording, based on my understanding, owners have decided not to rebuild the pier. The borough has limited the max height of rides on the pier to 100ft, plus case by case exemptions, and the owners were seeking to build 200-300 ft tall rides; they could not guarantee profits without guaranteeing their ability to build the rides they wanted, so they chose to walk away.

Recent Years at Seaside Heights

In 2014, the Moreland carousel was nearly sold, again.

As of 2014, an article described the carousel as “quietly for sale” the prior few years, and openly for sale in the last few years, meaning the late 2010s. The carousel was described as in poor shape, needing major repairs, and ridership was decreasing. At the time, the owners blamed the economy, declining ridership, and maintenance expenses for the historic carousel.

Locals and carousel enthusiasts were worried. They feared a terrible carousel fate, last seen at the Whalom Park carousel in 2000: being split up, horses and animals and machinery sold away in pieces, boxed and split up. Support groups were started to “Save The Carousel”.

A deal was proposed by the mayor at the time and ultimately went forward, where the borough would take control of the carousel as well as a Casino Pier-owned parking lot, swapping oceanfront public property north of the pier with Casino Pier in return. The deal generated controversy and legal challenges, although the general public opinion of the deal was positive. 

Rebuilding of Casino Pier

The land swap actually enabled Casino Pier to rebuild and expand after their losses during Hurricane Sandy.

2016 saw a mini-golf course with 36-holes, as well as a wave pool at Breakwater Beach, the “water park” side of the park. Construction also began on the new expansion to the pier on the land traded in the carousel-land swap. By January of 2017, a new Ferris wheel and the new extreme Hydrus coaster began to be constructed on the newly-built newly-expanded pier. 

Hydrus is a so-called Euro-Fighter coaster. It features a 70+ foot vertical lift and a quote “beyond-vertical” drop, where the coaster goes past 90 degrees after the hill. The Hydrus coaster opened in May 2017, and the Ferris wheel in June of 2017.

2019: Temporary Closure of the Moreland Carousel

In April of 2019, the carousel took its last ride there at Seaside Heights, after 87 years of operation. 

I’m recording this episode on the first of October, 2019. Later this month, the Floyd Moreland carousel is slated to be disassembled by the Ohio restoration group Carousels and Carvings, with parts to be stored in a pole barn workshop owned by the city nearby. 

The borough estimated a cost of approximately $4.5 M to construct a new building for the carousel, according to the local paper. Earlier in the year, the group applied for several grants, including one specifically for historical preservation and repair of the physical structure of the carousel, including machinery, decking, and horses. 

This is obviously a lot of money for a local government to cover. In November, voters will actually help decide how easy the carousel’s restoration can be. The “Natural Lands Trust Fund Program” is on the ballot. Currently, the county’s open space tax provides a small dedicated revenue stream for the local governments to step in and acquire lands for “general conservation or farmland preservation”, but this money currently can’t be used for historical landmarks, either to save them from destruction or preserve them. The ballot issue would change that, and allow Ocean County to use taxes to do things not currently financially feasible, such as preserve things like the carousel. 

The Seaside Heights Historical Society was planned to be created years ago, after Sandy, but was delayed until its formation earlier in 2019, a non-profit, volunteer-run group that is the official fundraising group for the Moreland carousel restoration. Their website contains some information about the project, and includes a set of detail shots from the carousel, as well as blueprints for the future new building.

A few weeks ago, a new sign was put up at the location of the carousel’s future home.

The mayor of Seaside Heights is quoted as saying that he hopes the carousel will be up and running by summer 2021. 

Conclusions

For many years, the carousel was the symbol of Seaside Heights, decorating official insignia, flags, and police cars. The carousel, as Moreland himself once wrote, was the soul that shaped the development of this once-barren mile-long stretch of Jersey shoreline. 

Today, the carousel is a declining breed. The majority of the masterfully hand-carved wooden animals from a century ago were burned or destroyed following the Depression, and many still extant fell into disrepair. But even a modern aluminum or fiberglass carousel can be an excellent connection to the golden days. Riding one, you might close your eyes and sit back, picturing a different time, when the simple pleasure of a carousel, going round and round, was the pinnacle of the amusement scene. And maybe if you’re lucky, you are close enough to a beautifully restored wooden classic to ride one of those, too.

Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of The Abandoned Carousel, where I told you about Burlington Island and Casino Pier, and about the historic century-old Floyd Moreland Dentzel/Looff Carousel. Please check out the official historical society page: seasideheightshistory.org, or find them on Facebook: Facebook.com/seasideheightshistoricalsociety. 

I’m always interested in hearing about your experiences with the places I talk about. I also love suggestions for future episodes, and corrections for this or past episodes. Contact me through my website or across social media as The Abandoned Carousel. 

I’ll be back soon with another great episode. It’s October, so maybe the episodes will take a bit of a spookier tilt? You’ll have to come back to find out. Remember what Lucy Maud Montgomery once said: nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.

References

1. http://web.archive.org/web/20180130002029/http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/recommendations/ad.html. Accessed September 23, 2019.
2. http://www.dryl.org/2010/Burlington_Island/Burlington%20Island.htm. Accessed September 23, 2019.
3. http://web.archive.org/web/20150526000808/http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/recommendations/ad.html. Accessed September 27, 2019.
4. https://carousels.org/psp/CasinoPier/. Accessed September 28, 2019.
5. Seaside Heights Historical Society – Home. https://www.facebook.com/seasideheightshistoricalsociety. Accessed October 1, 2019.
6. Historical Society of Riverton – Posts. https://www.facebook.com/rivertonhistory/posts/2357080464359335?__tn__=-R. Accessed September 30, 2019.
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The post Floyd Moreland Dentzel/Looff Carousel appeared first on The Abandoned Carousel.

This time we’re back in Canada again. Yep! Skinner’s Wet ‘n Wild was located in Lockport, Manitoba, a small town near Winnipeg. For Americans, go to Fargo, North Dakota, and then drive north four more hours.

Manitoba Tourism and the Genesis of Skinner’s Wet ‘n Wild

In 1984, the Rural Tourism Industry Incentive Program of Destination Manitoba offered a grant of $150,000 to help fund the development of a major water park in Lockport. This assistance was part of a grant program designed to expand and promote the Manitoba tourism industry. Destination Manitoba was 60% federal and 40% provincial (state). 

The owner group included Al Thompson, of the Skinner’s restaurant chain, and Wayne and Dave Babych. The Babych brothers played hockey in the NHL – Wayne in the late 70s through the late 80s, and Dave from 1980 to 1999.

Operational Years for Skinner’s Wet ‘n Wild

Together, they built Skinner’s Wet ‘n Wild, a waterpark in Lockport, Manitoba. “This is one of those landmarks that pretty much everyone in Winnipeg/Lockport knows about.” says blogger The Silent Road.  

The park’s predominant feature was the four-slide complex in the middle. It was seven stories tall, and the slides were reportedly 425 feet long.  

Skinner’s Wet ‘n Wild officially opened in 1984, becoming the second largest water park in Manitoba. Aside from the slides, the park also featured baseball, mini-golf, bumper cars, golf course, and batting cages. 

The snack building promoted nachos and mini donuts together at once, which sounds most triumphant to me. You can’t go wrong if that’s what you’re offering.

Reportedly, the park saw about 1200 tourists on an average weekend, but that was not considered to be as significant a tourist draw as had been hoped. 

Skinner’s Wet ‘n Wild had a fairly nondescript operational lifetime, and to be honest, has been more interesting in its abandonment. It was the place of choice for school patrol weekends, day trips, and other small outings. Online, people remember the park fondly, if vaguely, with “good times” being a very common refrain. Other common refrains, however, are to the effect of the small size of the park, the poor functionality of the slides, and undesirable things being found in the water. A former visitor online opines: “I believe the issue was lack of maintenance and the slides got so worn down it was too expensive to fix them. The last few years they would scratch the shit out of you going down. I miss that place it was fun.”

Downfall of Skinner’s Wet ‘n Wild

In the early 2000s, several summers were unseasonably cool. This kept attendance numbers low, severely hurting income. “We were closed 16 days in August last year,” the owner remembers in an article at the time. 

“Hard to stay in business when you can only be open for 2-3 wks max during the summer,” comments one former visitor online.

“Our expenses keep going up. Taxes and insurance were big factors,” says owner Al Thompson in an interview with the Winnipeg Free Press at the time. Liability insurance for an attraction of this type was costly, as were the expenses related to maintaining the slide structure after two decades of harsh Manitoba winters.

