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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34. Large ferris wheel at the World’s Columbian Exposition [Chicago, Ill.]. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. https://www.loc.gov/item/2006680018/. Accessed March 29, 2020.
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37. Letter from Helen Keller to Mabel Hubbard Bell, August 20, 1893. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. https://www.loc.gov/item/magbell.12400303/. Accessed March 29, 2020.
38. Press JGFT. Look back: Atlantic City’s almost famous “Somers Wheel.” Press of Atlantic City. https://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/look-back-atlantic-citys-almost-famous-somers-wheel/article_289d2b62-27a5-59d4-b1a0-44821117ed61.html. Accessed April 7, 2020.
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The post The First Ferris Wheel 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

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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.
61. 日本で二番目に怖い場所 福島県「高子沼グリーンランド」. NAVER まとめ. https://matome.naver.jp/odai/2142742314381060701. Accessed October 2, 2019.
62. 昭和日記 (#吹き抜けマニア の人) on Twitter: “消えゆく日本の廃墟より… ・高子沼グリーンランド 福島県 #廃墟 https://t.co/Em6xS9P0lC” / Twitter. Twitter. https://twitter.com/showadiary_com/status/943482607718735872?ref_url=https%3a%2f%2fleisurego.jp%2farchives%2f169611. Accessed August 24, 2019.
63. 死亡事故の噂が残る福島の廃墟テーマパーク「高子沼グリーンランド」の現在. スパイシービュー. https://spaicy.jp/takakonuma-greenland. Published September 15, 2017. Accessed August 24, 2019.
64. 海外でも有名!? 廃墟・高子沼グリーンランドがめちゃめちゃ怖い・・・. NAVER まとめ. https://matome.naver.jp/odai/2139899947228872201. Accessed August 24, 2019.
65. 福島県北部-伊達市-高子沼-その1-2016年4月上旬. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r58zs4I2A1Y. Accessed October 8, 2019.
66. 福島県民にとって想い出の映像集. 気ままにブログ三昧. http://musoujin.cocolog-nifty.com/blog/2018/09/post-2a5d.html. Accessed August 24, 2019.
67. 芝公園公太郎（ポートレートと廃墟を撮る人・ドローンフォトグラファー） on Twitter: “フィルムカメラの時代に出会った「甲賀ファミリーランド」「高子沼グリーンランド」で見た景色は死ぬまで忘れないと思います。 https://t.co/TiGgp9oGAp” / Twitter. Twitter. https://twitter.com/ruinsds/status/940222725905268741. Accessed August 24, 2019.
68. 高子沼グリーンランド. In: Wikipedia. ; 2019. https://ja.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=%E9%AB%98%E5%AD%90%E6%B2%BC%E3%82%B0%E3%83%AA%E3%83%BC%E3%83%B3%E3%83%A9%E3%83%B3%E3%83%89&oldid=73303678. Accessed August 23, 2019.
69. 高子沼グリーンランドは世界レベルの心霊スポット？恐怖の廃墟の現在までを解説 | Leisurego | Leisurego. https://leisurego.jp/archives/169611. Accessed August 24, 2019.

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.

When one is trying to visit Little Amerricka, the first impression is always along the lines of “Are you sure you typed the right address into the map?”

To get to Little Amerricka, one heads west from Milwaukee or east from Madison, there in the heart of Wisconsin. Exit number 250 off I-94. And then you drive another five miles along WI-73, past farmhouses in groves of shady trees, big fields of corn starting to grow tall in the summer sun. A nice little two lane road. It’s just rural enough and just far enough off the beaten path that you invariably ask your fellow car-riders: “Are you sure this is the right way?”

But eventually you hit the small town of Marshall and take a right at the Ace Hardware, and then there it is, just down Main Street. The first thing you see is a bizarre tree – no, is that a roller coaster? And that, no, THAT is definitely a giant inflatable tiger butt.

And that, my friends, is how I met the Little Amerricka theme park.

Lee Merrick and Darryl Klompmaker

The park is spelled A-merrick-a, a somewhat troubling yet ultimately harmless spelling, named after its founder, Lee Merrick.

Lee Merrick was born in Illinois. He was a farm boy. Eventually, he found his success in the necessary but unpleasant field of livestock rendering. (His son, Garth, currently runs the Merrick’s brand of pet food, seen in stores all over.) 

In his spare time, Lee Merrick found a hobby in large-scale miniature trains. Not train sets like in someone’s basement, but “grand scale” or rideable miniature trains. Such as those we might talk about here on The Abandoned Carousel, for instance. Yes, my friends, we are talking about trains again, so hang on to your hats.

Merrick had been involved in the grand scale miniature train scene since the mid-60s, but it took until 1987 for Merrick to meet up with the other main figure in our story: Darryl Klompmaker. That year, 1987, Merrick purchased the land in Marshall, WI that is now Little Amerricka, and set up himself a nice miniature train loop. According to Klompmaker in an interview with Parkworld Online, the train was the genesis for Little Amerricka. You see, they set it up so that the train took guests out to pick Christmas trees and then took them back to their cars – can you imagine how fun that would be, a steam engine on a snowy Wisconsin winter day, maybe some hot chocolate?

The train ride was incredibly popular, and they soon added a second building near the train loop. This building can still be seen today: it’s right at the entrance to the park, and is now the main concessions and offices. 

Even back at this time in the late 1980s, Klompmaker said that Merrick already had four rides in storage. These were reportedly the Ferris wheel, the tilt-a-whirl, the fire truck ride, and the bumper cars. Reportedly, Merrick offered Klompmaker a job, and in 1989 plans for the park began in earnest. 

Klompmaker is quoted as saying: ““I kind of fell into the amusement industry. Lee didn’t really have a plan, he just had the railroad. He thought that if we added a miniature golf course and a couple of rides alongside the train, it might draw people in and keep them longer. ””

In 1991, Little Amerricka opened, with those original four rides, the mini golf course, and the extended train loop. By the time of this episode in 2019, the park has 26 operating rides, catering to the young family crowd in southern Wisconsin. 

The park, unlike some, wasn’t planned. There were no blueprints, and some of the rides have moved a few times during the park’s lifetime. “It just kinda grew, almost like a mushroom”, said Merrick in a video interview from years ago. “Wasn’t planned, it was just spontaneous”.

What I personally love about Little Amerricka is how it has taken all of these seeds of older parks and planted them to grow anew. Little Amerricka has only been open for 28 years, but it feels like a place from out of time, like it’s been there in the cornfields longer than forever.

Ambience 

Like I said, the park is situated about five miles from the nearest “big road”. Location is key, yes, but this is still close enough and easy enough to access that the park hasn’t suffered as a result. 

You park your car adjacent to the theme park, either in a grassy field or a muddy field, depending on how recently it’s rained. There are two entrances, one from the parking lot and one right off Main Street, for any pedestrians. Of course, entrance to the park itself is free. Little Amerricka has a wristband/ticket system and allows guests to bring in their own food and drink. This obviously makes the park a cost-effective place for families to visit. 

Rides at Little Amerricka

The atmosphere is charming and freewheeling, like something out of a history film. Each of the park’s 26 rides tell a story. Today, I’ll be telling you a little bit about a lot of different defunct theme parks, because that’s the thread that weaves through Little Amerricka.

Wild & Wooly Toboggan at Little Amerricka

Take the connective tissue between this episode and the last. Perhaps you’re not listening in release order. That’s fine, this isn’t a serialized podcast. In last week’s episode, I talked about Dogpatch USA, that theme park down in Arkansas based on Al Capp’s Li’l Abner comic strip. Well, Dogpatch USA closed at the end of the 1993 season and began selling off its assets. One of the rides being sold was that original prototype Chance Toboggan, called Earthquake McGoon’s Brain Rattler. This was different than later Chance Toboggans, in that it was not on a trailer but a permanent installation, built in 1969. 

I misspoke slightly last week, though, so let’s correct the record. Before Dogpatch was closed, the Toboggan was sold in an effort to cut costs, reportedly around 1988. A little park called Enchanted Forest in Chesterton, Indiana purchased the ride in a last-ditch effort to stay operational itself. We’ll talk more about Enchanted Forest in a minute, but know that that effort was in vain. Enchanted Forest operated through the 1990 season and did not reopen in 1991. In the fall of 1991, all their assets went up for auction, and we’ve got a delightful treasure online – the original 1991 auction flyer. In the link for the auction flyer, you can see pictures of the rides on offer, including Toboggan, painted its distinctive tan on brown, and see the serial number: 69-4101. 

Well, Merrick and Klompmaker purchased the Toboggan at the auction for a cool $30,000, and installed it at Little Amerricka soon after. Klompmaker is quoted in the Little Amerricka mini-documentary as saying that the color scheme (brown and tan) appealed greatly to Merrick, and though they hadn’t planned on purchasing the ride, they knew they had to have it. 

Interestingly, the Indiana state inspection sticker on the ride could be seen in 2001, years after it had been operating in WI.

Today, the Toboggan at Little Amerricka is the last currently operating Toboggan at the time of this recording, according to the Roller Coaster Database, although there are a few nominally in storage. One such “in storage” is the Toboggan at Connaut Lake Park in Pennsylvania, which can be seen folded in pieces in a summer 2019 photo, overgrown with vines and other flora, rusting apart https://rcdb.com/1671.htm#p=102417.

