January 24, 2020: I originally posted this podcast episode and accompanying blog post in September 2019. With Dogpatch USA back in the news recently, I’ve updated this post and re-published it. I’ll be back with a new episode of The Abandoned Carousel next week – see you then! –Ashley

Sadie Hawkins

This week, our story begins in perhaps a seemingly roundabout way. 

Remember Sadie Hawkins Day, that pseudo-holiday where girls ask boys to a dance? Maybe you don’t, maybe you’re a younger listener from a more enlightened era who never had this phenomenon forced on them. Let me explain. The tradition originated in the late 1930s, when culturally, men did all the inviting and women rarely were socially allowed to do the same. The Sadie Hawkins dance (and Sadie Hawkins day) became a cultural phenomenon of gender role-reversal. Women asked men out to the big dance for once!

Does it seem empowering? Does it seem enlightened? Maybe not as much as you might think.

Sadie Hawkins was not a real person. Sadie Hawkins was the “homeliest gal in all them hills”, a character from Al Capp’s Li’l Abner comic strip. She was an unmarried spinster, and when she reached the “horrifying” age of 35 years old and was still unmarried, her father came up with a plan to solve the horrifying dilemma. Depicted in the comic originally between November 13-30th, 1937, Sadie’s father set up a foot race and invited all the unmarried men from the fictional town of Dogpatch USA. Whichever one Sadie caught first at the end of the race was obligated by town law to marry her.

The idea caught fire and spread out of the newspaper comic strip and into pop culture. By 1939, two years later, Sadie Hawkins had a double-page spread in Life magazine, and Sadie Hawkins day was an annual feature of Al Capp’s Li’l Abner comic strip.

Li’l Abner

You might also be saying to yourself, who or what is Li’l Abner and why should I care?

It’s always surprising when something once so incredibly popular and well-known is in modern times an unknown, distant memory. As the wheel turns, so too go our cultural references. 

Li’l Abner was a comic strip, written and drawn by one Al Capp. It debuted in August 1934, and ran daily until November of 1977. The strip was one of, if not the first comic strips to focus on the South. Before Li’l Abner, comic strips were based around Northern experiences. (Capp, probably unsurprisingly, was not actually from the South, despite the characters in his comic.)

The strip was set in the fictional town of Dogpatch, initially located in Kentucky, but later carefully only referred to as Dogpatch USA (likely to avoid offending Kentuckians and avoid cancellations of the strip from Kentucky newspapers!). Capp described Dogpatch as “an average stone-age community nestled in a bleak valley, between two cheap and uninteresting hills somewhere.” And the plot? Not so much a plot-driven comic, this strip was about the characters and the socio-political commentary. It was loud, bawdy, detailed, sexy, and poked sharp humor at the world. 

Li’l Abner was an over-the-top stereotype of poverty and Appalachia. Residents of Dogpatch were ignorant and lazy or scoundrels and thieves. It wasn’t without purpose, though. Reportedly, the characters in Li’l Abner allowed Americans suffering through the Great Depression to laugh at someone even worse off than themselves. 

The stars of the strip were the titular Li’l Abner, his love interest and later wife Daisy Mae (their nuptials landed them a Life magazine cover in March 1952), parents Mammy and Pappy, and a host of other supporting characters. There were also a number of allegorical animals over the years, including the fabulous “shmoo”, which “bred exponentially, consumed nothing, and eagerly provided everything that humankind could wish for.” (The Wikipedia article on the characters and settings is quite detailed if you’re interested in more information.) The strip as a whole was outright misanthropic.

Reception of Li’l Abner

Li’l Abner was a cultural phenomenon. It was like nothing anyone had seen before.

At its peak, the comic reportedly reached over 70 million households, in a time when the US population was only 180 million people. That’s almost 40% of the population. 

John Steinbeck “called Capp “very possibly the best writer in the world today” in 1953, and even earnestly recommended him for the Nobel Prize in literature”. In a 1997 book, comics historian Richard Marschall said: “Capp was calling society absurd, not just silly; human nature not simply misguided, but irredeemably and irreducibly corrupt. Unlike any other strip, and indeed unlike many other pieces of literature, Li’l Abner was more than a satire of the human condition. It was a commentary on human nature itself.” 

Li’l Abner marked a change in the tone of the comics world when it was introduced in the 1930s. It introduced politics and dark social commentary into a market that was primarily filled with lighthearted amusements. As the popularity of the strip grew, the audience makeup shifted, as well, comprised mostly of adults now.

Li’l Abner was even reportedly the inspiration for MAD magazine. Both captured the satirical dark humor that was becoming more popular with American audiences.  

The comic was the subject of the first book-length scholarly critique of a comic strip, as well. “One of the few strips ever taken seriously by students of American culture,” wrote Arthur Berger. “Li’l Abner is worth studying…because of Capp’s imagination and artistry, and because of the strip’s very obvious social relevance.” (Berger shows a little bias here, since he’s the author of this first book critiquing the strip. It has exactly one review on Amazon at the time of this recording: “It wasn’t what I expected since Lil Abner doesn’t need to be psycho-analyzed.”

Li’l Abner in Pop Culture

Beyond literary criticism, Li’l Abner touched all parts of culture, particularly during the height of the comic strip’s popularity (between the 1940s-1970s). At one point, Al Capp reoprtedly convinced six of the most popular radio personalities of the mid-40s to record a song he’d written about Daisy Mae; one of these was ol’ blue eyes himself, Frank Sinatra.

There was a radio drama and a Broadway musical. There were comic book anthologies and a short-lived TV cartoon and a live-action movie. And then of course, there was licensing.

Characters from Dogpatch were licensed to dozens of popular products throughout the decades, appearing throughout the grocery store and pharmacy aisles, and on the pages of men’s and women’s magazines alike. There were toys, games, clothes, and a series of family restaurants called Li’l Abner’s. (All have gone out of business by the time of this recording in 2019; a Li’l Abner’s Steakhouse in Tucson currently operating is not related to the Al Capp comics brand.) 

And finally, beyond all of that, there was a theme park, called Dogpatch USA.

Dogpatch USA

Before it was Dogpatch USA, a now-abandoned theme park based on a once incredibly popular media property, the land in the Ozarks, Harrison and Jasper, Arkansas, was just a scenic spot off Arkansas Highway 7.

The area was called Marble Falls, Arkansas.

In the 40s, Albert Raney purchased a trout farm. The Raney family also owned the nearby Mystic Caverns, caves with beautiful natural formations that had been commercial tourist attractions since the late 1920s. A local realtor, OJ Snow, saw the potential in both the caverns and the Raney trout farm when Raney put up the trout farm for sale in 1966. 

Snow gathered a group of businessmen and formed Recreation Enterprises, Incorporated (REI) to develop the property into an amusement park. (As a sidebar, this will be our first, but not last, business acronym. Keep count.) REI approached Al Capp with their plans for the park, reportedly assuring him (somewhat ironically, we’ll find out) that the park would be quiet and dignified, and wouldn’t have any roller coasters or thrill rides that would conflict with the hillbilly themes of Li’l Abner. 

Capp consented, having turned down several theme park proposals in other areas in prior years, and the planning was on.

Groundbreaking on Dogpatch USA

Capp and his wife came to Arkansas for a groundbreaking ceremony in October of 1967. Reportedly, Dogpatch USA was the by-product of his comic strip that made him most proud, as he said in his remarks during the ceremony. “This is the one which will finally gain me some respect from my grandchildren, who until now have always thought of me as a silly man who just draws pictures.”

Local perception of the park was mixed. State officials were reportedly concerned about negative impressions of Arkansas due to the hillbilly stereotype. Attendees of the 1967 Central Arkansas Urban Policy Conference also expressed doubts about the likelihood of success for the park, as many other parks in the decade prior had tried to replicate the success of Disneyland (1955) but failed. Still, the local Chamber of Commerce approved plans for the park.

This may have been in part due to an optimistic projection report from an LA consultant firm, which projected 400,000 visitors in year one, 1M visitors by year ten, and annual revenue of $5 M by year ten. 

These projections were incredibly optimistic, in retrospect, as we’ll later see.

Albert Raney, who still maintained ties with the park, was actually the town postmaster, and the post office is and was right in the Dogpatch USA parking lot. In 1968, Raney helped the town of Marble Falls officially change their name to Dogpatch, Arkansas, to promote the park. 

Over $1.3 M was reportedly put into the park’s phase I. Construction, according to some, was rushed. Scores of workers descended on the area in March, April, and May of 1968 in order to accomodate the opening date of mid-May 1968.

REI renovated the Mystic Caverns and renamed them Dogpatch Caverns, installing lighting, handrails, and additional safety features. Authentic 19th century log cabins were found elsewhere in the Ozarks, disassembled, and painstakingly reassembled at Dogpatch USA. 

Additionally, an 1834 watermill, already on the property, by the name of Peter Beller’s Mill, was restored to working condition for the park. The mill was not only for looks – it actually operated, grinding corn into cornmeal, which was then packaged and sold to visitors.