Competition with other local attractions, including the free Grand Beach and Victoria Beach, was also fierce. And of course, Fun Mountain, closer to Winnipeg, opened around the same time as Skinner’s Wet ‘n Wild. 

“Although maybe it’s worth noting that in my experience the park sucked when it was still open…overcrowded & there was only the one staircase to several slides. Apparently that’s why it was shut down, because it was a safety hazard”.

Skinner’s Wet ‘n Wild closed in 2005. 

Abandonment of Skinner’s Wet ‘n Wild

Thompson sold the park in 2007 to Santa Fe Developments, who were reportedly only interested in the land and not the waterpark as a business. It was reported that they were planning a housing development, but no work proceeded. Internet rumors suggest that the next decade’s worth of delays involved struggles with the city primarily over utility connections.

Unsurprisingly, the site became a haven for teenagers and urban explorers. Vandalism also became a concern, with a gazebo set on fire in 2017. Anecdotally, the park had lax security even when it was operational, leading teens and young adults to spend evenings casually trespassing at the operational park.

Reportedly, during at least one Halloween, people dressed up and used part of the park for spooks.

2015 and 2017 interviews with the CBC describe safety concerns with the massive seven story slide structure, by this point missing steps and segments of the slides after suffering through decades of harsh winters. At some points, missing slide segments led to thirty foot drops straight down.

Finally, reports surfaced of construction vehicles on site in 2017, after years of governmental concerns for safety. 

“We’re sad to see it go because we’ve had a lot of, a lot of years of fun times, but it’s nice to see the next step,” said Skinner’s owner Brenda Thompson. Reportedly, by the time the slides were to be demolished, they would shake in the wind, and a number of pieces of the slide simply cracked and fell off, leaving thirty foot drops to the ground in places.

Sometime after October of 2017, the massive slide structure was finally demolished. 

Interestingly, at least a few sections of the slides still live on, sold to private buyers for personal use.

Netflix’s How It Ends was filmed on location at the site, featuring the slides shortly before they were demolished.

Additional media usage of the site includes an independent film called The Goose, and the 2011 film Father’s Day.

The plan is for the site to become a residential housing development. Or at least, that was the plan at one time. Other information I’ve read indicates that the municipality has refused the idea of housing developments, townhouses, or condos, and that the land will be public green space. Only time can truly tell.

Skinner’s Restaurant

The Skinner’s is still there, and still open. Oh, did I not get into that? The park was called Skinner’s Wet ‘n Wild after the Skinner’s restaurant immediately adjacent to the waterpark. Remember, the Thompsons were partial owners of the park and are owners of the restaurant. Skinner’s is reportedly the oldest continually operating hot dog stand in Canada. The shop opened as a small stand in Lockport in 1929. Storekeeper Jim Skinner sold hot dogs for 10c and fries for 5c. Opening a store in the middle of the depression was a challenging act, but it proved to be a smart one, given the store’s track record.

The location of Skinner’s by the former waterpark is the “new” one, new since 1946, that is. Pictures online show black and white checked floors, red seats, and plenty of slick chrome details. “Growing up in the St. Andrews/Lockport area, I remember when they built Skinner’s Wet n’ Wild water park. Hell, who hasn’t worked at Skinner’s a summer or two! I hated having ice cream duty. Hard ice cream, the WORST. Having to stick your arm in gooey bucks all day, trying to get that perfect scoop. But it was almost like a right of passage having to put your time in at the legendary Skinner’s restaurant.”

Comparing Skinner’s Wet ‘n Wild and Lake Dolores

I thought it was interesting to look at Skinner’s Wet ‘n Wild after Lake Dolores, as a nice little compare and contrast exercise. Both parks closed for good in 2004, yet the condition of Lake Dolores is beyond the pale in regards to damage, scrapping, and graffiti. At Skinner’s Wet ‘n Wild, there’s some graffiti, yes, but not much. Only a little scrapping. Few smashed toilets! Windows still had glass in them for goodness sake! Is it just the cultural difference between Canadians and Americans? And Wet ‘n Wild was demolished in 2017, while Lake Dolores still remains standing and smashed. 

But still, a similarity between the sites is the opinion of visitors that often they were both too far from major city centers. Of course, Lake Dolores was a solid two hours from both Los Angeles and Las Vegas. Lockport, in contrast, is a small town about 30 minutes from the major city of Winnipeg in Manitoba. Far enough to be inconvenient for things like school field trips and summer camps, particularly when a larger waterpark with more features existed just five minutes from Winnipeg. Skinner’s Wet ‘n Wild was further away from the big city compared to the other park, and had fewer amenities. Given the competition and the short summers, it’s not surprising how things turned out. Yes, that larger waterpark, Fun Mountain, is still open.