Funnily enough, this coaster is often one of the major draws to Little Amerricka, at least for out-of-towners, due to the novelty of the coaster. See, apparently “coaster counts” or “coaster credits” are a thing, where coaster enthusiasts travel the world and log as many coasters as they can ride. The current leader on the website Coaster Count, George, has ridden 2,872 coasters as of the time of this recording.

Back at Little Amerricka, some in trip reports describe the Toboggan as the worst coaster ever devised. One trip report says: “Ironically, after 500 roller coasters, the scariest rides are no longer ultra-intimidating stratacoasters but things like this.” There’s about 450 ft of track, crammed into about 45 ft of length. The coaster cars are tiny, small claustrophobic enclosed cages for two. This is not the ride for a tall person. 

How does the ride work? The chain winches you vertically up the central tube, staring at the sky like an astronaut about to launch. Then, a dizzying downward spiral, five and a half times around the outside of the lift tube. Since visibility is compromised in the cage-like car, the violent little bunny hills at the end are a jarring surprise. Your knees, head, and back take a beating on this ride, despite the car’s padding, despite the apparent simplicity of the ride, as you slam back into the station. 

It’s either a blessing or a curse for the rollercoaster enthusiast.

Every ride at Little Amerricka has a history, though of course we don’t know about all of them in as much detail. The rides are almost entirely secondhand, allowing the visitor in the know to trace the connections to parks past, parks still operational or parks defunct.

Mad Mouse at Little Amerricka

Let’s go back to Enchanted Forest. Klompmaker and Merrick had gone to the auction at Enchanted Forest in Chesterton, Indiana, intent on purchasing a Scrambler ride. They ended up with a lot of stuff: the Scrambler, the Toboggan. 

Something else that was there caught their eye though, at that auction, and like the best of the impulse purchasers among us, they bought it: the Mad Mouse coaster, to the tune of $6,000. The coaster can be seen in operation there in this vintage TV commercial on YouTube and in a still photo from the 50s or 60s here.

(Enchanted Forest sat in a state of flux for a few years, as I’ve alluded to a few times – it’s a park worthy of its own episode. But briefly, for now, the park operated between 1994-2009 as Splash Down Dunes. It then operated from 2013-2017 as Seven Peaks Water Park Duneland, and is currently abandoned. Like I said, it’s worthy of its own episode.)

Here’s a great aerial shot of Mad Mouse: http://www.coastergallery.com/2001/LA05.html. As noted in the Dogpatch USA episode, this coaster is not the mouse coaster from Dogpatch – that was a Monster Mouse model, with an extra loop of track to the left of the lift hill. Demonstrated in this image, Little Amerricka has a Wild Mouse model, which doesn’t have that extra track. The Allan Herschell Mad Mouse is an endangered species. This specific coaster, a “Wild Mouse” model, was manufactured in 1960 (serial number 432760), and has been at Little Amerricka since 1993. It was the only Herschell Mad Mouse in operation until just a few months ago, when another Wild Mouse opened at the small Arnolds Park in Iowa, its third location.

I’m not sure that we’ve talked about a Mad Mouse coaster in any depth yet here on The Abandoned Carousel. If you’re unfamiliar, mouse coasters run with single wide cars instead of trains of cars; the wide cars overhang the edges of the tracks and contribute to the psychology of the ride. The track itself is characterized by many tight, unbanked turns, as well as short bunny hills. Despite their name and descriptions, mouse coasters are often quite thrilling, with abrupt negative G forces and quite good airtime (the cars often are without seatbelts, particularly on vintage models). The original ride operator instructions were apparently “”Sit down, shut up, and hold on!”” an exact quote, apparently.

Some chide the appearance of the Mad Mouse. One review describes it as “it’s basically a giant plug-and-play erector set roller coaster”. Another commenter online describes it thusly: “Mad Mouse twists and turns on a naked track that weebles and wobbles”. And still others call it rickety, rusty, horrifying, “deathtrap” and “never quite seen one like it”. BUT they also usually love it. The Mad Mouse at Little Amerricka is generally considered its most popular coaster.

In a final fun fact, the cars all have padded bumpers on the front, because originally at Enchanted Forest, seven cars were run at a time, and if they bumped into each other, well, how about a little padding from a pool noodle? Now at Little Amerricka, they usually only run 3 or 4 at a time. 

Monorail and Other Rides at Little Amerricka

Merrick and Klompmaker have found impulse purchases at other places, too. The auction for the former Peony Park, in Omaha, NE, occurred in 1994. They went down to purchase the kiddie boat ride, where a handful of boats spin in endless circles over a pool of water. (Spoiler alert, this is one of my kids’ least favorite rides.) In addition, though, they picked up an incredibly unique ride on a whim: the monorail, formerly called “Sky Rail”. Apparently it took about six trips with one truck back and forth between Marshall WI and Omaha NE to move the pieces of the Sky Rail.

This is technically not a monorail since there are three rails, but let’s not be pedantic about things. The ride is actually Mad Mouse-esque, with wide cars that overhang the tracks. However, it’s ultimately just one big loop that circles most of the park, allowing for lovely views. One report claims without source that only two of these rides were ever made, and that this is the only one in operation. I do believe it, because despite my research I have been unable to find another other rides like this.

Other rides we have less details on. 

Take that Ferris wheel, stored away and opened with the park. “12-Car Eli Ferris Wheel came from Wonderland Park in Amarillo, Texas, when Wonderland upgraded” their wheel. It can be seen operating at Wonderland here: https://www.wonderlandpark.com/our-history?lightbox=dataItem-ixxq564f3 Otherwise, not much is known about it. 

The carousel reportedly came from somewhere in Boston. The Tilt-a-whirl “possibly” came from Ohio, and has been moved twice on the Little Amerricka grounds. One report pings this as the oldest permanent currently operational Til-a-whirl in the world, with serial number 614 from 1939, though Wikipedia cites without sources a claim that a Midwest traveling carnival called “Evans United Shows” still operates a 1927 model. Little Amerricka’s Tilt-a-whirl has a licensed Mario sculpture in the center.

Little Dipper, the Allan Herschell classic kiddie coaster, came from a private owner who’d been running the ride in his backyard. It came to Little Amerricka when the Missouri town he lived in decided to institute a “no coasters in the backyard” policy. The Little Dipper was manufactured in 1953 and still has the original flat iron wheels. It makes a small circuit around the kiddie ride area at Little Amerricka, with an 11-ft lift hill and a few bunny hills before the station. Apparently in most parks, this ride has a MAXIMUM height limit; here at Little Amerricka, anyone can ride. 

I don’t need to go through the entire list of the park’s ride, but suffice to say there are plenty: bumper boats, a haunted house, mini-golf, an inflatable slide, a carousel, bounce house, etc. The only ride the park purchased brand new was the Red Baron kiddie airplane ride. 

Roll-o-plane at Little Amerricka

The Roll-o-plane at Little Amerricka (“Test Pilot”) is a gem in the crown of the park. If you’re not familiar with the ride, this was a 1934 improvement on the 1931 Eyerly Loop-o-Plane. Not familiar with that? The rides were built by the Eyerly Aircraft Company. Another Lee, Lee Eyerly, had always been a mechanically inclined person. He built and raced his own cars and airplanes in the early 1900s, and actually began his own flying school, there in Oregon. He built a custom flight trainer for his students, called simply “Aeroplane” (originally the Orientator). The students did well, but Eyerley began being approached by a salesman who saw the flight trainer while passing by the school’s parking lot. (Video of this early trainer can be seen here.)

The salesman proposed selling the Aeroplane to theme parks and carnivals, and Eyerley reluctantly agreed. Upon seeing the profit totals that next year, though, he was happily surprised, and the Loop-o-plane came out soon after. A 1951 Billboard article notes that over 500 of these had been produced at that point, saying “there is scarcely a show or a park that doesn’t have one.”

The Rolloplane, then, came in 1934. This ride executes an “Immelmann turn”, named after the WWI ace Max Immelmann. An Immelmann goes as follows: the plane accelerates at level flight, then climbs vertically (a half loop). The plane then completes a half-roll, coming back to level flight at an altitude above the original flight path. Reportedly, this is a difficult maneuver. 

Anyhow, despite once being such an incredibly popular ride, this is now 2019, and very few Loop-o-planes or Roll-o-planes are operational anymore. Merrick and Klompmaker picked up their Roll-o-plane from “a very small park in northern Indiana” for $75,000. Klompmaker is quoted describing his pride in their restoration of the ride. Apparently, the same ride inspector who’d once inspected the ride in Indiana came and did the inspection on the ride in Wisconsin, and didn’t believe it was the same ride until he’d checked the serial number.

The ride is pristine, shiny and gorgeous, and the operators are generous with ride time. It’s probably the most thrilling ride at Little Amerricka.

Meteor at Little Amerricka

The Meteor is the shining star of the Little Amerricka ride pantheon. It’s reportedly the only wooden coaster that’s been successfully moved twice. The Meteor, you see, was originally called the Little Dipper. It was manufactured by PTC, Philadelphia Toboggan Company, for the Kiddietown park in the Chicago area (Norridge, IL), beginning in 1953. 

It was a nice little junior coaster, and reportedly was one of six manufactured; today only one nearly-identical sister coaster survives, at Kiddieland in Melrose Park, IL.

Little Dipper, as it was known then, operated there until Kiddietown was shuttered. The coaster has serial number 120 from PTC, and was designed by Herbert Paul Schmeck. Do you remember another coaster I’ve already talked about here on TAC that was also designed by him?  I’ll post the answer in the website shownotes.