One of the major pros of the park for the Chamber of Commerce was the Cornpine Square business region, which employed many from the local area, demonstrating and selling wares, arts, and crafts. One such building was called the Ladies Brotherhood Hand Sewing Center for all things knit, sewn, or woven. There was a diamond and stone museum, including demonstrations from artisans. There was a honey shop, a glassblowing center, a woodshop and wood carving, photo studio, pottery center, candle shop, and of course, trout fishing.

Opening day was May 17, 1968.

Dogpatch was immediately a success. Motels in the area reported hordes of tourists they couldn’t serve, even going so far as to seek private rooms in the area for the summer season in order to handle the crowds they couldn’t serve in their motels. Reportedly, there were about 8,000 visitors on opening day, with 300,000 visitors reported in the first year. They also reported a net profit of about $100,000 at the end of the year – $700,000 in today’s money. Not too shabby, but not quite the 400,000 visitors projected by that LA firm prior to the project’s start.

Early, Hazy Days of Success at Dogpatch USA

Things at Dogpatch USA looked so sweet in those early days. A local 1968 op-ed wrote that Dogpatch had “a good chance of becoming one of the nation’s biggest tourist attractions”. That same op-ed projected a gross of $12 M for the park in the first six years, adding “the rest of Northwest Arkansas had better start rounding out their own tourist facilities to take advantage of the crowd”. 

This is the point where, to be honest, I would always get bored and confused in the story of Dogpatch USA in my research. Hang in there if you feel the same way. I’ve punched it up a bit, and honestly the story of Dogpatch USA is so much wilder when all of the details are left in instead of being glossed over. 

REI, the developer group who owned the park, spent their first off-season squabbling over how to use the profits from the first year of Dogpatch USA’s operation. Many of the members wanted to divide the profits amongst themselves personally, while some members, including our realtor friend OJ Snow, wanted to reinvest the profits in the park. This dispute left an opening for an entrepreneurial spirit.

Enter businessman Jess Odom. He saw that opportunity, and purchased a controlling interest in the park from REI members in late 1968. He signed a 30-year licensing agreement with Al Capp: the park had the rights to use Capp’s Li’l Abner intellectual property from 1968 through 1998, and in return, Capp would receive 2-3% of the gross profits of the park.

Dogpatch USA: 1969

In addition to further licensing of the Li’l Abner IP, Odom had capital p Plans for Dogpatch USA. He reportedly installed $350,000 worth of rides before the park reopened for the season in May 1969. It’s likely that one of these was the “Frustratin’ Flyer”, a Monster Mouse model Allan Herschell mad mouse coaster. 

One other was the “Earthquake McGoon’s Brain Rattler”, a Chance Rides prototype Toboggan coaster. This ride was painted as a track wrapped around a metal tree – riders in a small coaster car climbed through the tree and then circled around the structure before doing a short out and back to the station. This ride bore serial number #1 from the factory in Wichita. (If you’re new to the podcast, check out the Joyland episodes, where I talk about Chance Rides, and the recent C. P. Huntington train episode). A scant 32 Toboggans were manufactured. Most were built on trailers for portability. Earthquake McGoon’s was not. Conflicting reports arise, as some places say the coaster was introduced later on (in 1981). However, this seems unlikely given the manufacturer’s date of 1969 and the manufacturing dates of other Chance Toboggans (via RCDB). 

Beyond rides, Odom hired former six-term Arkansas governor Orval Faubus as president of Dogpatch USA in early 1969. This was ultimately only a one-year position for Faubus that primarily consisted of promotional visits across the country, extolling the virtues of the theme park. 

Odom also arranged some cross-promotional opportunities. The first annual Miss Dogpatch contest was held in 1969, and the park also was a filming location for the 1969 horror flick “It’s Alive!”, which has 2.7 stars (out of 10) on IMDb. 

The park was doing well. 1969 marked a high point in rustic, hillbilly pop culture nationwide. Li’l Abner appeared in more than 700 US newspapers daily. Shows with rustic, rural themes like Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Petticoat Junction were all massive hits on TV. And locally, another theme park with a similar country rustic theme was finding success as well: Silver Dollar City, outside of Branson MO. 

Dogpatch USA: Early 1970s

Things continued to go well for Dogpatch in its next few years. A motel made solely of mobile homes was completed in time for the 1970 opening day, as was a campsite with over a hundred spaces. A funicular tram (essentially an angled railway going up and down a slope) was nearing completion and opened midway through the 1970 season. The funicular transported guests from the parking lot down to the theme park below.  

Odom was like Uncle Scrooge seeing unlimited dollar signs. He bought out almost all of the remaining REI investors and essentially became the new owner of Dogpatch USA.

By 1972, a number of new attractions were added, including animal exhibits with sea lions and exotic birds, and a “unique boat ride”. This was simply called Boat Train Ride, and involved a cast member driving a motorboat, pulling a train of non-motorized boats behind it. The ride went up the creek to the Mill and then back again.

Marble Falls Ski Facility

1972 also saw the announcement of a new project: Marble Falls. This was to be “a highly unique snow-skiing and convention facility which will offer a variety of seasonal attractions the year round.” Odom saw this as a way of maximizing the potential of Dogpatch, continuing the profits throughout the off season. The ski center used snow machines to produce adequate ski slopes, and also featured an ice-skating rink, an inn, condos, and A-frame Alpine chalets that were sold as timeshares to help defray costs. 

Ironically, a snowstorm caused delays in the opening of Marble Falls. The snow cannons were all stuck in a major snowstorm in Denver! Not only that, but it was icy on Marble Falls’ opening day, which kept patrons away. Slopes were finally conditioned for skiing by New Years, and for a few weeks, things went great. Unfortunately, it was an early spring, and by mid-February, it was too warm for even artificial snow. This was to be the story of Marble Falls for each year of its operation.

Many people, of course, point to the Marble Falls winter resort as the tipping point for Dogpatch’s downfall.

More Additions to Dogpatch in the 1970s

Additional rides were added to Dogpatch USA in 1973, including a scrambler, go-karts, a shooting gallery, a maze, and a swinging bridge. They all have Li’l Abner-themed names which I really don’t need to go into here. Pappy Yokum’s Positively Petrifying Putt-Mobiles, indeed. 

The “famous” Kissing Rocks sculpture was also added during the 1973 season – two very large heads of characters kissing, carved out of stone. 

1974 saw additional new attractions, including a replica Native American village and Hairless Joe’s Kickapoo Barrel. This was a very memorable thrill ride of which few photos exist. It’s one of the “Rotor” type, also known as “Devil’s Hole” and “Hell Hole”. Simple in concept, these were incredibly popular around the 1950s. Riders were spun in a circle until centrifugal force pinned them to the wall of the barrel, and then the floor of the ride dropped out while the ride kept spinning. This sounds absolutely terrifying to me, but I get that I’m a chicken about these things.

Attendance estimates for this time period vary wildly, from 200,000 visitors per year to over 1 million visitors per year at its peak. 

Trouble on the Horizon for Dogpatch USA

It did seem like prospects were looking up and up and up for Dogpatch, even with the stops and starts of the Marble Falls Ski project. As with all good roller coasters, it was time to fall down. A number of factors came together at once to really seal the fate of Dogpatch.

Nationally, in the early 1970s, interest rates skyrocketed. Odom needed money for Dogpatch, so even though it was a bad time to borrow, he had no choice. He borrowed money from Union Planters Bank in Memphis – $2M in 1972 and an additional $1.5M in 1973.

An energy crisis kept travellers home due to the high cost of oil and gasoline in the oil embargo of 1973. And in pop culture, there was the “rural purge”. Network TV executives, especially those at CBS, began cancelling rural, rustic shows in favor of more urban-directed shows that were aimed at a different audience. Additionally at play here was the newly-implemented Prime Time Access Rule, which forced networks to trim seven half-hour shows (from 7:30-8:00pm) from their weekly programming and return that time to local stations. Shows had to go. Urban variety shows were the new trend, so even though shows like The Beverly Hillbillies were popular, they had to go from the POV of a network executive.

Li’l Abner was still a daily comic strip in a declining number of papers, but the extensions of the property never happened given the changing cultural climate. No Li’l Abner restaurant chain, and no Li’l Abner TV series. Al Capp was facing sexual assault charges. Capp’s politics in his comic strip were changing. 

And back in the Ozarks, attendance numbers for Dogpatch USA in the 1970s were nowhere near expectations.

Weather and Money Troubles in the Late 70s

Mild weather was spelling trouble – this was awful news for the ski lodge of Marble Falls. You can’t have a ski lodge in warm weather, even if you can make artificial snow. Marble Falls sat empty and grassy and idle. Dogpatch USA made a moderate profit, but couldn’t make up for the resulting lack of income from the Marble Falls side of things.

Jess Odom was sitting at around $3.5 million dollars in debt at this point. He tried some business maneuvers, but ultimately failed. Banks began seeking their money back from Odom in the late 70s. In 1976 and 1977, two different banks sued Odom and his company, Marble Falls Estates.