Conclusions

No matter what, though, folks of course have strong memories about Skinner’s Wet ‘n Wild. Imagine the spooky thrill of seeing a shadowy green slide structure backlit by city lights at night, surrounded by inky darkness. Imagine too a bright sunny day, the chill of a wet swimsuit as you climb the stairs high up in the air; catching a warm breeze off the prairie; then the whoosh of the chlorinated water as you slip-slide down into a big splash, chasing the last glimmering days of summer.

A former visitor online sums it up perfectly.

“It is strange being old enough to remember places like this opening brand new, and seeing them dying like this thirty years later is evidence what was fun and adventurous to us in our youth has become irrelevant today.”

Remember that what you’ve read is a podcast! A link is included at the top of the page. Listen to more episodes of The Abandoned Carousel on your favorite platform: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | RadioPublic | TuneIn | Overcast | Pocket Casts | Castro. Support the podcast on Patreon for extra content! Comment below to share your thoughts – as Lucy Maud Montgomery once said, nothing is ever really lost to us, as long as we remember it.

 Thanks to Holly for providing the inspiration for this episode, and for her lovely images of the abandoned waterpark.

If you enjoyed the show, please subscribe on your podcast app, and remember to tell a friend. I’d love to hear your stories, about this park, or anywhere else you’d like me to cover – drop me a line below.

As Lucy Maud Montgomery once said, nothing is ever really lost to us, as long as we remember it.

References

I’ve included a complete list of references used while researching this topic. It’s hidden under the link for brevity.

The post Skinner’s Wet ‘n Wild appeared first on The Abandoned Carousel.

This episode is best experienced as a video or audio podcast. Listen or watch; both players are embedded below.

American Adventure’s Earliest History

The Shipley estate is an ancient manor in Derbeyshire, England, and when I say ancient, I mean ancient. The Domesday Book, the 1086 England survey ordered by King William the Conqueror, mentions the Shipley estate. 

Early on, the land was used primarily for hunting and farming. Starting in the 16th century and fully entrenched by 1722, coal mining began to be the primary source of profit for the land owners, the Miller-Mundy family. The mines continued operating under family ownership for the next 200+ years. 

(If you’re wondering whether you stumbled into the wrong podcast, fear not. We’ll get to the theme park soon enough.)

In 1920, the Shipley Colliery Company took over the running of the mines from the Miller-Mundy family who’d owned the land previously. During World War II, coal reserves in the UK were taken under the control of the government for the war effort. The National Coal Board was created to run all UK collieries, and took over operations completely as of Jan 1, 1947. This included the Shipley Colliery.

Once there were 3 coal mines, working 15 seams of coal and 30 railway sidings covering 176 acres in the vicinity. However, coal mining in the UK peaked in the 1910s, and began drastically falling in the 1960s. Coalpits of Woodside and Coppice, located at Shipley, were regarded as uneconomical and closed at this time.

Shipley Country Park

Working with the National Coal Board, the Derbyshire Country Council purchased the land, and decided to create a park as a memorial for the former mining activities in the area. The NCB and KLF mining spent four years reclaiming the former colliery land using opencast methods. Two additional years were spent contouring, seeding, planting, and constructing, in order to make the land available for public use. 

Shipley Country Park opened in 1976. Shipley Lake, to the west, was artificial and had originally been created for and near Shipley Hall, the long-gone estate manor. During the open-cast mining in the early 1969s, the lake had been drained. As part of the reclamation process, it was lined with clay and refilled, becoming the 37-acre freshwater Shipley Lake.

Surrounding Shipley Lake was Shipley Lakeside, which was designated for privately-owned leisure development. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, discussions began to occur about the future of the area. A tentative agreement was settled on for a park about the best of all things British, past, present, and future.

Private company KLF group negotiated a 100-year-lease from the Derbyshire County Council (DCC) on the property, and discussion moved forward about the leirsure park. The residents of Shipley caught wind of this agreement, however, and were against the concept and its expected traffic congestion and noise pollution. There was much political infighting in the best local style, but KLF finally got the go-ahead to begin construction for their park.