Hillcrest Park, another Chicagoland location (Lemont, IL) purchased the classic wooden coaster in 1966 for $6,000, and spent another $66,000 to move the coaster 30 miles from one side of Chicago to the other. Images of its disassembly at Kiddietown can be seen here: https://rcdb.com/2571.htm#p=8287. The former site of Kiddietown is now a bank. 

Hillcrest is not a very well-known place. It was a private “picnic park”, used for corporate outings, weddings, etc. The park handled between 200-2000 guests, depending on the day. Little Dipper operated there from 1967 until 2003. Images can be seen here: https://rcdb.com/327.htm In addition to the coast, Hillcrest operated a helicopter ride, bumper cars, a merry go round, and had a C. P. Huntington miniature train: number 41. 

In 2003, Hillcrest Park simultaneously saw a decline in the number of corporate outings and an increase in the value of the land. It became not profitable to operate the park, so it was closed in 2003. Today, the land is warehouses, storage, and parking lots.

The auction for Hillcrest Park was held in October of 2003, and of course, Klompmaker was in attendance. He purchased the little woody coaster for between $9-10k. Lest these numbers start making you think you might open your own park in your spare time, it then took Klompmaker another three years and over $100,000 to restore the ride and install it at Little Amerricka. 

Little Amerricka had to replace about 75% of the lumber in the wooden coaster, but “it was still cheaper than buying new”. (You can find 2005 pictures of the disassembled coaster sitting in a field at Little Amerricka here) Today, the coaster sits in the center of the park, looking as though the rest of Little Amerricka had been planned around it, despite being one of the newest additions to the park. It has a unique curved loading station and still uses the classic large person-sized wooden handles for braking the coaster.

The sister coaster I’d mentioned earlier was purchased from Kiddieland Melrose Park by Six Flags Great America in 2009 and currently operates there at the time of this recording.

One of the best parts of Little Amerricka is the ride operators, who give you plenty of bang for your buck. For your two tickets ($3), you get at least three complete circuits on the coaster. More, depending on how the operator is feeling that day. 

A Comet Coaster at Little Amerricka?

Interestingly, the Meteor is, according to some, only practice for a larger event. 

Merrick and Klompmaker took a trip to New England in the early 2000s, inspecting some defunct coasters: at Whalom Park and Lincoln Park, both Massachusetts theme parks. 

Whalom Park’s Flyer Comet

At Whalom Park, they were looking into the Flyer Comet coaster (vintage on-ride video). Opened in 1940 and closed around 2000, the Flyer Comet was a classic old figure-eight style woodie designed by Vernon Keenan (image). Whalom Park shuttered, as seems to be the common refrain, due to financial struggles and competition for audiences from mega-parks like Six Flags. However, the park sat abandoned for half a decade after its closure, as assets were sold off piece by piece, or left to rot. The Flyer Comet fit both these categories. Unfortunately, weather and time had not been kind to the ride, some 70 years old at the time it enters our story. 

Klompmaker and Merrick inspected the ride, and found the wood of the Flyer Comet coaster in very poor shape. (Unsurprising, as trip reports and memories of the park from its active years in the late 90s described the coaster as dangerous and wobbly. Some even remember seeing actual pieces of wood fall off during coaster rides.) 

Despite the quality of the wood, Klompmaker and Merrick were able to salvage the lift motors, lift chain, and other station parts. This required the track of the coaster to be cut apart, reportedly the final death knell for the original Flyer Comet. The coaster sat, cut up and overtaken with greenery, for several more years, prior to its demolition. 

Lincoln Park’s Comet

Their next stop was Lincoln Park, in North Dartmouth (an unrelated, unlisted, hilarious video: “link in park”). This park had been around since 1894, operating first as a picnic park, traditional to that time period, and then later becoming an amusement park. There, they were looking at another vintage wooden coaster: the Comet, opened in 1947. This one was designed by Vernon Keenan (wait – screeching noise – yes, the same Vernon Keenan who designed the Flyer Comet we just talked about! Funny world, that). Keenan designed the Comet (with Edward Leis) and it was built by Harry Baker. Keenan and Baker also built the 1927 Coney Island Cyclone coaster. Ironically, the oldest of this family of coasters is the only one still operational. 

(As a sidebar to a sidebar, the Coney Island Cyclone was saved from demolition by a massive refurbishment effort in the mid-1970s and millions of dollars have been invested since in order to keep the ride running, along with another major refurbishment in 2011. Apparently the structure is considered “irreplaceable”, since wooden coasters can no longer be built under NYC building codes. A single ride today on this 92-year-old coaster costs $10.)

There’s a great video from opening day of the Comet (1947) available on YouTube.

Again, we’ll only go into it briefly since this is a Little Amerricka episode and not a Lincoln Park episode, but the downfall of /this/ park, for once, was not solely finances. In fact, it revolves around the coaster we’re talking about. This time the story is a bit more grim. In 1986, there was a fatal accident on the Comet coaster. The owner reportedly invested $75,000 in upgrades and park safety, but it wasn’t enough. Only four months after the owner was quoted in the papers talking about the ride’s safety, the coaster’s brakes failed (or were applied too early, according to others). This caused a coaster car to actually jackknife on the track and derail, leaving passengers dangling over the edge and reportedly injuring four (image of the incident). The coaster’s cars are quite arresting-looking, even moreso when they’re not on the tracks correctly. This 1987 ride was the coaster’s last, and ultimately the park closed as a result a few months later. 

The park changed hands several times before its current development company owner purchased it. This didn’t do the park any favors, as it suffered heavy damages from arson and vandalism. Many of Lincoln Park’s assets were auctioned off, but the coaster was left, standing but not operating. It was already 40 years old at the time of the park’s closure. And there it sat. Reportedly, the jackknifed coaster car stayed in place on the track well into the 90s.

Well, come the mid-2000s, Merrick and Klompmaker investigated the coaster and its components, now up for sale after the lift hill collapsed in 2005. The wood from the track was obviously in poor shape, unsurprising considering it had been unmaintained in the elements for almost another two decades since the park’s closure. Despite the coaster’s somewhat grim ending, they ended up purchasing the trains from the Comet, as well as the blueprints for the ride. Reportedly, one train is in decent shape while the other (probably our jackknifed friend) needs significant work.

Ultimately, the plan is to refurbish the original trains, and then to use new lumber to build a copy of the Comet at Little Amerricka. (For the interested, here is an archived page detailing the structural components of the Comet.) This is obviously a huge plan for a little park, and there is no expected timetable for this to occur at this time. But what an eventual tribute to two longstanding wooden coasters this will be when it’s completed!

The Comet’s remaining wooden structure was demolished in 2012. The land is now condominiums. A company named Marion Millworks reportedly was given salvage rights for the former coaster’s lumber, and is said to have created unique outdoor furniture and other items with the wood.

Log Flume at Little Amerricka?

Not only are they planning on a larger coaster. They also have plans for a water ride, too.

Klompmaker and Merrick had been on the trail of a log flume for the park for years. They passed on a poor-quality flume at the auction for the Old Indiana theme park; they never heard back about their offer on the log flume from Miracle Strip Amusement Park in FL. Ultimately, they purchased a log flume called the “Log Jammer” from Kiddieland in Melrose Park, IL, which opened in 1995 and closed in 2009. (You might remember me mentioning Kiddieland in Melrose Park a few minutes ago – it was the original home of the sister to the Meteor coaster.) The pieces to the log flume have sat in a field at Little Amerricka for years, maintained but not yet assembled, visible from the monorail. Eventually, the log flume will be installed at Little Amerricka. One blog reports that the estimated concrete costs alone are up around $1M, so it is not expected that this flume will open anytime soon.

Whiskey River Railway at Little Amerricka

We talked about the train at the beginning of the episode, but I haven’t really made it clear that this park has a fairly legit railroad. Little Amerricka operates three different steam trains. Their first was the Atlantic, nicknamed The Little Engine That Could, was built in 1969 and came from the Sanford Zoo in FL. This engine was a 16” gauge, which is why the Whiskey River Railway is made to 16” and not the more common 15”.

The next train to come was the Oakland Acorn, built in 1949 by George Reddington and Robert Blecha in Oakland Park in California. It has a sister, the Gene Autry Melody Ranch Special, “Daylight”. These two trains are actually identical, just “dressed” differently. 

Here’s a great video showcasing the WRR; it includes a video interview with Lee Merrick before he passed.

The track itself covers a great distance, about 2.5 miles, and takes about 20 minutes to traverse. There are grade crossings, a tunnel, and a roundhouse. Trains can reportedly hold around 150 people at a time, and the train is actually the park’s most expensive ride. 

The train starts out by looping through most of the park; it then meanders through outbuildings before moving into farmland and fields. There are farm animals, including sheep and llamas. A fairly recent addition is a second stop at the Whistle Stop Campground, the new accomodations adjacent to the park. 

Ups and Downs for Little Amerricka

Things haven’t been perfect for Little Amerricka over the years..

A fire in 2000 caused over $200k in damages, and ruined a train machine shop. Said Merrick to the paper: “I don’t believe in insurance.” And in 2018, a ride operator was fired for seemingly nodding off while operating a kiddie ride.

Reportedly, Merrick “never made a nickel” on the park, at least during his lifetime. He died in 2011. Klompmaker continues to run the park, per Merrick’s wishes. 