And then in 1977, Al Capp retired, ending the Li’l Abner strip. This was a huge blow to the park, as the strip had essentially provided a constant, wide-spread advertising for the park. All together, expenses were up, and profits were down.

That same year of 1977, Odom made the decision to permanently close the Marble Falls ski slopes, citing the fact that the attraction had lost $50,000 to $100,000 a year since its opening in 1972. 

Despite all this, 1977 was reportedly the most profitable year yet, with the highest attendance numbers in the park’s history.

Odom tried to add some new attractions to stem the tide: the Slobbovian sled run, a puppet theater, a space flight simulator. It wasn’t enough. 

In 1979, Odom announced that he was in talks to sell Dogpatch to a nonprofit Christian group called God’s Patch, Inc, and reportedly had been negotiating the deal privately for several years. Should the deal go through, Dogpatch would be converted into a biblically themed entertainment and convention center. The deal never went forward, however, as God’s Patch, Inc. couldn’t find sufficient matching investment funds before their allotted time ran out.

Odom tried another tact, feeling himself sinking under the weight of the high interest rates on his loans. He went to the Harrison City Council. He tried to get their help in essentially refinancing all of his loans and extending their life while lowering the interest rates, through the issuing of tourism bonds. Ultimately, he was asking them for all of his personal money back out of the park, for Harrison to assume all the debts, and for the park to be run by this God’s Patch group. 

Harrison City Council wasn’t particularly excited by the proposal, and asked to see his books for the last five years. 

Within a week of the meeting, two lawsuits were filed. The previous year, in 1978, a child fell over 20 feet after slipping between a ride and its loading platform; a woman slipped and fell trying to catch the child. Both suffered spinal injuries and permanent disabilities. They sought over $200k in compensation, alleging in the suit that Dogpatch had been negligent in ride design, safety, and employee training. The lawsuits took two years to settle, and they left a bad taste in the mouth of the Harrison City Council. 

The Harrison City Council rejected Odom’s bond proposal, and they rejected his subsequent followup bond proposal. Councilmembers reportedly went on record at the time to say that the entire community was against any bonds relating to Dogpatch. The general sense was that the community knew the shape of it, and didn’t want any part in the bad deal Odom was trying to pass off on someone else.

Some new attractions materialized again at the park, doing little to improve attendance: a trained bear act, and the first appearance of a costumed Shmoo character.

In 1980, a new business entity was formed, this time called Ozark Family Entertainment (OFE). OFE stated that they had no connection with Dogpatch, although later records reportedly indicated that multiple people associated with OFE had been in management positions at Dogpatch USA or had been involved in other business dealings with Odom.

Several people were reportedly interested in moving Dogpatch to a new location, and Odom was reportedly no longer interested in being the owner of the park. The newest idea was that now they’d try getting Jasper (Newton County, where most of Dogpatch was physically located) to issue tourist bonds, with the gist of their proposal being no property taxes on almost 1000 acres of developed land, plus cheap money. 

OFE negotiated to purchase Dogpatch, which was unsurprisingly approved by the shareholders. Newton County tentatively agreed to the bond proposal only if OFE could find buyers for all the bonds AND convince Dogpatch USA’s creditors to accept the bonds in lieu of payment. OFE seemed to think they had this in place. 

In one of the many mind-numbingly complex situations involved with Dogpatch, REI maintained ownership of the park for the summer of 1980, but OFE managed it. Banks and creditors wanted to wait on the bond issue through the summer season to see how profitable Dogpatch USA was going to be without the weight of the now-closed Marble Falls ski resort.

What happened was a massive heat wave. 1980 saw what was reputedly the hottest summer in Arkansas history to date, with more triple-digit days that year than almost any prior year. Trees and plants withered, water sources dried up, and people stayed inside. They did not want to be out at a theme park in humid 100+ degree temperatures. The months rolled on, and summer at Dogpatch USA in 1980 was a bust. 

By the end of August, the creditors had seen enough. They weren’t willing to accept the bonds as payment. Additional banks sued Dogpatch and its holding companies over their unpaid, ballooning debts. The bond issue wasn’t going anywhere. Odom tried to get the banks to allow delayed payments on some of the debts, but they weren’t having any of it. And the lawsuits over the child and woman injured at the park were settled during this time as well, for an undisclosed amount of money.

In October 1980, Union Planters Bank, to which Dogpatch owed millions, filed to take possession of Dogpatch and Marble Falls. 

In November 1980, Dogpatch filed for bankruptcy. Their filing reportedly listed 90 creditors owed $3.2 M, including personal debts to Al Capp and Jess Odom himself. OFE would not be able to buy the park unless these creditors were all paid off. The bank, Union Planters, took possession of Dogpatch USA, including most of the associated business as well: hotels, chalets, post office, restaurant, and service station. Despite their ownership on paper, Union Planters was reportedly ready to sell quickly, as they were located in Memphis, almost 300 miles from Dogpatch USA. 

Here we go through yet more confusing legal ownership.

Union Planters expected that Dogpatch USA wouldn’t open during the 1981 season, but it ended up doing so after all. Enter Wayne Thompson, one of the former members of OFE and a former general manager at Dogpatch USA (during 1974-1975 season). He formed a new company called Ozark’s Entertainment, Inc (OEI), because who doesn’t love another confusing acronym? OEI purchased Dogpatch and much of its assets for an undisclosed sum early in 1981. 

The bank retained Marble Falls Ski Resort, and auctioned the property off in April of 1981 (we’ll get back to this in a minute). Also sold were the Dogpatch Caverns. The latter were purchased by Albert Raney, part of the family that owned the original trout farm property. After a rename to Mystic Caverns, they continued operating as a tourist attraction that year. 

Dogpatch USA under OEI Ownership

Wayne Thompson, as mentioned, had originally been a general manager of Dogpatch back in 1974 and 1975. In the intervening years between his management and his ownership of the park, he reportedly managed a different park down in Florida, leveling himself up on park management skills. As the 80s rolled on and Dogpatch USA began operations under Thompson and OEI, it was clear he’d learned some useful things. 

For instance, he cut staff – from 600 in 1980 down to 250 in 1981. He focused on upgrading landscaping and adding additional arts and crafts and shows. Thompson even re-invested in the park’s infrastructure, working with a local firm to rebuild the Marble Falls water wheel. They used original period wood-working techniques and the original cast iron spike, still drilled into the rock at the base of the waterfall. 

And of course, Thompson added new rides. The iconic “Wild Water Rampage” (the big waterslide still living on the property today) was installed for the 1984 operating season.

Reportedly, big name acts like Ike and Tina Turner, Hank Thompson, and Reba McEntire all performed at Dogpatch USA’s ampitheatre at this time. Denver Pyle from the popular TV show Dukes of Hazzard was signed on as the spokesman for the park. And Thompson signed licensing deals: Spiderman, Batman, and Captain America were all on hand for autographs and appearances. At the same time, Coke, Dr. Pepper, and Tyson Foods licensed their brands for amphitheatres, buildings, and season passes. 

All told, Dogpatch USA recovered from its slumps in 1979 and 1980, and made a profit. Reportedly, attendance was up by 21%, although this practically should’ve been a guarantee after the 1980 heatwave. 

More Legal Entanglements for Dogpatch

While the park seemed to be recovering, more was going on behind the scenes. The courts were structuring the debt after bankruptcy. 

Y’all, I’ve got to be honest, I’ve almost given up on this episode right here, so many times. Ugh, it is just an alphabet soup of confusion. I promise that the story is more interesting with all the details – stay with me. 

Okay. So, we have a new company. This one’s called Dogpatch Properties Inc, or DPP. Remember how I said the Marble Falls part of the property was auctioned? Well, DPP was a group of businessmen who formed this company and arranged to buy it. The plan was that secured interests in the property would be paid off first, and then unsecured interests paid off next, somehow with Jess Odom still in the mix to manage expenses only. 

Somehow too was introduced the concept of selling parts of this property as time-shares. Enter a new company: Buffalo River Resorts (BRR), still an Odom enterprise, that reportedly existed as a company only to sell timeshares for DPP. (Why all the shell companies? Perhaps to keep the name Dogpatch off sales and ad copy, and keep that associated bad taste out of people’s mouths.) 

Okay. So then, one of the Arkansas state laws get changed, and uh-oh, this one concerns time shares. This here is the most confusing part of the legal entanglements. Essentially, the Time Share Act of 1983 (Act 294) required that timeshare properties be registered with the State Real Estate Commission prior to being sold. This in turn would require that “BRR furnish the purchaser with releases from all liens or to put up a bond or buy insurance or to provide a document in which the mortgage holder subordinates his rights to those of the purchaser”.

It gets into legal spaghetti here, and to be honest, I think very few people understand what went on. You can get into the details at the website of Arkansas Road Stories, whose piece on Dogpatch is incredibly well-researched, and provides a solid backbone for my episode that you’re hearing right now. 