Britannia Park

The park was to be called Britannia Park. 

Britannia Park was envisioned as quite the grand affair, with multiple themed areas, largely based off the EPCOT idea. In Festival Village, there was to be a traditional village green with a Blacksmith, and of course plenty of cafes and shops. A 1/25th scale display was planned with displays of English landmarks done in miniature. Traditional British crafts would also be showcased. 

A Wonderland area was proposed for children; an Adventureland area for a family-friendly amusement park; and the lake for water activities and sports.

The star of the park was the eight pavilions of the British Genius exhibit, where commercial investors could highlight the importance of their products to the average Brit. 

It looked like it could be a charming park, but after irritating both the locals and the DCC taxpayers, there was a steep hill to climb. And since this episode is called American Adventures Park and not Britannia Park, I’m sure that you can guess things didn’t go well.

Money troubles happened, for one. KLF hoped sponsors would cover some costs (“To participate in Britannia Park is to contribute to the success and share in the benefits of a major national tourist centre,” was the promise in the park’s brochure.) and ultimately only about 20M lbs were raised (EPCOT cost approximately $800M).

The park opened on June 27th, 1985, and it wasn’t at all complete. The former heavyweight champion Henry Cooper gave a speech. There was a flyover by the Concorde. Then things began to go downhill. Only five of the eight British Genius pavilions were complete (occupied by the National Coal Board, the Royal Mint, and the Bass beer brewery) and there was half a mile of miniature railway. And that was it. The rest of the park was reportedly a muddy mess, much not even landscaped. 

The season was a disaster. Mother Nature even seemed to be out for the park – it was an extremely rainy summer. This rain kept both visitors and construction workers away. 

Only weeks after the grand opening, KLF was already selling shares in its business to pay off the creditors for the park, and staff were even laid off.

By November of 1985, Britannia Park was closed for good, after only 12 weeks of operation.

Ramifications of Britannia Park’s Closure

There were no buyers waiting to take on the failed Britannia Park. Derbyshire County Council was forced to buy back the land for 2.5M lbs. 

Years later, Peter Kellard and the KLF Group were the subjects of (reportedly) the longest criminal trial in UK history. Over 14 months, it was revealed that KLF was in debt to the tune of 8.7M. Park debts went unpaid, even the appearance fee for Henry Cooper.

Peter Kellard was found guilty on several counts of fraud, for which he was sentenced to four years in prison (and served one). The chairman of Britannia Park, John Wright, received a six-month sentence for his part in the fraud.

The Origin of American Adventure Theme Park

Enter John Rigby, associated with Park Hall Leisure. This company is perhaps better known for its association with the UK theme park called Camelot Theme Park, which opened in 1984. Rigby negotiated a deal with DCC in August of 1986. Another 100-year lease, but this time reportedly with less strings attached. 

Rigby wanted to capitalize on his success with Camelot and open a new theme park. This was going to be a “fully-fledged Cowboy vs. Native” theme park.

Rigby essentially took the infrastructure from the old Britannia Park, and put an overlay on it: Native Americans on one half of the park, Cowboys on the other half. The entrance pavilion was given a stars and stripes paint scheme. 

Rides at American Adventure

American Adventure opened with incredible theming for the time – Alton Towers was the other big park at the time and wouldn’t add a big themed ride for a few years. “Major new theme park”

The former British Genius pavilion, essentially an empty warehouse, was given a fiberglass makeover. Possibly the most famous part of the park (at least in its abandonment), the building was covered in faux hills and giant fiberglass faces painted as Native Americans. Inside, a giant play area for kids under 8. 

A replica of the Alamo, reportedly quite convincing, camoflagued an area for horseback stunt shows called Wild West Shootout. Lazy Lil Saloon was another area for live shows, where saloon girls would dance to entertain guests. 

A Zamperla Buffalo coaster opened with the park. 

A log flume called Cherokee Falls. At the time of the park’s opening, this ride was the tallest in the UK. 

A small miniature train ride went around the park, repurposing old Britannia Park tracks. The train was called Santa Fe Railway, and went all the way around the park – popular for both transportation and excellent views.

Fort St. Lawrence opened the next year with the Great Niagra Falls Rapids (later called Grand Canyon Rapids and then Rocky Mountain Rapids). The rapids ride had 12-seater round boats and was considered by some to be the best ride of its type in the UK.