In an interview online, Klompmaker describes the park as filling a void. This is a small, quaint, classic kiddie park, a dying breed, a working collector’s museum. The park allows parents and grandparents an inexpensive place to take kids and grandkids, standing out in the area, in a sea of over-the-top thrills at other massive parks. 

Little Amerricka is rough and tumble. There’s essentially no theming, the rides’ mechanisms are laid bare for all to see, fences are a suggestion at best. A ride operator was fired for seemingly falling asleep while operating a kiddie carousel. The whole place does seem like it’s waiting for a massive public outcry. 

At the same time, it’s a hobby park, like a real-life museum. It “personifies old-fashioned amusement traditions.” The rides are meticulously maintained and painted. History is an important part of Little Amerricka. Klompmaker is quoted as saying “we try to keep the nostalgia alive.”

Did I mention all of Little Amerricka’s borders? Main street, on one side. The parking lot, on another. The railroad tracks, on another.

And the town cemetery, on the other. 

Yes, as your children spin in endless circles on the vintage car carousel or the Pinto Brothers 1940s fire truck ride, you the adult get to stare out at Marshall’s town cemetery and contemplate the similarly endless cycle of life and death. 

“Buy the ticket, take the ride,” said Hunter S. Thompson, and the contrast between the flower-bedecked headstones and the regular whoosh of the Little Dipper invites you and your children to do just that.

Little Amerricka is real, authentic, fun. It’s a great place to visit.

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 Little Amerricka appeared first on The Abandoned Carousel.

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

The story I’m about to tell you is not the story I’d planned on telling when I set out to research Trinity Loop Amusement Park. I’d been going to talk about an empty Ferris wheel and an eerie old locomotive sitting on a hill by a lake. Maybe I had been going to talk about the block letters that still clearly spell out “Trinity Loop” up on top of a bridge.

I knew there was a train theme involved somehow. But to be honest, I never was much of a train buff, so I’d expected to gloss right over that part. 

It turns out, however, that the story of Trinity Loop is so much more than any of my preconceived notions. 

This is a story about historical preservation. This is the story of interesting engineering to solve a geography problem and connect a country together. This is the story of reuse and waste. This is the story of childhood summertime memories. This is a story about what we choose to preserve and what happens when we’re gone. 

This is Trinity Loop, in Newfoundland.

Trinity, Newfoundland

Let’s start with a wide view. 

We’re talking about Newfoundland. Newfoundland is an island, the eastern-most part of Canada. Newfoundland was formerly a colony and then a dominion of the United Kingdom. In 1949, Newfoundland became a part of Canada.

Narrowing in, we look at Trinity. Trinity is a small town on the eastern side of the island. Historically, Trinity served as a major port for the export of the island’s fishing exports. I recommend browsing through the Trinity location tag on Instagram – a beautiful town, with brightly-painted houses, amazing sunsets, and lots of whale-watching. Certainly a feast for the eyes!

In popular culture, Trinity might be familiar as a filming location for the 2001 movie “The Shipping News”, which has a lovely soundtrack, as well.

The Newfoundland Railway

Now that you know where we are, let’s talk about the history of the railway in Newfoundland.

In the 1880s, the colonial government of Newfoundland began construction of a narrow-gauge railroad across the island as a vital way to transport people and goods across the island. This was before the days of cars or any sort of highway system. Ultimately, at a total length of 906 miles, the Newfoundland Railway became the longest 3’6” narrow-gauge railway system in North America. 

Narrow gauge was chosen instead of standard gauge (which is 4ft 8 ½ in) as a cost-saving measure (reportedly costing roughly half of what a standard gauge rail would cost). This decision would save money in the short-term but spell the end for the railway in the long run. 

Trinity Loop in Train Service

The railway was constructed as a key way to connect small towns across Newfoundland. Remember that Trinity was located on the eastern side of the island, far from mainland Canada – the railway would’ve been huge around the turn of the 20th century. 

In addition to being a coastal town located in the bay, Trinity is surrounded by steep hills. A normal direct train route would’ve been too steep a grade for any train to pass.

To connect Trinity to the railway, then, some effort was required. 

In 1911, engineer J. P. Powell came up with a solution similar to those seen in the western Canadian mountains in British Columbia. The train route was looped around a pond outside of Trinity, slowing changing elevation as it crossed underneath itself. Overall, the elevation of the track dropped 10.3 meters over 6,600 feet. This allowed the train to then safely finish descending into the town of Trinity. 

The Trinity Loop is quite unique because of the visibility of the entire Loop.

The trestles were set for the train, and then earth was moved in great quantities to cover the exposed structure. This is quite the engineering marvel for hand tools in 1911 – think of doing this without a modern excavator!

Struggles for the Newfoundland Railway

Despite the influx of money from private investment by Sir Robert Gillespie Reid, the railway never turned a profit as the years went on. The narrow gauge of the railway meant its freight capacity was limited. The harsh winter weather at points, including Gaff Topsail (the north-central point of the railroad), meant constant delays and small fortunes in winter weather maintenance costs. And Newfoundland as a whole was a small island without enough traffic to truly support the massive train infrastructure.

After decades of operating losses, the government nationalized the railway, buying it back from the Reid Company in 1923. The railway passed from the hands of the British colonial government to the Canadian government in 1949, when Newfoundland became part of Canada as mentioned earlier. 

As the years rolled over, the railway’s prospects continued to fall by the wayside, the casualty of the more popular bus and Trans-Canada highway systems, which were paved in the 1970s. This was reportedly not only due to preference of travelers, but also to the allocation of government dollars. In 1979, CN restructured itself after years of complaints about the railway and significant subsidies, renaming the Newfoundland operations as Terra Transport. Between 1979 and 1988, the Newfoundland railway was slowly shuttered, with branch lines closing in 1984 and the main line closing by 1988. 

Closure and Preservation of the Trinity Loop

The train on the Trinity Loop operated from 1911 until the closure of the Bonavista branch of the railway in 1984, along with all other branch lines. With the line closed, the original plan was to disassemble, remove, and scrap the Trinity Loop, and all other parts of the shuttered railway, despite its recognized historical importance.

However, local researcher Clayton Cook, a former railwayman, took it upon himself to save the Loop. He began petitioning several of the local politicians and began a one-man campaign to save the Loop as a historical site and monument. 

He ultimately succeeded, and Trinity Loop’s original tracks were left alone, some of the only original railway tracks remaining on the island of Newfoundland. The structure of Trinity Loop was preserved, at least in that it wasn’t destroyed.

The Trinity Loop became government property. In February 1988, the Loop was recognized as a Registered Heritage Structure in Canada. 

Trinity Loop Amusement Park

Local Francis Kelly purchased the Trinity Loop by lease some time after its original rough preservation. Cook’s original goal for the Trinity Loop was reportedly a railway museum, but Kelly had other ideas. He began construction on an amusement park inside the area of the Loop. It was simply called Trinity Loop Amusement Park.

Kelly built a small miniature narrow gauge train to run on the former Loop tracks. After a few years, he added additional tracks to allow the train to circle the amusement park and connect to the start of the Loop. Visitors could take that historical trip around the waters of the Loop Pond, the Ferris wheel spinning merrily nearby. Plywood cutouts of popular early 90s cartoons at the time dotted the perimeter, an occasional surprise in the thick evergreens.

“Crossing over the bridge on the mini train on original track with my family and looking down at the pond, track and park was probably the most exciting moment of my childhood,” remembers local J. P. Coady.

The setting couldn’t have been more breathtaking – lush green forest, sparkling clear blue waters of the Loop pond, and the amusement park itself, set in a clearing in the middle of it all. Several former railway cars became part of the park – an old yellow Plymouth locomotive for patrons to climb in and on, several passenger cars, a sleeper car that could be rented for the night, and a boxcar as a small stage for performances. 

Other Activities at Trinity Loop Amusement Park

In a lower clearing, the mini-golf game, the bumper boats, the little playground, the Ferris wheel..all that sat down closer to the water. To one side, the cabins and the petting zoo.

“My first memory was catching a brief glimpse of the mini train on top of the hill, briefly visible from the road heading to the loop.” remembers J. P. Coady. “Then cresting the last hill my heart raced as I saw a railway crossing sign (which marked where the original line crossed the old Cabot Highway; this crossing was know as breakheart crossing)rail cars and park entrance! After reading so much about the Loop, being there was such a big deal for me.”

Visitors Loved Trinity Loop Amusement Park

The park is a quick drive from the town of Trinity. Reportedly, it was popular for its free swimming, as well as its good food. The restaurant was called Conductors Choice Diner (great restaurant in a converted passenger car). Burgers and the popcorn chicken are both mentioned in fond remembrances online. Former workers remember taking breaks, sitting on the stoops of the railway cars, listening to the band play: the Singing Hobo and the Brakemen. 

Scouting organizations took camping trips there (particularly the Girl Guides groups in the area). Visitors remember the area as being a nice place for a day trip, and a place they remember as kids (or a place they remember taking their own children). It was a place for families. Locals even called it the Florida or the Disneyland of Newfoundland.

Quote: “In the evenings they would have live music, on the upper part of the site by the RV park. People would drive up, or you could walk there, and the stage was a flat car on railway tracks. People would blow their horns in the cars or clap after each song. It was such a nice experience.” If you chose to stay on-site, you could stay in one of the Trinity Cabins, or even rent out the Terra Nova 2 sleeper car. From the back of the sleeper car, you could see the sun set over the water and the park, and listen to the band play.