The long and the short of it was that there was a lot of legal mess roughly boiling down to “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” until 1984, when lawyers found a loophole. Essentially, the courts made a decision to exempt BRR from registering with the State Real Estate Commission, with one catch. Any time-share buyers had to be informed that banks had liens on the properties, and therefore that the banks could potentially re-possess timeshares if DPP and BRR didn’t pay their debts. 

Unsurprisingly, the number of timeshare sales subsequently dropped.

1987 and On: Dogpatch USA Ownership Under Telcor

After the dust from the OEI ownership and BRR timeshare kerfuffles had settled down, things were quiet at Dogpatch for a few years.

Then came 1987.

The Entertainment and Leisure Corp (Telcor) came on the scene. They purchased a controlling interest (90%) in Dogpatch USA for an undisclosed sum, leaving the remaining 10% in the hands of a few area residents.

Well, that was abrupt. How’d this all come about?

So it turns out that Telcor was a new company, formed in order to buy and manage theme parks. It was headed by a guy named Melvyn Bell, who also at the time owned Deer Forest Park in Michigan, and Magic Springs, in Arkansas. (We’ll get there, though not in this episode. Magic Springs was shuttered for five years starting in 1995 before a massive revitalization project, and Deer Forest Park is on my master abandoned park list.) Aside from theme parks, Melvyn Bell had made a name and a lot of money for himself in waste management and restaurant training (two separate businesses). 

The Dogpatch connection came from the new President of Telcor, one Wayne Thompson, who should be a familiar name by now as the general manager of Dogpatch USA for most of the 80s and current OEI owner. And funnily enough, another principle owner of OEI, Sam Southerland, became VP of Telcor, and became finance manager for all three Telcor parks. 

Corporate poaching or perhaps just some solid lateral business moves, who knows. The sense from my research is that the acquisition was well-received. After all, Melvyn Bell had deep pockets and Telcor had promised to spend at least half a million dollars on improvements to the park. 

Well, they did add a new ride called Space Shuttle, which didn’t seem to fit the rustic theming of Dogpatch USA very well. I haven’t dwelled on the theming very much with how much this story has been about ridiculous money mismanagement and legal mumbo-jumbo, but it should be very clear that by the late 80s, rustic was very out. Clean and shiny and new was in, and Dogpatch USA was never going to fit the new trends without a massive re-theming. Barring that, they just shoehorned whatever new ride or attraction felt fun into place and hoped for the best. Leave the theming to Disney, it seems. But they did take at stab at improving maintenance, at the least.

Anyhow, reportedly attendance was up 60% in the first year with Telcor compared to 1981, the first year with OEI. Okay. Odd comparison, but okay. 

If we flip back to the BRR and DPP timeshare side of things, we’ll still be mired in legal spaghetti. Three banks’ right to foreclose (on Jess Odom) were upheld by the US Eight District Court of Appeals. Summarizing and reading between the lines, it appears that the court placed the responsibility for Dogpatch USA, DPP, and BRR solely at the feet of Jess Odom. “If Dogpatch Properties, Inc. (DPP) can’t pay, the debtor will be responsible for the leins, the money will come out of the debtor’s estate, and unsecured creditors will get nothing.”

1988: Departures and Declining Cultural Relevance at Dogpatch

In 1988, Wayne Thompson parted ways with Melvyn Bell and therefore with Telcor and Dogpatch USA. Lynn Spradley became the general manager in his place, a man with fourteen years of experience already at Dogpatch USA in other positions. In his next few years at Dogpatch as general manager, he was reportedly often bemoaning the situation Dogpatch USA was in. As I said, the theming had really taken a dive, and rustic was out out out, not in. The Li’l Abner comic strip had been out of print in the papers for over a decade. Said Spradley, “A lot of kids don’t have any idea who Daisy Mae and Li’l Abner are.” Reportedly, Dogpatch had to spend more per patron than comparable parks on various promotions to attract guests.

Not only was the theming a problem, but location was always a problem, too. Dogpatch was on a side highway, a back road. As we know by know on The Abandoned Carousel, location is such a huge factor.

And as I mentioned many minutes ago, Silver Dollar City in Branson, MO was a relatively close attraction (50 miles north, just over the MO-AR border). This park is still open, spoiler alert. It is and was an 1880s-themed Ozark village. There are crafts and tradesman demonstrations, there are stages and performances, there are multiple coasters and rides, and there’s Marvel Cave, a cave that’s been open for tourists since 1894. Does it all sound like a better version of Dogpatch? Kinda. Sorry, Dogpatch stans. And if Silver Dollar City didn’t have it, Ozark Folk Center, an Arkansas state park, was a short distance due east, to meet the craftsman and Ozark heritage needs. 

As one author nicely put it, Dogpatch USA was, from the beginning, too hokey and jokey with its Li’l Abner dark satirical comic strip theme to ever successfully emulate a grander, more polished place like Silver Dollar City. And where Dogpatch does bear some resemblances to a rustic version of a Six Flags franchise park (with its mishmash of attractions and themes and licensed properties), it was located in the wrong place to ever draw enough crowds to succeed with that audience. Its location is and was one of the poorest in the state.

Dogpatch USA’s only true advantage over other local attractions was always the Li’l Abner theme. But every year past the strip’s retirement, the park declined in cultural relevance. Dogpatch was simply outdated. If you have to explain to your kids that Daisy Mae was a character in a comic strip that ended when you, the parent, were a kid, well…

You begin to see the discouragement that had to be setting in for those in ownership of Dogpatch USA. 

1991: Changes for Dogpatch USA

Melvyn Bell sat down in 1991 and began making major changes. He saw the writing on the wall, and local civic leaders in Jasper and Harrison were publically voicing their concerns about whether the park would ever be viable again. 

The Li’l Abner theming was dropped. Melvyn Bell and Telcor decided that they could save that 2-3% of gross profits for themselves instead of sending it to the Al Capp estates. The park was renamed “Dogpatch, Arkansas” and they waved goodbye to that licensing fee. 

Not only that, but the entry fee was dropped as well. What? As a cost-saving measure? Yep. They lengthened the season, charged per ride on each attraction, and reframed the park as an arts and crafts focused place. This brought more bodies in the park, potentially meaning more dollars in the pocket.

General Manager Lynn Spradley left Dogpatch in 1991, as well, in order to become a plumber. In his place, Shirley Cooper stepped in, an 11 year veteran of the Dogpatch world, serving as general manager for the park’s last two years.

Yes, there wasn’t long left for Dogpatch, even with the major changes Bell and Telcor had set in place. Visitors during these last years noted the declining maintenance around the park, the train’s PA system on the fritz, generic carnival rides like the tilt-a-whirl added to try and boost income…

Nothing helped.

Dogpatch USA’s last day of operation was October 14, 1993.

Abandoned Dogpatch USA

“There were a lot of mistakes. Bad judgement calls,” Bud Pelsor, a later owner of the park, is quoted as saying. “I don’t know that they could’ve made good ones. The United States was going through some serious transitions in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s.”

Ultimately, the park was foreclosed upon yet again. Bell and Telcor had done pretty well on taking down that pile of debt, but almost half a million was still outstanding. In December of 1994, the park was put up for auction. The new owners were C. L. and Ford Carr, also known as Leisuretek Corporation and Westek Corporation. During these transition years, many options for revitalization were floated, including converting the space into a movie ranch, an ecotourism spot, or a better version of an Ozark history spot, but nothing ever came of any of it. 

And then the park sat.

New Operations at Marble Falls

Up at Marble Falls, there was a bit of action.

In 1997, reportedly facing public pressure, the official name of the post office (and the town) was changed from Dogpatch back to Marble Falls. Despite this, however, Google still thinks the official name is Dogpatch, AR. 

Back in 1988, when DPP was divvying out shares of the Marble Falls ski resort land, a woman named Debra Nielsen began purchasing what she could, when she could. According to news reports, she eventually owned much of the Marble Falls attractions area: the ski lodge, the convention center, the roller (skating) rink, and a motel. She reportedly named it “Serenity Mountain”. The skating rink she reported leased to a nonprofit called HELP, providing therapeutic horseback riding at no cost. Additionally, she reportedly operated a B&B as well as a church on the land, although I’ve been unable to find additional information on this. 

What I did find was a few businesses clustered in the former Marble Falls buildings. I’ll get into more detail later, but there’s Marble Falls Resort and Restaurant (which advertises some incredibly tasty-looking fried catfish on its social media accounts) and a place called The HUB. Both cater to motorcycle enthusiasts. Well, one does, one did. The HUB closed in 2017 after 12 years of operation. 

Back at Dogpatch, things were still stagnant. There were rumors and reports but no activity towards revitalization of any kind.

In 2002, Ford Carr listed Dogpatch USA on eBay, at a starting minimum bid of $1 M. There were no takers. 

In 2005, things changed again. 