Boom Years for American Adventure

American Adventure was a moderate success after its opening, but it didn’t do as well as expected. The park was still overshadowed by fallout from the Britannia Park disaster, which the media was still focusing on.  

Possibly in a bid to distract the media and boost attendance, in 1989, a new ride came to the park via the Glasgow Garden Festival. It was called The Missile and was a Vekoma boomerang ride. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin opened the ride. “Most intense ride in the UK” at the time, despite being similar to another ride at West Midlands Safari Park, nearby. The next year in the 1989 season, “Spaceport USA” section was added around The Missile.  5 years before similar Nemesis opened at Alton Towers nearby – cost of 4M pounds for the section. 

1991 was American Adventure park’s most popular season.

In 1993, cowboys vs natives theme dropped for all over red, white, and blue. The time for immersive theming was over. 

“Nightmare Niagra” was an upgrade to the log flume ride formerly called Cherokee Falls. This became a highlight of the park – The extra drop made it the tallest log-flume in the UK throughout its operational life (this record has now reverted to Loggers Leap at Thorpe Park as this ride used to hold the record before the new drop was added). Unfortunately this new ride was never advertised to any great extent.

Competition from the other parks in the area during the 1994 season was intense, with most of them opening major rides. American Adventure didn’t have anything new to offer. They began throwing things at the wall to see what would stick:

The children’s play area Pioneer Playground was closed and the space given to a Motion Master 4D movie.

Go-karts were installed at the expense of one of the live horse stunt shows. 

Lightwater Valley, a theme park in Yorkshire, was looking to free up some capital. They sold a ride to American Adventure in 1995. It was called “Iron Wolf” and themed as the Gladiator’s Arena from the itv game show. This was a double loop coaster. Opinions are mixed on this one, with some loving it and some hating it. Quote: “It was a massive mistake buying something as uninspiring as Twin Looper.” The ride reportedly still had Lightwater Valley logos visible on it throughout its first operational year.

Soon, there were struggles with attendance. It became clear that there was no longer any interest in detailed theming like in the early years of the park. Although the detailed theming had been dropped in 1993 with the change to the red, white, and blue “theme”, it wasn’t until 1996 that this became an obvious negative.

1997 heralded big changes for American Adventure, and potentially the turning point in the park’s history. Granada sold the leases to Venture World, and John Broome, the original developer of Alton Towers. This was part of a broader movement during that time, where public companies exited from the attractions sector. Following the sale of American Adventure, Granada also sold Camelot, the neighboring amusement park, to that park’s management in a buyout. The Tussauds Group, which owned three major UK parks, was sold by its parent company around the same time.

A Skycoaster was installed at an upcharge.

1998 saw a short-lived attraction called the Flying Island. The ride had a habit of getting stuck, requiring fire department intervention, and the ride closed after two years. 

1998 also saw the closure of the grand entrance. The main entrance to the park was suffering from mining subsidence (essentially sinking and collapsing). What was once one of the most attractive areas of the park was closed off. The amazing feeling of walking down the steps from the entrance plaza and seeing the park unfold in front of you was gone. It was another negative for the park, particularly as the new entrance had a view of the portapotties.

Around this time, John Broome tried to promote name changes – he very much disliked the American theming. “American Adventure World” was the new name, and the long term goals was to remove the “American” aspect of the park. The name changes were short-lived, however, as was Broome’s position.

John Broome left management of American Adventure in 1999. The park was sold to the THG Group, who owned Blackpool Tower, Winter Gardens, and Piers (other UK parks). Major changes were afoot and many smaller rides were removed and sections closed off. A series of extra-pay attractions were added, including the JCB diggers, where guests could pay to spend five minutes in a real digger. Most rides were beginning to show wear, with malfunctioning parts and ride structures badly in need of paint.

2003 saw a JCB overlay including a JCB digging attraction, at an upcharge.

Less and less attention began to be paid to maintenance of the park. 

2004-2005 was another period of huge turmoil for the park. It was the end of Nightmare Niagara.

Around the same time, the Missile closed, standing empty for all of 2005. So too did the water rapids ride, which was said to be because of structural issues and water pollution.

The park became a shell of its former self. Most structures and buildings were left standing, despite being abandoned/closed.

In 2006, new marketing came out, promoting American Adventure as a place for cartoons and family rides. New rides opened up, including a handful of “carnival” type rides and a Zamperla runaway mine train ride.