Downfall of the Trinity Loop Amusement Park

As is almost always the case, there’s no one reason the park closed. At its peak, Trinity Loop amusement park attracted 35,000 visitors per year, which was a huge boost to the local economies of Trinity and nearby Goose Cove. 

Quite a bit seems to have hinged on the downfall of the job and tourism industry on the island of Newfoundland. Work locally became hard to find during this time, so many left for the mainland for more stable employment. Employes became hard to find. Tourism to amusement parks like Trinity Loop also dwindled, and the park management didn’t shift their focus to include a more broad historical context that may have pulled in additional visitors. 

Trinity Loop Closed Again in 2004

The park operated until 2004. At this time, the contract ended with the provincial government and the property returned to governmental ownership. There is some speculation about fees and back taxes owed, but this is only speculation and rumor. 

After the park’s closure, the small miniature train (Trinity Loop Express) went to Avondale, NL, where it was rebranded the Avondale Express. The train lives at the Avondale Railway Museum and gives rides in the summer over the 1.5km of remaining track there at Avondale.

Trinity Loop began to decay, there on the eastern edge of Newfoundland. Images online show nature beginning to take back the park. However, it wasn’t until 2010 that things seem to really have gone downhill for the Loop.

Hurricane Igor

What happened in 2010? In fall of 2010, Hurricane Igor swept through the area. This was the most devastating hurricane ever to hit Newfoundland.  (Interesting sidebar: if you Google “Hurricane Igor”, a top result is the “Hypothetical Hurricanes Wiki” for a fictional 2028 Hurricane Igor. I love that people make up fictional hurricanes as a hobby. I can’t throw any shade on that and thought this was actually kind of fun. Hey, I do a podcast about abandoned theme parks. To each their own.)

Anyhow, back in 2010, the real Hurricane Igor did millions of dollars of damage to Newfoundland. 

The abandoned Trinity Loop Amusement Park was particularly hard hit. Most of the original Loop track was left mostly unharmed, but most of Kelly’s later additions to track were completely torn up, washed out by the riverbeds. This led to one of the iconic images of the abandoned park – a twisted train track, suspended in the air. Rocks and sediment from the washed-out riverbeds spread across other areas of the park. 

Despite the historic designation, neither the Heritage Foundation nor the Department of Environment and Conservation had any apparent interest in taking ownership of the park. 

Despite interest from a number of people in the Trinity Loop site, the government reportedly only wants to sell the land as an entire parcel, not portions, and thus has not chosen to work with anyone interested in the Trinity Loop site specifically.

Abandoned Trinity Loop

Much of the park was left in place when it was shuttered in 2004. Some of the large train cars were sold, including the Terra Nova 2 sleeper cabin, which now resides at the Orangedale Railway Station Museum in Nova Scotia. 

Abandoned Train Cars at Trinity Loop

Other large train cars still remain at the site, including the caboose and dining car that were used as restaurant and museum, as well as the cutaway car that was used as a stage for The Singing Hobo. The empty train cars have become increasingly vandalized as the years have gone by. Their interior paint peels, covered by bright graffiti tags. A torn red train seat sits perfectly positioned for “the” Trinity Loop Instagram photo.

The yellow Plymouth locomotive remains on the top of the hill, looking out across the scenic Loop Pond and the decaying remains of Trinity Loop Amusement Park. The locomotive has seen better days, now covered in rust and graffiti. 

Another train car remains, as well, away from the main area. A car from the miniature train, this car appears to have toppled from the track by a vandal. Over the years, photos show it slowly sliding from the bank into the Loop Pond. Today, a wheel on the back of the car is all that’s clearly visible in the water.

Abandoned Ferris Wheel at Trinity Loop

Of course, there was a Ferris wheel. Yes, I do say “was”. The wheel stood for many years, even after Hurricane Igor, but it looked increasingly worse for the wear. Where once the wheel had brilliant primary-colored paint, now was only the color of rust, with the faded seats stacked in piles on the ground nearby. Based on social media photos, it appears that the wheel collapsed between June 20, 2018 and July 2, 2018 (probably June 26, 2018, based on Weather Underground weather history – there was a big storm that day with 30+ mph winds). 

The collapse of the wheel of course has led to a darker tone in the social media imagery from the site – the whole place appears much more post-apocalyptic now. 

The mini-golf course remains in place, a testament to the eternal properties of Astro Turf. In the most recent photos at the time of this recording, someone has taken to stacking cords of cut wood on it.

And the bumper boat pool is still there, empty. The other outbuildings are still all there too, increasingly vandalized and destroyed: the “Good Food” building, the Trinity Cabins where visitors once could stay, the barns where the ponies for the pony ride once were stabled. Most of the kiddie playground items are gone, with only a headless ride-on motorized pony still remaining.

And that historical, iconic looped train railway, part of the original 1911 Newfoundland railway…well, it’s still there. It hasn’t really been maintained since 2004, but reportedly it could still be restored. The red letters spelling out “Trinity Loop” still sit atop the upper trestle.

Popularity of the Abandoned Trinity Loop

Trinity Loop is more popular than ever these days. 

Recent publicity from a Canadian Press article has encouraged even more visitors, beyond just the locals. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The romance of the abandoned place, says JP Coady, has been quote “attracting a lot of people, which is good because that gives me a chance to say, ‘Well, look, this is why it’s here.”‘

Trevor Croft and J. P. Coady are names you see a lot researching this topic, and I’ve mentioned them already in this episode. They are two locals who have a passion for the history of the Newfoundland Railway, and are even more passionate about preserving history before it’s lost, as so easily happens. They volunteer at the Avondale Railway Museum, sharing their private railway collections as well as their extensive knowledge. Quote: “…they [want] to make sure that people experience the history, which is a lot more important than reading posterboards.” 

The Avondale Railway Museum

I briefly mentioned it before, but the Avondale Railway Museum is located in Avondale, about 220km from Trinity and the Trinity Loop. The length of track at Avondale is the same as that at Trinity, interestingly enough, and they have the old Trinity Loop Express, now branded the Avondale Express. The museum is open in the summer months and is “wildly popular for those interested in rail history, as well as curious tourists.” There’s a great 20 minute documentary on J. P., Trevor, and the Avondale museum.

J. P. has been working on efforts to preserve the Loop since 2012, beginning with a Facebook group, letter-writing campaigns, and a petition to the local politicians and MPs. He added the Loop to the list of “Heritage Canada sites at risk”. His vision is for the site to be turned into a heritage operation, a working railway museum. 

No Changes for Trinity Loop Yet

Despite the lobbying of J. P. and others for a heritage operation on the Trinity Loop site, the government response to date has been tepid at best.

The condition of the site hasn’t changed. Many people reportedly now blame the government for the decaying condition of the park. 

Trinity’s mayor, Jim Miller, has reportedly addressed the issues of the unsafe site with the province. Nothing has changed yet, however, aside from some very “helpful” signs posted on the property. In a statement from the provincial Department of Fisheries and Land Resources, the possibility for restoration was indicated, though without any concrete timelines. They reportedly are working on arranging an inspection of the site regarding environmental remediation.

Memories of Trinity Loop

Many guests visiting the park after its abandonment describe the ghost-like feeling of the site. “Breaks my heart in a thousand pieces,” says one former visitor. So many visitors remember idyllic weekends and summers at the park.

“The whole place is totally destroyed.”

If you were to visit the park, you’d look out over the destroyed landscape. Despite the chaos, you could close your eyes and still almost hear the squeals of joyful children. You could almost see a generation of wonderful times. Like so many of the parks we’ve covered here on TAC, Trinity Loop as an amusement park was a classic local tourist gem: a small family place, for first jobs, first kisses, and friendly fun. 

Quote: “You could look down over all the park from the cabins on the hill, hear the music, see in cars lined up in the evening to hear the local musicians play, the dancing, it was a magical place.”

Trinity Loop: More Than an Abandoned Theme Park

I told you at the beginning that Trinity Loop was about more than my preconceived notions. It’s more than just a rusty Ferris wheel and some abandoned, vandalized train cars, though. Truly, what Trinity Loop and so many of these sites represent are the idea of the past. These sites challenge our ideals. What do we value as people and society? What happens to us all when we’re gone?

Trinity Loop was preserved once, and it has the opportunity to be preserved again, if we and the right people act quickly. 

History is about keeping alive what is left. History isn’t just dry old books in a library. If we don’t talk about our past or preserve our past, who will? If we don’t memorialize our past and keep it alive in common memory, it will be forgotten. It will be lost. 

These are the lessons I’ve learned from Trinity Loop, and from The Abandoned Carousel to date. I hope you’ll continue listening and keeping the past alive with me.

This week, I’d like to thank J. P. Coady for talking with me about his history with the Loop. You should check out his Facebook group: “Trinity Loop Heritage Railway and Museum”. The CBC Land and Sea documentary called “Riding the Rails” is also well worth your time. 

Remember that if you liked the show, subscribe, leave a review, and tell a friend. 

I’ll be back soon with another great episode, so I’ll see you then. As Lucy Maud Montgomery once said, nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.

Listen to more episodes of The Abandoned Carousel on your favorite platform: Apple Podcasts | Google Play | Spotify | RadioPublic | TuneIn | Overcast | Pocket Casts | Castro. You can also find The Abandoned Carousel across social media: YouTube | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest | Facebook.

References

I’ve included a complete list of references used while researching this topic. It’s hidden under the link for brevity.

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Under New Ownership (1960s)

With Herb and Harold Ottaway retired, Joyland Park was leased to new owners: Herb’s son, Jerry Ottaway, and Stanley Nelson. Jerry Ottaway, of course, was a familiar name. He was Herb’s son, and had literally grown up around the park.