2005: Pruett Nance and Dogpatch USA

Enter Pruett Nance, then 16. His grandfather was one of Dogpatch’s original shareholders, and Nance had grown up going to the park. When it closed in 1993, he regularly spent time on the former park land, reportedly with permission of the property owners, C. L. and Ford Carr. 

In 2005, he was ATV riding on the property, again with permission from the Carrs, “to tour the property”. He hit a wire that had been strung between two trees, and was severely injured, nearly decapitated. His trachea was severed and his neck was broken. Doctors didn’t expect him to survive, and when he did, they didn’t expect him to ever talk again. But Nance proved them wrong again, on both counts, and he did. 

Nance and his father filed a lawsuit against the owners, alleging that they’d put the wire there on purpose, as a deterrent against vandals, with malicious intent. The case actually made it all the way up to the Arkansas Supreme Court. The court ultimately ruled in favor of Nance. Between Nance and his father, Dogpatch owners were ordered to pay $764,582 in damages, to include medical bill costs, within 45 days of the decision. 

The owners could not, would not, did not pay.

The judge gave the deed to Dogpatch to Nance, and he became the new owner of Dogpatch.

“”I do have the ability to change things for the better of course,”” he said to the local paper in 2011. He was also pragmatic in his comments to the paper, stating that he was only 23 and did not have the experience or knowledge to properly deal with the ruins of Dogpatch. It was reported that Pruett Nance and his father Stewart Nance were taking the project one day at a time.

2014: Bud Pelsor and Dogpatch USA

It took a few more years, but it turns out that they did eventually decide to sell Dogpatch. In summer 2014, it found a new owner: Bud Pelsor, inventor of the spillproof dog bowl (http://greatamericanspillproof.com/), and his business partner Jim Robertson, the CFO of Great American Spillproof Products. (Curious? Pelsor’s dog-wolf hybrid is the spokes-dog for the product. Her name is Miss Arkansas Diamond, or Dia for short, and she’s a lovely animal. The bowl is sold with the tagline “Dogs love it because water does not go up their nose. You love it because you have less mess.” I am tempted to purchase one for my own pups.)

The story goes that Pelsor had briefly visited Dogpatch in its heyday. Talking to the newspaper at the time, he said “I saw how the local residents thrived from it. … All the houses along the road had jellies, jams, quilts for sale. I was really impressed with it. I kept making trips down here, and it just kept getting worse and worse and worse.”

Pelsor’s business partner Jim made him aware that the park was up for sale in 2014, and they purchased Dogpatch to the tune of $2 M, reportedly backed by promises of additional external grant money. (As a sidebar, the property records are freely accessible by the public and tell a fascinating legal and tax version of the story I’m telling you here. Worth checking out if you’re into that.)

He wasn’t particularly interested in reopening Dogpatch as it was, however. “Resurrecting the dead is something best left for someone other than me,” he’s quoted as saying. He had plans for “The Village at Dogpatch”. It was to be an ecotourism place, for reintroducing native mussels to the creek, for restocking the famous trout pond. He wanted a more arts and crafts focused place – maybe to bring back the music, maybe a restaurant, but not a theme park.

Regardless of the ultimate theme, with Pelsor as the new owner, he had immediate plans for cleaning and maintaining the property, at the very least. Volunteers even came out for weekends on end to help him clean up the property, cutting back the massive flora that was taking over the remaining rides and buildings. 

The crowds were incredible. Traffic was reportedly backed up on Highway 7 for the December 2014 public opening, the first time the park had been open to the public for 21 years. Over 5,000 people were reported in attendance. Very impressive for a defunct theme park, abandoned for 21 years! There were several of these Riverwalk events, allowing the public to see the cleaned up Dogpatch.

Plans didn’t move very fast – unsurprising as I’ve learned from firsthand experience that construction timelines are truly something else. A few months later, in February 2015, three buildings were burned down. Arson was suspected. 

In May 2015 it was time for more Riverwalk events at Dogpatch again. This time, the framing was as an artists village event. Several musical acts performed, and artists demonstrated their craft. Many pieces were Dogpatch themed: arrowheads made out of old broken glass from the site, pictures of the abandoned site pasted onto wood, etc.

But still, things were moving slowly. It seemed like it was setback after setback. There were floods. The overgrown buildings required extensive maintenance before any new construction could be done.

And then came the news that the promises for big name support and grant money for the park were empty useless promises. Pelsor is quoted as saying that it ”left me with my pants down and exposed to chiggers”.

And Bud’s business partner wanted out, too, reportedly due to poor health. 

In March of 2016, Dogpatch USA went up for sale again – either the whole thing, or just half. Pelsor was willing to remain co-owner if someone else was interested in being his business partner. “”I don’t want to sell out, but my business associate does,” he said. “I have the option to buy him out, but I can’t.””

2018: Heritage USA (But Not That One)

It took over a year, but in late 2017, after months Pelsor announced that he’d come to an agreement with a group called Heritage USA to lease the property. 

No, not THAT Heritage USA. This was not the Christian Disneyland, Jim Bakker, pyramid scheme Heritage USA. This group was (supposedly) unrelated, operated by a guy named David Hare. 

In YouTube videos, Hare looks and speaks like a TV preacher, well, a lot like Jim Bakker, to be honest. He’s filmed wearing button-down shirts and slicking his hair back. His background is as an executive member of the Las Vegas Broadcasting Company America’s TV Network, a very small media company. Prior to that, he did musical productions in Anaheim and hosted a kids radio show in the 80s and 90s. 

For months prior to the official announcement, Hare posted vague and confusing videos about the forthcoming deal with Dogpatch. But what was eventually announced was that Heritage USA and David Hare would lease the main Dogpatch property, with a potential purchase agreement at the end of the lease period.

In addition to making a deal with Pelsor, Heritage USA also made a deal with Debra Nielsen for a similar lease-purchase agreement on the Marble Falls hotel and convention center properties. 

Hare and Heritage USA posted multiple videos about the site online, often rambling. They branded themselves as “your conservative entertainment company”. Nothing is or was ever very clear with the Heritage USA operations of Dogpatch from what I’ve been able to see, but it appears they planned to have a resort, theme park, hotel, theater, and RV park, opening in stages. Reportedly a new train was supposed to open in 2019.

Based on their social media postings, things went okay for the first few months. They were active on social media, showing the progress on the land, a full house at the hotel, tours and other special events, etc. But somewhere in June 2018, things seem to have gone awry.

On June 28, 2018, Hare published a (frankly rambling) video on his Heritage USA Youtube channel, about the “challenges” he sees facing the company and project going forward. The gist seems to be that his investors decided to bail on their support of the Heritage USA project, but that he himself was not going to bail. In his comments, he insisted that it didn’t require a lot of money to operate the site. Several times over the course of the video, he reiterated that the property owners (Pelsor and Nielsen) “deserve to get their money”. (Obviously, as this was a legal contract he’d entered into.) The overall tone was of a man rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

It’s difficult to put together the pieces from where I’m sitting in 2019, as several of Hare’s Heritage USA videos have been deleted. But Hare goes on to say in his June 28 video (“Do It Talk 3: Moving Forward.The Challenge”): “Do you realize we could start paying the bills up here if people would start really renting rooms? […] if we had a good influx of steady bookings, we could make it. That’s how reasonable it is.” 

It’s so classic, to shift the blame to others. 

He closes the video saying “Don’t count us out” and then adds “but don’t make reservations for October, either”.  

Essentially, it looks like Hare could never fulfill his end of the bargain, or perhaps never intended to. Some online speculate that the Heritage USA name was intentional, and that the only real intent behind the park plans was a church or religious cult of some kind. Hare posted on social media advertising the park, but the hotel was vacant when paid guests showed up, utilities turned off, Hare and Heritage USA vanished in the night, completely unreachable. 

The nitty gritty of what happened seems to be that Debra Nielsen had filed an eviction notice in July, requiring Heritage USA to be out within ten days as a result of non-payment of rent. (Not just a short term lack of payment – they apparently had never paid her any rent, nor had they paid rent to Pelsor.) 

Heritage USA, in turn, reportedly claimed that this eviction was a breech of their lease, and requested mediation. 

Debra Nielsen filed a lawsuit in Newton County Circuit Court in August of 2018, saying that mediation was pointless since Heritage USA hadn’t made any payments on their lease (which had reportedly begun in January 2018 on the Marble Falls portion of the land). Heritage USA had originally agreed to pay $5,500 / month just for the Marble Falls portion of the land alone (this included the old HUB motel and convention center, as well as the old skating rink). “The lease began Jan. 15 and was to continue until Jan. 14, 2020, at which time Heritage USA Ozarks Resort was to purchase the property for $750,000 if the company didn’t opt to do so sooner.”

An immediate hearing was scheduled, as the property was in a state of emergency. Apparently Hare hadn’t paid the insurance companies either, nor the water and electric companies, so all insurance and utility services had been shut off. 

Reportedly, though, Hare disappeared. According to the newspaper articles, Nielsen’s attorney had exhausted every possible resource available to him to find Hare. 