On January 4, 2007, American Adventure Park announced it would not reopen after 19 years of operation. The lease went back to the county council.

American Adventure Rides: Sold

Missile closed at end of 2004 season, stood unused for all of 2005; sold to Pleasurewood Hills in 2006 as “Wipeout” and is still open

Buffalo Stampede → Twin Lakes Theme Park in May 2007

Mini Mine Rush → Flamingoland (via Gullivers)

Twin Looper → Poland – lagendia theme park Tic Tac Tornado

Many rides → billings aquadrome

Big Country Motioneering – runaway train (near CF/NN) – ride was sold and traveled, went to Dubai

Abandonment of American Adventure

Many people began visiting the abandoned site – 2008 videos with the Aztec faces. In 2008 or 2009, much of the park was demo’d in order to avoid becoming an attractive nuisance.

In 2012, an announcement was made that the land would be redeveloped. However, nothing seemed to come of it.

In Feb 2018, “Shipley Lakeside by Waystone” was supposed to begin construction. This site would be a housing development, business park, possible healthcare, retirement facility, and pub. However, 2018 came and went. 

Many petitions went around, looking to reopen the park. One had over 10,000 signatures.

Derbyshire Wildlife Trust is said to be purchasing 160 acres surrounding the site to create a nature preserve.

Many urbex videos are available on Youtube. A 2018 video really establishes what is left.

there are signs marking what was located in the different areas. Nearly all that is left are concrete footings. Paths are overgrown with weeds, pavement and brick crumbling. 

Near the Missile, was Lunch Pad (restaurant) and Space Port Driving School (kids driving ride). Spaceport Cinema, a 3D/4D ride, like a big circle. The concrete portion of a lift hill at the rapids ride is still partially visible. 

Trees were all reportedly cut down in 2016 and many have grown back.

Water and many canals for Nightmare Niagra (log flume) are still visible, though crumbling and incredibly overgrown with flora. Nearby, there is a rusted metal footing that used to support the Runaway Train ride. In this area, the pavement is very crumbly.

The bare outlines of the arena can still be seen. 

Pier 49, nearby the arena, is sinking into the water on one side.

Out on Tentacle Island, the footings for the ride can still be seen, with large rusted bolts sticking out of solid concrete blocks. Floating aimlessly in the lake where the wind takes it, the platform that once held fireworks and a hole for the golf game sits. No longer covered in any astroturf, sadly.

Near the main shop area, traintracks from the miniature train are still visible and relatively clear of weeds – wooden logs on a gravel sea. By the original main entrance, a nearly-rotten wooden bridge stands. 

In the former staff parking lot, on grass-covered ground, sits one of the former river rapids cars – now solely the structural components, “concrete”-looking plastic and rusted metal, upside down. A thin border of red paint is all that makes it clear that this once was a ride car.

A wheel that could be a spare from the Twin Looper coaster sits in a patch of weeds, rusted and falling apart.

Work for the Shipley Lakeside development is finally about to begin. Concrete crushing of all old foundations said to start in mid-2019, with land ready for housebuilders in 2020.

Helen McLoughlin, development director, said there was still 12 to 18 months of work to do on the old foundations before the first homes could be built. 

Quote: “This is all weather dependent because what we have to do is take out old foundations that were left behind from the legacy of the American Adventure and they have to be re-crushed and used on site.” 

Quote: “It’s literally just a lake surrounded by the overgrown foundations of all the rides, you can still see where the rides used to be. It just felt eerie, really eerie – you wouldn’t think it had ever been a theme park.”

In April 2019, four construction vehicles at the site were set on fire by arsonists. 

American Adventure was once one of the largest and most popular theme parks in the UK. A series of poor management choices spelled the end for the park; change came too little and too late for the American Adventure park. However, the land has carried on since the Dark Ages, and it will continue on in a new form soon. For now, nature is reclaiming the land.

Remember that what you’ve read is a podcast! A link is included at the top of the page. Listen to more episodes of The Abandoned Carousel on your favorite platform: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | RadioPublic | TuneIn | Overcast | Pocket Casts | Castro. Support the podcast on Patreon for extra content! Comment below to share your thoughts – as Lucy Maud Montgomery once said, nothing is ever really lost to us, as long as we remember it.

References

I’ve included a complete list of references used while researching this topic. It’s hidden under the link for brevity.

The post American Adventure appeared first on The Abandoned Carousel.