Stanley was a long-time park worker and a friend of the Ottaway family. Stanbley was a Dodgem ticket-seller, and met his wife Margaret at the park in the early 1950s when she was a skeeball attendant. Nelson continued to work at the park, doing bookkeeping and working up through the management as he got his accounting degree at Wichita State University.

“My dad realized that he loved the amusement park business, so he decided to go into it,” Roger Nelson, Stanley’s son, said.

New Directions for Joyland Park

Together, Jerry and Stanley continued to manage the park and take it in new direction.

Things didn’t always go as planned, especially with Joyland’s miniature zoo that operated for a period of time. A lion at Joyland got out after biting its caretaker, and three deer escaped from their pens. The 1960s were also the first major injury at the park, with a girl suing the park for $400 after smashing her teeth on the steering wheel of a bumper car.

In 1968, Jerry and Stanley built Joyland’s roller rink to the tune of $100k, opening in July of that year. The skating floor at the roller rink actually came from the skating rink at Wichita’s Kiddieland that had closed earlier that same year (remember, Kiddieland was not the same as Joyland’s downtown location, Joyland Central). The rink was 75 x 175 feet. It was brightly colored and held 600 skaters.

Stanley continued rising in the ranks of the amusement park industry all the while. “My dad was the president of the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions,” Nelson said, “and that was a big deal. He was in the business a long time, and he was just a little park operator, but he worked his way up to become the president,” Nelson said.

Changes at Joyland Park (1970s)

In the 1970s, more changes were afoot. The park was facing some challenges. Jerry Ottaway said “it takes more thrilling rides to give amusement park patrons their kicks anymore. People have their water-skiing, snow-skiing, motorcycles and that kind of thing.”

Some were little: owners built a giant gunny-sack slide near the dark ride.

Others were more festivals and commercial partnerships. For instance, in fall of 1971, Joyland Park hosted five days of the Wichita State Fair, which included country music as well as other performers: Pee Wee King, Stonewall Jackson and Leroy Van Dyke. In 1972, Joyland was part of a Kellogg’s commercial, introducing the new Mini-Wheats product.

Other changes were bigger. In the mid 1970s, Jerry Ottaway decided that wanted to pursue an interest in the roller rink business. He sold his portion of Joyland park to Stanley Nelson, and later built the Carousel Skate Center.

Stanley Nelson and his wife Margaret were now the sole owners of the Joyland Park.

Whacky Shack

With the change in ownership, Stanley Nelson was in the market for a new darkride. At an IAAPA convention, Stanley connected with noted dark ride and haunted house designer Bill Tracy. Stanley took one look at Tracy’s new “Whacky Shack” concept and placed an order on the spot, saying he wanted the Joyland facade to look exactly like the concept art.

Bill Tracy and the Whacky Shack at Joyland Park

Tracy died soon after the completion of the Joyland Whacky Shack, making it the last complete project with his personal touch. The Joyland Whacky Shack was the prototype for the Whacky Shack model. Joyland’s shack was the first such design built. The Whacky Shack did have its roots in earlier Tracey rides like Hell’s Kitchen and Devil’s Inn. However, the Joyland Whacky Shack was the first true iteration of the design.

Stanley Nelson was a fan of Bill Tracy. Stanley said: “Bill Tracy never got the recognition that he deserved. He had a great imagination and a knack for scouring the local area for just the right materials for a ride. If he needed old looking wood for a ride, he would search for an old building being torn down. No sense in creating that look when the real thing could be found.”

Whacky Shack at Joyland Park

The old safari darkride building became the new Whacky Shack building. This building had originally been a Dodgem bumper car building.

The new Joyland Whack Shack ride incorporated portions of the old safari ride as well as plenty of Tracy’s classic dark ride haunted house spooks. Reportedly, when construction was complete, Stanley Nelson looked Bill Tracy in the eye and said that the building *wasn’t* exactly like the concept art like he’d wanted. Tracy, shocked, asked what the issue was. Nelson laughed and said that the hands on the clock on the front Whacky Shack facade pointed to 2:00, not 12:00.

The completed Whacky Shack was an excellent example of Tracy’s famed dark ride work. The ride combined eerie sound effects, spooky organ music, and dim lighting to set the environment. Then guests rode through different scenes, most done in neon fluorescent paints: skeletons, cemeteries, even a near-collision with a realistic truck. The second floor of the ride brought riders out into the open, past fearsome painted figures.

Tracy’s original ride had additional thrills, with rotating cars and track layouts that dipped and rose. But as Stanley Nelson put it, “Tracy was into thrills, not maintenance.”

Later Changes to the Whacky Shack at Joyland

Whacky Shack had rotating cars that were a maintenance hassle, especially for such a small park. The cars were ultimately welded to stop any rotation. Later, Bell’s Amusement Park made new fiberglass cars for the ride. Management also made other changes, including the removal of the thrilling track dips.

More modern computer sensors and additional fencing prevented guests from getting out of their cars and removing scenery.

See a ridethrough from a different Tracy Whacky Shack on Youtube here.

The Whacky Shack wasn’t as thrilling as some of the bigger rides in the same genre that you might find at a Six Flags, but for many people, the Whacky Shack is one of the most outstanding memories of the park. It was a first thrill ride in a comfortable environment, a welcome into a larger world of amusements.

Joyland in the 1970s

More festivals and commercial partnerships followed in the late 1970s. Filmmakers of the 1976 film “King Kung Fu” filmed on location throughout Wichita. One scene included several minutes of footage shot at Joyland, primarily in the Roller Coaster area. 1978 saw a two day “Jesus Rock” festival that included free camping at the park.

The park also cross-promoted through local radio stations and businesses. The shady picnic areas and Opera House with space for performances were huge draws. Many places held celebrations and meetings at Joyland.

An interview with Stanley Nelson in the local paper in 1979 discussed his hopes to add a large water slide to the popular Joyland swimming pool, citing the popularity of water-oriented rides throughout the amusement park industry. The date of this interview is a bit surprising, since most of the internet sources I came across in my research have given 1973 as the date of the Joyland pool closure. Other reports note that the pool was closed but still standing. Reportedly, the pool became a bumper boats attraction for a short period in the 80s.

Sadness at Joyland Park

Of course, it wasn’t all fun and games in the 70s. 1977 saw the first death at the park. A seven-year-old boy fell from the Roller Coaster after standing up in the rear car. This was a regular activity on the ride at the time, despite the famous sign at the top of the lift hill warning riders to the contrary. However, this time the boy couldn’t hang on. He was ejected from the car on a hill near the end of the ride. He died almost instantly.

Totally, Gnarly, Joyland (1980s-1990s)

Joyland in the 80s

As the decade turned over into 1980, things weren’t feeling as comfortable at Joyland, beginning a time of ups and downs for the park. Stanley Nelson talked with the local paper about the contrast of Joyland vs. larger amusement parks such as Six Flags. “People are developing a taste for bigger attractions,” he said, describing the impact large parks had on small parks like Joyland. It was true that the most popular theme parks were having success because of their location: on large highways near major population centers.

In 1981, the high gas prices resulting from the 1979 oil crisis caused increased park attendance, with people wanting to vacation closer to home. “Joyland doesn’t pretend to be the park to end all parks,” Nelson said. “It’s simply a hometown recreational facility that draws from a radius of about 100 miles.”

Sadness at Joyland Park, Again

Things were looking downhill again at Joyland, with the second of the park’s deaths in 1982. The neighborhood around Joyland took on a rougher vibe. The happenings at the park reflected this. A park employee was stabbed to death in the parking lot. Several men snuck into the park and tried to provoke several employees before finally finding one to fight.

The Log Jam

The Log Jam at Joyland opened in 1985, and represented one of the last major projects the Nelsons undertook at Joyland.

Nelson remembered the ride as “a really big risk at the time”, at least financially speaking. Log flumes were (and continue to be) popular rides; Disneyland announced their log flume, Splash Mountain, in the early 80s, as well.

Designed by O. D. Hopkins, a well-known water rides manufacturer, the Log Jam required a river dug into the ground as well as a tall splashdown. The Nelsons took on some of the building for the project themselves, in order to save money. However, the investment paid of. “It was good for the park, it was a good major ride and it made us feel good to do that,” said Nelson.

The Log Jam was a classic log flume ride. Riders boarded fiberglass boats shaped like hollowed out logs, seating 4-5 riders each. The Log Jam guaranteed that every rider would get wet. The ride was therefore one of the most popular in the park on hot summer days, particularly with the closure of the Joyland Pool.

Joyland in the 90s

The 1990s continued to be somewhat tumultuous for Joyland. In 1993, a fire destroyed the Joyland skating rink – one for the L column. But sometime in the mid-90s, a go-kart track was added – one for the W column.

In an interview with the paper, Nelson drew contrasts with Joyland and bigger parks like Six Flags. He thought that parents interacted with their children differently at Joyland; calmer, more relaxed. “We give them a place to go where they can get their minds off what they’re doing.”

Skycoaster at Joyland Park

1996 saw the addition of Joyland’s last new ride, the Skycoaster. This is a ride consisting of an arch and two lifting towers. The ride pulls riders to the top of the lifting towers, then lets go. Riders swing in a huge arc from the main arch. As described at the time, “There is a sudden drop and the scenery begins whizzing by in a sweeping arc at about 32 feet a second.” A video of the Joyland Skycoaster can be found on Youtube.