Pelsor described Hare as “larger than life” and defended his original decision to work with Hare and Heritage USA in a newspaper article in August 2018. ““He had sound investors that were contractors. He had sound financial management. He had a good team assembled, and that’s what we looked at,” says Pelsor.”

Pelsor continued in comments to the local news, saying “Now it looks almost like it did when I bought it. A wasteland. Everything’s grown up and ugly again and it happened because David Hare made promises he couldn’t keep,”. By all accounts, Hare was all talk, and burned bridges with those around him.

And once again, Dogpatch USA as a theme park was abandoned.

Dogpatch USA: the Present and Future

Of course, in Monday morning quarterbacking, people have plenty of opinions about the many ups and downs the park has gone through. “The roads to Dogpatch were so rugged, so it was never an easy destination to reach.” says one person in the comment section of a newspaper article. Many other folks remember the park with fond nostalgia from attending there in the 70s and 80s, though, and praise the inexpensive pricing. 

It does seem like the park was originally a little bit magical – like something from a simpler time, surrounded by the natural beauty of Northern Arkansas. And the theming reflected the history of the people of the area, at least at first.

But in its abandonment, it only had offerings for those interested in abandoned places and urban explorers. Residents and former visitors described the area as a hazard, rotten and falling down. Many called it a problem, and it seems like most just want the eyesore to go away. There’s nostalgia for the past, but it seems like people have been burned too many times in too many different supposed revitalizations of the place.

And Dogpatch is incredibly outdated. Al Capp, while being an excellent writer and artist, was a known womanizer, misogynist, and accused rapist (including allegations by Goldie Hawn and Grace Kelly). And his Li’l Abner comic strip has been out of publication for 42 years as of this recording. Arkansas residents didn’t want to be seen as hillbillies back then, and that theming definitely wouldn’t fly in today’s culture. 

An online commenter summed it up: “Not worth tearing down and there’s no market for it if it was restored.”

Now in 2019, the park is back in the hands of Bud Pelsor. He’s quoted in an interview with Belle Starr Antiques, saying that he simply plans to ““clean it up, turn the lights on, the music up loud and party until it says SOLD on the sign.””

Yes, Dogpatch USA is currently back up for sale. The address is 256 NC 3351, Marble Falls, AR, 72648. At the time of this recording, asking price is just under $1.5M dollars.

Do you want to visit Dogpatch USA yourself? Reportedly Pelsor sometimes allows visitors, arranged ahead of time, for a modest $5/pp fee. Or you could go with a group, like this upcoming October 6, 2019 hike: https://joplinoutdoors.com/explore-dogpatch-usa-hike-october-6th-2019/?fbclid=IwAR0Zi9JnTXKcN5V4lfsZzJSzkip81Etqku4Rst2danRpN6hawLO0SsxZZZs

The Future of Dogpatch: 2019 and 2020

The writing has been on the wall for some time. But late 2019 and early 2020 have seen the wheels of bureaucracy, so familiar in this long story, back in action at Dogpatch once again.

In December 2019, Bud Pelsor announced that he was giving up on his dream of the ecotourism village at Dogpatch USA, and that he was moving back to Indiana. In a quote from the article, Pelsor said, “I’m just not able to pull it off. The stress of this place is killing me. I’ve had successes in a lot of ways, but everybody that was supposed to come on financially, well, there were just too many talkers.”

A January 2020 article fleshed out the story further: Pelsor and his business partners had missed multiple payments on the property through August 2019. The mortgage holders, the Nances, filed suit against Great American Spillproof. By late January, a decree of foreclosure was filed, giving Pelsor and his partners 10 days to pay the over $1M still owed on the property. At the time of this update (January 24, 2020), it is expected that the money will not be repaid. If so, the Dogpatch USA property will be sold at auction on March 3, 2020, there on the courthouse steps of Jasper, AR, with an expected starting bid of $1M.

Still in Operation

While The HUB has shut down, as I mentioned earlier, (that was where Heritage USA had made its base of operations, after all) things are still operation at Dogpatch and Marble Falls. There’s still the US Post Office. There’s a fairly new campground: CabinPatch USA. This is aimed at revitalizing the old campground at Dogpatch, and the views look incredible.

Marble Falls Resort and Restaurant is a recent effort from Debra Nielsen, the current landowner of most of the old Marble Falls properties. Operating in the former facilities of The HUB and Heritage USA, this place is currently operational and looks to be a very nice place to visit and stay. And, as I mentioned, delicious looking fried catfish advertised on their social media. 

Dogpatch USA Rides: Still Operating

And of course, you can still find a little bit of Dogpatch USA in one of its former rides. The waterslide (“Wild Water Rampage”), of course, still stands in state at the abandoned Dogpatch. It’s missing steps and will never be an operational ride again – an insurance nightmare. And of course, the funicular tram is still onsite, too, rusted in place. The paddleboats were left on the property after its abandonment, and are now long stolen.

Many of the other rides were sold or destroyed. Whearabouts of the carousel, the paratrooper, the Slobbovian Sled Run, the space ship, the barrel ride – all unknown.

Close to home, the Dogpatch Caverns, as mentioned earlier, were sold in 1981. They were renamed back to Mystic Caverns and are still open for curious cavers at the time of this recording.

The small coaster that was once at Dogpatch was called Frustratin’ Flyer, a Herschell wild mouse Monster Mouse model. Reportedly, the coaster was even wild during the park’s operation, with one guest commenting online that they could actually see the bolts holding the ride in place MOVING while the ride operated. While some sources state that this ride went to the Little Amerricka theme park after Dogpatch was shuttered in 1993, this would not be accurate. Little Amerricka owns a Wild Mouse model, not a Monster Mouse model – a close comparison of the track layout from photos and onride videos makes this clear. The only operational Herschell Monster Mouse coaster at this time is at Parque Acuatico Rey Park in Ecuador.

What IS at Little Amerricka is the infamous Earthquake McGoon’s Brain Rattler. If you head on over to Marshall, WI, some ten hours north of the former Dogpatch USA, you can ride the last Toboggan coaster known in operation at this time, now with a simpler name: Wild & Wooly Toboggan. Little Amerricka only runs one car on the coaster now, though, instead of the two it has the capacity for, and the ride does admittedly break down often. Spoilers.

And what about the miniature train that used to run? It was called the West Po’k Chop Speshul, and it was actually three different Chance C. P. Huntington trains, each of which had been heavily modified. On some, that lovingly ridiculous smokestack was removed and replaced with a crooked stovepipe. At the time of its construction, it was the first and only railroad in Newton County, Arkansas.

One online commenter suggested that one of the trains had been cannibalized for parts for the KC Zoo. This doesn’t fit with what’s known about the trains from the C. P. Huntington Train Project, though. 

We know that Dogpatch had CPH #64, #69, and another train. They were given the name “West Po’k Chop Spechul”. All engines were custom-themed. One was originally light green and orange; later black; the others were themed to the train from the comic strip. It pulled custom coaches with wood shingled roofs. 

Richmond Country Farms (up in British Columbia) purchased CPH #64 (Dogpatch #1) in 2013, and has been refurbishing it over the intervening years.

You see, word had been going around that the Dogpatch train was just rotting in some Kansas field somewhere. Well, this was the rumored train. Here’s a quote from Richmond Country Farms’ website: “It has been a dream of ours to have an operational railroad and miniature train for many years. We found our train tucked away on a farm in Witchita, Kansas in 2010. After many phonecalls and emails, we were able to secure a deal. Our two main farm hands, Nelson and Lucas Hogler, made the trek from Vancouver to Kansas to bring the train to its new home at Richmond Country Farms. After arriving home, we began an extensive 5 year full restoration of the locomotive and coaches. Construction of the railroad began in the summer of 2014- finishing just in time for October- for the grand opening of the train, and our annual Pumpkin Patch. Now, when you see that shiny candy-apple red train, you will know what we’re talking about!”

I’ve seen video of the coaches cleaned up and operating, sent to me by Chris Churilla, and they are looking very nice indeed. Good job on you, Richmond Country Farms.

Ultimately, Dogpatch USA was always in a state of flux, and continues to be so.

Whatever does end up happening at Dogpatch and Marble Falls, the tagline for the place will likely always hold true: “it was a heckuva day at Dogpatch USA.”

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References

1. Heritage USA fails Dogpatch venture. NewtonCountyTimes.com. http://newtoncountytimes.com/news/heritage-usa-fails-dogpatch-venture/article_4d13b6d8-049e-11e9-a89b-1736d093969f.html. Accessed May 12, 2019.
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25. Dogpatch USA – Marble Falls Township, Arkansas – Atlas Obscura. https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/dogpatch-usa. Accessed August 11, 2019.
26. Dogpatch USA 1968 Super 8 Home Movie – YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WENIBpR4Us. Accessed August 12, 2019.
27. DogPatch USA Arkansas. http://www.chaserl.com/dogpatch/. Accessed September 5, 2019.
28. Dogpatch USA for sale for $3M. Arkansas Online. //www.arkansasonline.com/news/2016/mar/12/dogpatch-usa-for-sale-for-3m-20160312/. Published 3:17. Accessed September 5, 2019.
29. Imgur. Dogpatch USA then and now. Imgur. https://imgur.com/gallery/x0Wgb. Accessed August 12, 2019.
30. Imgur. Dogpatch USA: Abandoned Porn. Imgur. https://imgur.com/a/695Pz. Accessed August 12, 2019.
31. Dogpatch USA: An Abandoned Themepark In Photos, Then And Now. https://www.theodysseyonline.com/dogpatch-usa. Accessed August 12, 2019.
32. Dogpatch USA: The Hillbilly Theme Park that Lies in Ruin. Slate. May 2014. http://www.slate.com/blogs/atlas_obscura/2014/05/21/dogpatch_usa_is_an_abandoned_hillbilly_theme_park_in_arkansas.html. Accessed August 11, 2019.
33. Mike. Dogpatch!; 2018. https://www.flickr.com/photos/diatrib3/48061755872/. Accessed September 5, 2019.
34. Encyclopedia of Arkansas. Encyclopedia of Arkansas. https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/dogpatch-usa-2302/. Accessed August 12, 2019.
35. [email protected] SR. Eviction lawsuit filed against Heritage USA. HarrisonDaily.com. http://harrisondaily.com/news/eviction-lawsuit-filed-against-heritage-usa/article_e33ab1dc-a4bf-11e8-b737-830b8da82386.html. Accessed May 12, 2019.
36. Bogle K. Explore Dogpatch USA Hike [ October 6th, 2019 ]. //joplinoutdoors.com/explore-dogpatch-usa-hike-october-6th-2019/?fbclid=IwAR0Zi9JnTXKcN5V4lfsZzJSzkip81Etqku4Rst2danRpN6hawLO0SsxZZZs. Accessed September 5, 2019.
37. Exploring The Abandoned Dogpatch USA Amusement Park In Marble Falls, Arkansas. Quicker Liquor Finder. August 2018. http://quickerliquorfinder.com/exploring-the-abandoned-dogpatch-usa-amusement-park-in-marble-falls-arkansas/. Accessed August 12, 2019.
38. Fire at Dogpatch USA being investigated as suspicious | Local – KY3.com. https://web.archive.org/web/20150223002747/http://www.ky3.com/news/local/at-least-3-buildings-destroyed-in-dogpatch-usa-fire/21048998_31412944. Published February 23, 2015. Accessed September 5, 2019.
39. For $2 million, inventor reels in Dogpatch acres | NWAonline. https://web.archive.org/web/20140818204615/http://www.nwaonline.com/news/2014/aug/15/for-2-million-inventor-reels-in-dogpatc/. Published August 18, 2014. Accessed September 4, 2019.
40. [email protected] SR. Hare evades eviction hound. HarrisonDaily.com. https://harrisondaily.com/news/hare-evades-eviction-hound/article_84912330-b538-11e8-80dd-87a4e8a849dd.html. Accessed September 5, 2019.
41. Heritage USA – Home. https://www.facebook.com/HeritageUSAinc/?hc_location=ufi. Accessed September 5, 2019.
42. Blevins B. Hill Folks: A History of Arkansas Ozarkers and Their Image. Univ of North Carolina Press; 2003.
43. Hundreds Attend Dogpatch Re-Opening Event – OzarksFirst.com. https://web.archive.org/web/20141215233223/http://www.ozarksfirst.com/story/d/story/hundreds-attend-dogpatch-re-opening-event/20354/–qTkMEXD0K45v4KJFUQyg. Published December 15, 2014. Accessed September 5, 2019.
44. It was a heckuva day at Dogpatch USA. bellestarrvintage. https://bellestarrantiques.com/blogs/blog/dogpatch-usa. Accessed September 5, 2019.
45. Lost Arkansas Ski Area called “Marble Falls Resort” – Ski Southeast Messageboard. http://www.skisoutheast.com/messageboard/viewtopic.php?t=128674. Accessed September 4, 2019.
46. LOST PARKS OF ARKANSAS. http://arkansasacer.tripod.com/id41.html. Accessed July 24, 2019.
47. Marble Falls Resort and Resort – Formerly The Hub at Dogpatch | Marble Falls Resort and Restaurant in Arkansas. https://www.marblefallsarkansas.com/. Accessed September 5, 2019.
48. Marble Falls, AR – Dogpatch U.S.A. (Closed) – Page 2. RoadsideAmerica.com. https://www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/46. Accessed August 12, 2019.
49. Mystic Caverns and Crystal Dome. In: Wikipedia. ; 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mystic_Caverns_and_Crystal_Dome&oldid=895839437. Accessed September 4, 2019.
50. Owner of hotel near Dogpatch files to evict firm, CEO. Arkansas Online. //www.nwaonline.com/news/2018/aug/21/owner-hotel-near-dogpatch-files-evict-firm-ceo/. Published 12:29. Accessed September 5, 2019.
51. Owners of former Dogpatch theme park reach deal to lease property. https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2017/dec/04/owners-former-dogpatch-theme-park-reach-deal-lease/. Accessed September 5, 2019.
52. PHOTOS: 50 years after Dogpatch USA’s first full season, theme park memorabilia finds home at Arkansas museum. Arkansas Online. //www.arkansasonline.com/news/2019/jul/21/after-50-years-fun-finally-wearing-off–1/. Published 4:30. Accessed August 12, 2019.
53. Pokin S. Pokin Around: Conservative broadcast group interested in former Dogpatch site in Arkansas. Springfield News-Leader. https://www.news-leader.com/story/news/local/ozarks/2017/12/08/pokin-around-conservative-broadcast-group-interested-former-dogpatch-site-arkansas/929136001/. Accessed September 5, 2019.
54. Return of Dogpatch USA: New Owner, New Plans? https://web.archive.org/web/20120316110810/http://ozarksfirst.com/fulltext?nxd_id=456217. Published March 16, 2012. Accessed September 4, 2019.
55. Rural purge. In: Wikipedia. ; 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rural_purge&oldid=910351155. Accessed August 14, 2019.
56. Sadie Hawkins dance. In: Wikipedia. ; 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Sadie_Hawkins_dance&oldid=910430620. Accessed August 13, 2019.
57. THE HUB MOTEL – Updated 2019 Reviews (Marble Falls, AR). TripAdvisor. http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g31759-d1581587-Reviews-The_Hub_Motel-Marble_Falls_Arkansas.html. Accessed September 4, 2019.
58. The Rise and Fall of Dogpatch, USA. https://web.archive.org/web/20120331073138/http://arkansasmatters.com/search-fulltext?nxd_id=315391. Published March 31, 2012. Accessed September 4, 2019.
59. Kaitlyn. The slow demise (or rebirth?) of Dogpatch, U.S.A. Ozarks Alive. January 2017. https://www.ozarksalive.com/the-slow-demise-or-rebirth-of-dogpatch-u-s-a/. Accessed August 12, 2019.
60. The Strange (But True) Story Behind America’s Most Obscure Abandoned Theme Park. Theme Park Tourist. https://www.themeparktourist.com/features/20150515/30260/story-and-photos-laid-rest-dogpatch-usa. Published May 17, 2015. Accessed September 5, 2019.
61. The Village of Dogpatch. Only In Arkansas. https://onlyinark.com/places-and-travel/the-village-of-dogpatch/. Published August 5, 2015. Accessed August 12, 2019.
62. UALR Public Radio | FM 89 KUAR – New owner ponders future for former Dogpatch USA. https://web.archive.org/web/20120324030733/http://www.kuar.org/kuarnews/23466-new-owner-ponders-future-for-former-dogpatch-usa-grounds.html. Published March 24, 2012. Accessed September 4, 2019.
63. USA C. Welcome to CabinPatch USA Primitive Camping. CabinPatch USA. https://cabinpatchusa.com/. Accessed September 5, 2019.
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65. Dogpatch dream dies: Owner of abandoned Arkansas theme park served foreclosure notice. Bill Bowde, Northwestern Arkansas Democrat Gazette. https://www.nwaonline.com/news/2019/dec/08/dogpatch-again-for-sale-owner-says-he-s/ Published December 8, 2019. Accessed January 24, 2020.
66. Dogpatch’s time’s up; auction set to sell park. Bill Bowden, Arkansas Democrat Gazette. https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2020/jan/24/dogpatch-s-time-s-up-auction-set-to-sel-1/ Published January 24, 2020. Accessed January 24, 2020.

The post Dogpatch USA appeared first on The Abandoned Carousel.

When I started my research for the last episode, Takakonuma Greenland, I got a lot of results for Okpo Land. Sites like to compound the two, putting images of Okpo Land in a Takakonuma Greenland piece or vice versa. Several times, I came across references to Okpo Land as the true “scary” park, which is why I scheduled it for the week of Halloween.