Management built the Skycoaster on the site of the former Joyland Pool, now filled in with cement. This ride was a separately-charged attraction, costing $15-25 in 1996.

1997 flooding at Joyland Park

In June of 1997, in the middle of the Joyland operating season, Wichita experienced a torrential rainstorm, which led to flooding. Joyland Park flooded with water from the nearby creek, to a depth of 6-8 inches. Electrical equipment shorted out. Debris scattered everywhere. Two of the Joyland Log Jam cars floated away in the fray. One was found a few days later. The other car remained lost for three years, finally being found seven miles away in the Arkansas River.

When the flood waters finally receded, building floors had been covered in a half inch of sludgey, silty mud that had to be scraped and power washed. The park lost eleven critical days in the middle of the season. The park reopened, but it was clear that the flood had put a damper on the season.

The End of the 90s at Joyland Park

The flood may have marked the beginning of the end for Joyland. Despite the niche market the park had in providing party catering and group picnic spots and corporate event hosting, opinion of the park was starting to take a downturn.

In 1998, it got worse, with the final death at the park. A roller coaster car hit a maintenance worker, killing him. For unknown reasons, he was weeding with a weed trimmer underneath the roller coaster; he then stood up. The oncoming roller coaster train hit him.

Kansas lawmakers at the time did not require state inspections for amusement park rides. They did consider the notion as a result of this incident. But, it wasn’t until a state lawmaker’s son died on a water park ride in 2016 that a law was passed requiring state inspections of theme park rides.

Things were getting grim at Joyland.

Trouble at Joyland (2000s)

Getting into the early 2000s, we are finally arriving at a point where contemporaneous trip reports posted on the internet still exist.

Joyland Park Layout

One 2002 visitor described the park layout: “Essentially Joyland is one long midway. It is a bit odd as I felt the left side of the park (as you are walking in) had a classic feel to it. Down here there was Louie the Clown (one of two Wurlitzer clowns left), a Herschell carousel, the Eli Bridge Wheel, a Hrubetz Paratrooper, the Hopkins flume, an Eli Bridge Scrambler and the Roller Coaster.

“There were lots of trees hanging over the midway and may of the trunks had benches fashioned around them for people to sit and relax. The right side of the midway featured the seemingly out of place Skycoaster, the train station, a Hrubetz trailer-mounted Round Up, the Zumur, a Tilt-a-Whirl, Bumper Cars, the Wacky Shack, the kiddie area and a boarded-up western area. There was lots of open space here covered by concrete and some downright ugly buildings.”

Joyland cost $3.00 at the gate, plus either individual ride tickets or an unlimited wristband.

The park in 2001 felt run down. The entire Frontier Town section of the park had closed, fenced off, and decaying under cover of weeds. The post praised the park for trusting the visitor (“the park’s scenic train ride crosses pedestrian paths without the use of gate crossing arms in at least three places!”). They also noted that there was only one food stand and one set of bathrooms for the entire park.

2001 Review of Joyland Park’s Roller Coaster

Another 2001 visitor described the park as “shabby”. They praised the Roller Coaster, however, still a park favorite even after more than 50 years.

“The 1949 ACE Coaster Classic was my very first roller coaster. I still measure all wooden roller coasters by the standard set by its first two hills. It wasn’t the tallest coaster, nor was it the fastest. It didn’t do loops or have any bells and whistles. The lift hill was a tall ride, straight up. As you neared the top, you saw the vintage clown sign that read, “Last chance!” We’d put our hands in the air, and WHEW!, you dropped straight down. No turns, no tilts. Just a perfect, straight tummy-tickling drop. You could touch the branches of the trees, if you kept your hands up. Then whoosh!, straight up again, and another straight drop. The rest of the ride was a bit quieter, but those first two hills were my favorite part of Joyland. And in 2001, that ride was still incredible.”

Joyland Park Under David Rohy

All together, the reports were painting a picture of a park past its prime. It appeared as though the park’s maintenance, formerly meticulous, had slipped. Visitors were starting to notice. Many of the attractions were said to be in need of extensive repairs. It perhaps should not come as a surprise that in 2000, the Nelsons had begun leasing the park operations to another person, one David Rohr.

In 2003, David Rohr purchased the park from the Nelsons for $1.6 million.

It was short-lived. In March of 2004, the Nelsons sued Rohr, for missing payments and not paying the park’s taxes. In their lawsuit, they alleged that he was not properly maintaining the park.

Closure of Joyland Park

Then, in April 2004, another major incident, with a 13-year-old girl falling out of the ferris wheel and dropping over 30 feet to the ground. She suffered major head, leg, and arm injuries. Fortunately, she lived. The US Consumer Product Safety Commission investigated the accident. “We have an excellent safety record,” said David Rohr. “Nothing like this has ever happened since I’ve owned it.”

2004 at Joyland Park: Lawsuits and Closure

In mid-July 2004, the park abruptly closed. The given reason at the time was a dispute between David Rohr and the insurance companies, possibly relating to the Ferris wheel incident. Joyland was still a profitable park, reportedly grossing around $1.75 million per year at this time.

In late July of 2004, the Nelsons sued Rohr for a second time, again for missing payments on his $1.6 million dollar loan. Employees of Joyland were furious as well, reporting missing paychecks or paychecks that had bounced. The IRS put a lien on Rohr’s business, Rohr Enterprises, for $185,000.

By December of 2004, the park was in possession of the sheriff’s office. At this December 2004 sheriff’s auction, the Nelsons were able to successfully rebid on the Joyland Park, purchasing the property back with a $1.3 million bid that primarily consisted of collateral owed to them by David Rohr.

Joyland Park Revived (2006)

Joyland sat empty for all of 2005, with gossip flying about the future of the park. Urbex found its way in, even back before it was a trend: a great image album of the park in 2005, in between the final operating seasons. Rides were all still in place. Everyone waited.

In early 2006, the Nelsons leased the park to Michael Moodenbaugh and his business partner Robert Barnard, of “T. Rex Group”, with plans to renovate and reopen the park by mid-April of the same year.

It was a tumultuous year. The park did open Easter weekend, but without any rides. A contemporaneous park visitor posted about the reopening, saying it was “worse off than it was before. The roller coaster was closed, Whacky Shack was closed, go-karts closed, sky-coaster closed, the Log Jam was open but did not work properly; the Slide did not have wax so you could not slide. This image of Joyland was one that people did not like to see.”

Upgrades at Joyland Park (2006)

Joyland closed again in May for additional renovations. The Nelsons weren’t pleased. They got a court injunction to prevent Moodenbaugh from entering the park, claiming he had missed utility payments. Moodenbaugh countered by saying he and his company had already spent over $300,000 on renovations. The injunction was lifted after a few days, and the renovations continued.

Moodenbaugh and his T. Rex Group did invest money into the park, mostly focused on aesthetics and not ride safety. The roller coaster received a facelift – white paint, $10,000 dollars worth of wood repairs, and a new name: “Nightmare”. This included a quite tacky skeleton grim reaper makeover on the coaster cars themselves.

The Log Jam ride received upgraded pumps. Most of the other rides were left alone. Nothing was really done in regards to upgrading the ride safety. However, the park received a very unique blue and pink paint scheme throughout.

Joyland Park Reopens in 2006

By the end of May 2006, the park was open again, from 2-9pm daily. The Roller Coaster, however, did not reopen, due to failure to obtain insurance company approval for its operation. Irritated neighbors complained about the noise at the park, and there were constant squabbles with the city about permits.

The park closed for the season in the fall of 2006, and never re-opened.

Uncertainty at Joyland Park (2007-)

Joyland sat empty for all of 2007. Moodenbaugh and Barnard were facing a lawsuit from Star Lumber Supply Company, Inc, stemming from unpaid debt incurred for materials used in repairing the Joyland Roller Coaster. CEO of the lumber company stated: “It isn’t a huge amount ($10,000) but it still makes you angry.”

The Nelsons were back in court in 2008, again suing Moodenbaugh for “$248,000 in unpaid rent and $200,000 in missing or damaged property”. Moodenbaugh planned to counter-sue, but did admit to owing $150,000 to various creditors in Wichita.

Joyland Park Abandoned (2006-present)

“The unfortunate thing is that a lot of times, what we’d hear from people is ‘Oh, you’re closing Joyland down? Gosh, I haven’t been out there in 20 years,’ and we’d go ‘Yeah, we know,’” Nelson said to the local paper, afterwards.

“The support was just not there, and that’s nothing against Wichita, it’s just a fact,” Nelson added.

Park visitors concurred. One stated: “I honestly believe that Joyland closed because there was no introduction of new rides. Every park has to have some form of modern rides to keep the interest of the general public. The lack of attendance is why the park went under.”

Joyland Park Up for Sale

After the park’s closure in 2006, the Nelsons unsuccessfully tried to sell the park twice more. Both times, the sale ended with the potential owners walking away in the middle of the deal. And Stanley and Margaret Nelson wouldn’t sell to just anyone, at least not at first.

“He wanted to keep it as an amusement park,” Roger Nelson said of his father. “My dad genuinely loved the place and he wanted to see it continue.”

By fall of 2008, the Nelsons were resigned. They listed the park for sale for $2 million, open to any type of development, not just a theme park, for the first time. The local paper described the state of the park at the time:  “Weeds have grown up in concrete cracks. The wind whistles through buildings with no windows and through the ghostly skeleton of the roller coaster, now silent.”

Vandalism at Joyland Park

While wheels spun on the business front, vandals and thieves made merry at the abandoned Joyland park.

Nelson remembered one weekend in particular: “they [vandals] came in and just ripped the guts out of the electrical system and that left us absolutely unable to defend the place because we couldn’t leave any lights on,” Nelson said.

In 2009, the Nelsons sold several of the rides: the paratrooper, the round-up, the big truck ride. Later that year, someone stole the “Last Warning Do Not Stand up sign” from above the roller coaster.

Vandalism at Joyland Park was Difficult

Fires were set. Items were stolen, tagged, destroyed, sometimes even on a nightly basis.

“It was very hard to watch and very hard to come to grips with,” Nelson said.

With the constant vandalism at the park, it was difficult to keep a basic level of maintenance at the abandoned Joyland park, much less to sell it. This in turn made the banks reluctant to invest in either the refurbishment or the sale of the park. The city did their part to make the process even more difficult, declaring the Joyland property a flood zone.

Joyland Restoration Project

In 2010 and 2011, an ambitious group of high school students organized the “Joyland Restoration Project”. The Joyland Restoration Project had ambitious goals for buying, restoring, and expanding the park, and was looking to run the park as a non-profit. Their plans included expanded concessions, a second roller coaster, and a water park after ten years. However, their plans did not ever come to fruition.

Neighborhood in Decline

It seemed as though any and every possible idea to save the park was tried. They even listed Joyland for sale on eBay for a time. Everyone speculated about the reason the park wasn’t moving.

Alex, from the Joyland Restoration Project, was interviewed by the website Coaster101 in 2011. When asked why Joyland was still standing after seven years of abandonment, he responded: “I believe that Joyland is still standing because the owner of the park wants to see it come back to life. Joyland is not on the best side of town and that is why nobody has purchased the land and torn it down already; the only things that the land could really serve as is something unique like Joyland.”

Other people agreed, commenting on websites with similar sentiments. “Many people are probably thinking about the neighborhood Joyland is located in. I really think it will be fine there but many people won’t. Security will have to be addressed. People’s perception of the area will play a major factor regardless if there’s enough security there.” Others described the neighborhood as “a scary part of town”.

Fire, Fire, and More Fire at Joyland

Vandalism continued to rise at the abandoned Joyland park.

In late 2008, paintballers began to tag up the abandoned park.

In 2009, vandals destroyed the park’s office building. They smashed windows, scattered papers, kicked in doors, and destroyed furniture. Metal scrappers attacked the park. In a comment to the newspaper, Margaret Nelson said, simply, “We’re sick. Our hearts are just sick.”

Later that year, the Opera House at Joyland, known for its picnics, puppet shows, movies, and corporate retreats, was completely burned down by fire. Police suspected arson.

In 2011, the bathrooms were destroyed in a fire. Police suspected arson.

In 2012, a storage building was partially damaged by fire. Three teenagers fled the park. Police suspected arson.

Joyland Park: An Attractive Nuisance

By 2014, the city of Wichita stepped in. They claimed that the Nelsons had failed to properly maintain and secure the premises. Joyland Park had become an attractive nuisance. It needed to be demolished. Plagued by constant vandalism, the park was simply beyond repair.

What was once a vibrant, thriving family theme park was now a hazardous wasteland, covered in graffiti and weeds, ruinous and sad. One urban explorer commented in 2017: “There are heaps of debris everywhere and evidence of fires and graffiti at every turn. It is eerie and sad to remember having fun there and now it’s just an abandoned ruin.”

In 2015, Joyland’s iconic (or terrifying, depending on the source) Louie the clown was discovered. Lost at the time of the park’s 2004 closing, a disgruntled former employee reportedly stole Louie; originally, he maintained Louie during the park’s off-seasons. The same employee was involved in a civil suit with Margaret Nelson over the purchase of the Wurlitzer organ. Neither the status of the lawsuit nor the current whereabouts of the Joyland Wurlitzer organ are known.

Decay and Damage at Joyland Park

The decay of the abandoned park is very apparent in this video from the local paper.

A windstorm swept through Wichita in April of 2015, massively damaging Joyland’s Roller Coaster. Portions of the track collapsed, and the entire coaster structure was visibly structurally unsound. On July 23, 2015, owners demolished the remainder of the historic Philadelphia Toboggan Company wooden Roller Coaster.

The final insult to the once-thriving Joyland park came in 2018. The historical society had purchased the iconic Whacky Shack facade, among other Joyland items, and was in the process of arranging for transport. On August 8, 2018, fire completely destroyed the Whacky Shack building.

Police suspected arson.

In November of 2018, a private buyer purchased the land where Joyland once sat for $198,000.

Joyland Park Remembered

Joyland Park was an iconic part of Wichita for the better part of a century, and parts of the park still remain, scattered throughout the community.

Storage and Preservation of Joyland Park Artifacts

Despite the attractive urbex abandoned park photos cluttering the internet, many of the park’s items were saved. Sitting in a warehouse, buried under layers of dust, lie piles of park memorabilia: original Joyland posters, dodgem cars, ticket boxes, signs. Porky the Paper Eater leans up against a wall, recovered from the home of a disgruntled park employee in 2015.

Elsewhere, the Historic Preservation Alliance of Wichita and Sedgewick County have stored away several larger historic Joyland artifacts, such as the large caboose that formerly resided in Frontier Town. The original neon animated sign that once lived at Joyland Central was also purchased and saved, featuring an animation of two clowns. Along with the stagecoach, the Old Woman’s Shoe, and the original Roller Coaster ticket booth, these artifacts were reportedly purchased in 2010 for $22,000. These larger items sit dismantled in storage, waiting for eventual restoration.

Joyland Park in the Community

Other local groups also have bits and pieces of Joyland. The Donut Whole shop in Wichita has Joyland’s original open-mouthed lion drinking fountain. And over at the Churn and Burn, an ice cream and coffee shop, you can find several of the handpainted Joyland signs, including the “Joyland Arcade” sign. Owner Christian Shomberg says that after a dream about opening up the show, he says the Joyland signs pictured under his first web search for “ice cream shop”. “That afternoon I went and looked at them and put a deposit down before I had even bought any equipment or anything else because I knew I wanted them.”

Joyland Rides at the Ottawa County Fair

It’s not just small stuff that’s been saved, though. The Ferris wheel remained in the park until the early 2010’s, when crews eventually came to remove it. Today, the Joyland Ferris wheel runs at the Ottawa County Fair in Minneapolis, KS, a brilliant yellow wheel against the sky. Bucket seats feature a detailed “JP” on the backs, for Joyland Park. The Scrambler and a handful of other rides, including a tea cup ride, were purchased by the Ottawa County government from Joyland to run at the fair, as well.

Joyland’s Carousel, Restored

Perhaps the most visible part of the former Joyland artifacts is the Carousel. In May 2014, Margaret Nelson announced her donation of the carousel to the Botanica in Wichita, where it would be fully restored. In addition to restoration of the horses, the entire carousel is to be rewired after copper thieves hit the park, and energy efficient LED bulbs will replace the original incandescents.

Carousel Restoration Process

Carousel restoration artist Marlene Irvin has 40 years of experience with carousels. “I have repainted and restored thousands of individual animals and restored complete carousel machines. This one is special to me because it is the carousel of my youth, in my town,” Irvin said. “All through my growing up years I went to Joyland for various outings and always rode the carousel and stopped by the Wurlitzer organ to listen. I imagine I have ridden every horse several times during my lifetime.”

Describing the task ahead of her, Irvin said, “Every couple of years a new coat of paint was applied over the old resulting in me now having to strip anywhere from 5 to 25 or more coats of paint.” Each horse takes at least one hundred hours or more to restore.

“Finding and bringing back the beauty that was originally there is never boring,” Irvin said.

Botanica is building a brand new pavilion complex to house the Herschell carousel, where it will reportedly be one of only five remaining Herschell carousels in the world. Irvin completed the restoration of the carousel horses in April 2019, and the expected opening date for the restored carousel in Botanica’s Carousel Gardens is fall 2019.

Joyland: Community

Joyland still inspires fond memories today. Everyone who talks about Joyland remembers it in the context of family and community.

“I grew up at Joyland. First roller coaster, first date and even my first kiss were at Joyland. I am sad that my kids and my nieces will never get to experience Joyland the way me and my sister did. I have so many amazing memories with my family there. My sister and I always reminisce about our youth and mom and dad taking us there,” a visitor is quoted as saying.

Remembering the Ottaways

Roger Nelson is grateful to the park’s original owners for the work they put in and the risks they took in opening a park like Joyland in Wichita.

“The people that originally started the park were some really special people. The Ottaways were very innovative and very handy at what they did, and I always like to give credit to them. The things that they did, back then, the risks that they took to buy equipment and stuff, not knowing for sure what’s going to happen. They took some tremendous risks,” he said. “We did, too. That’s what it’s all about in that game. You spend a lot of money on a ride and you hope like heck it goes, ‘cause man, we’ve got everything riding on it.”

Joyland Park: Something Special

True to its name from the beginning, the amusement park brought joy to Wichita for decades, and it will forever hold a special place in the hearts of those who visited.

“It was a place where you could take your kids, it was a good safe place, and it had little kiddie rides,” Nelson said. “It was just a nice, pleasant uncrowded place and it was something that people just enjoyed,” Nelson said, remembering the park. “We lived and breathed the whole thing, always.”

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.

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