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

History of Okpo Land

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

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

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

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

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

Okpo Land: Geoje, South Korea

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

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

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

Okpo Land and South Korea’s Economic Crisis

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

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

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

It was too late, however, for Okpo Land. 

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

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

The Legend of Deaths at Okpo Land

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

You know, all the deaths.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Truth to the Rumors of Okpo Land?

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

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

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

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

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

Abandoned Okpo Land

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

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

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

Okpo Land was small. 

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

Rides at Okpo Land

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

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

Small Attractions at Okpo Land

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Carousel and Viking Ship at Okpo Land

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Swimming Pool and Other Buildings at Okpo Land

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

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

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

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

Squirrel Roller Coaster and Rok ‘n Roll at Okpo Land

Squirrel Coaster = Fantasy Express

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

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

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

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

Rock ‘ n Roll OR Squirrel Buckets

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

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

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

Duck Sky Cycle at Okpo Land

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

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

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

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

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

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

Except one.

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

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

Impossible.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Demolition of Okpo Land

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conclusions

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

It’s all rumor. 

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

The truth, of course, is kind of boring.

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

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

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

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

Okpo Land Guide Map

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

References

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The post Okpo Land appeared first on The Abandoned Carousel.

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

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

The Creepypasta: “Takakanonuma Greenland”

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

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

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

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

Creepypasta.com, April 26, 2013

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

What is a Creepypasta?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Real Story of Takakonuma Greenland

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

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

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

The Name: Takakonuma Greenland vs Takakanonuma Greenland

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

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

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

Location of Takakonuma Greenland

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

Date, though, is located in Fukushima Province. 

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

2011 Nuclear Meltdown at Fukushima Daiishi Nuclear Power Plant

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

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

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

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

Fukushima Daiishi Meltdown and Takakonuma Greenland

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

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

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

The True History of Takakonuma Greenland

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

Takakonuma Family Park

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

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

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

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

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

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

Takakonuma Greenland’s Operating Years

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

Reception of Takakonuma Greenland

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Closure of Takakonuma Greenland

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

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

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

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

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

Abandoned Takakonuma Greenland

Incorrect Coordinates of Takakonuma Greenland

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

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

Where Are the Photos of Takakonuma Greenland?

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Visit to Takakonuma Greenland

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

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

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

Enterprise and Looper at Takakonuma Greenland

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Buildings at Takakonuma Greenland

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

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

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

Sky Cycle and Go Karts at Takakonuma Greenland

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

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

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

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

Bobster Roller Coaster at Takakonuma Greenland

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

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

Jet Coaster Adventure Coaster at Takakonuma Greenland

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

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

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

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

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

Ferris Wheel at Takakonuma Greenland

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

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

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

Missing Rides at Takakonuma Greenland

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Demolition of Takakonuma Greenland

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

But this is all hearsay and rumor.

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

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

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

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

Legend of Takakonuma Greenland

The legend of Takakonuma Greenland still persists today. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are you sure?

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

Thanks and References

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

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

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

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

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

References

1. https://www.knoebels.com/rides/looper. Accessed October 8, 2019.
2. Kamen Rider 555. In: Wikipedia. ; 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kamen_Rider_555&oldid=919719235. Accessed October 9, 2019.
3. なつかしま、福島. https://www.facebook.com/groups/167469633435418/permalink/175649069284141/. Accessed October 10, 2019.
4. ライブドアニュース – Posts. https://www.facebook.com/livedoornews/posts/1592203121012442?__xts__[0]=68.ARCuTnxeVg4-L_dnEakcaOe3FEjUNAW8GkzxwZTiM1utNyP2PVIFkeYJk4twwfeKqdDfw8KbCHD0NM9xozPRmnGryfMaPEfnTP8H7Ol0BrlYERLUDjJCTjW7Qdv2HrIsu19E_zNIK_Ko1n_53CcWmPIkZMj-iX-xg7BWaTs2PhgRuBv0yr4jWG8W3El7FbdjkzO57m3FWJLCAdjFDDpIuMjVsPGRupwQqRTHawWAqJE-Q8PH-zcJbgCubinpPaAAgpyFXOHiCHSR8H1OdpR8AqfTQiw10UkJSXF7fgQVFAJCeCQz4SxL8et0RCP0hn9i3YCdLLPU8kz76yuWbBLXTjHRUCyU&__tn__=-R. Accessed October 10, 2019.
5. 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. In: Wikipedia. ; 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2011_T%C5%8Dhoku_earthquake_and_tsunami&oldid=918175627. Accessed October 6, 2019.
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58. どらやき on Twitter: “すごーく近所にあった、高子沼グリーンランドっていう遊園地の話を聞きました。 閉園してからの廃墟っぷりがすごくて、検索する手が止まるレベル･･･ https://t.co/mp8jvRsZ6A” / Twitter. Twitter. https://twitter.com/dorarararayaki/status/801794010213847040. Accessed August 24, 2019.
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60. 之 裕 之 on Twitter: “Takakonuma Greenland in Fukushima, famous as an abandoned amusement park. Even if a solar panel is installed, the ground will collapse due to rainwater and the new solar panel will be abandoned. Since it will become, please note → https://t.co/vrTcT29iyZ https://t.co/b9nuioanmp “/ Twitter. Twitter. https://twitter.com/electricdaddy/status/851555677344378881. Accessed August 24, 2019.
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Map of Takakonuma Greenland with Key

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

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

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

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

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

Coney Island

Our story today begins almost 200 years ago.

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

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

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

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

History of the Carousel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Looff’s 18th Carousel

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

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

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

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

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

Burlington Island

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

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

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

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

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

A Brief Sidebar on Trolley Parks

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

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

Development and Downfall of Burlington Island Beach Park

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New Ownership at Burlington Island

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

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

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

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

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

(a great view of the coaster here and here) 

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

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

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

Two Stories of Fire at Burlington Island

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mystery of the 1928 Fire

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

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

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

Currently in 2019, Burlington Island is undeveloped.

Seaside Heights: the early years

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

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

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

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

The Carousel at the Heart of Casino Pier

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Early Days of Casino Pier

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

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

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

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

Expansions and Firsts at Casino Pier

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

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

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

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

1965 Fire at Casino Pier

1965 saw the expansion of the pier, 320 further feet out into the ocean. Additional things were to happen, though. On June 10, 1965, a major fire whipped up by the wind on the pier destroyed many of the rides. In particular, the Wild Mouse was absolutely burnt to a crisp. Interestingly, this was all caught on film and is available on YouTube. In the video, you can see the fire burning on and around the ferris wheel, wild mouse, that two-year-old Himalaya, and a scrambler. The video continues as firefighters put out the blaze with patrons looking on. A later article describes how the fishermen were so intent on having their fishing pier back that they reportedly chipped in free labor with Casino Pier-provided materials to begin the rebuilding effort.

A second wild mouse was brought in for the remainder of the 1965 season, running at a different place on the pier. By 1966, a third wild mouse was brought in and placed on the site of the original Schiff Wild Mouse. An image of the coaster during this time can be seen here. However, this wild mouse also only lasted the year, and it wouldn’t be for another 30+ years that another wild mouse would be installed at Casino Pier.

1970s at Casino Pier: “Firsts”

A small metal Zyklon coaster operated for a few years, between 1967 and 1969. 

In 1970, a Schwarzkopf Jet Star was purchased new and installed on the pier. You might remember a sibling of the Jet Star we’ve already discussed on the podcast: the Jet Star 2, SBNO at Children’s World in Elektrenai. (Though it may not be SBNO for long; internet hearsay is that some of the rides at Elektrenai have already been demolished between the time of that recording and the time of this recording. How about THAT for a live update?) 

In 1975, the first Enterprise ride in the United States was installed, right here at Casino Pier. Remember, Wynne was notably interested in the European ride circuit. You might remember the Enterprise ride from the Abandoned Yangon Amusement Park episode here on TAC. 

In 1976, the Wurlitzer organ on the carousel received a major rebuild from the BAB Organ Company. At the same time, mirrors featuring sculpted horseheads were added to the center pole of the carousel. Originally, there had been paintings in this position; however, these were destroyed in the 1950s (cause of the destruction unclear) and cartoon prints had been in place there between the 1950s through 976. The mirrors + horseheads are still in place today.

In 1979, the “Love Bugs” indoor/outdoor coaster was added – this was a ride built in 1959 for a travelling German carnival, known then as the Broadway Trip. This coaster operated at a number of different parks before arriving at Casino Pier, including Fun Forest in Seattle, Cedar Point in Ohio, and Palisades in New Jersey. This coaster was renamed to Wizard’s Cavern in 1988, and finally demolished in 2003 – a good long run for a once-travelling coaster.

1984: Floyd Moreland Saves the Carousel

In 1984, Wynne nearly sold the Loof/Dentzel carousel. By this time, the carousel was in need of repair, and a sale had reportedly been arranged to the tune of $275,000. Individual horses were selling for up to $100,000 at that time, as private collectors saw value in carousel horses in their living rooms and not at theme parks. Down the beach, the Illions Chafatino carrousel had been broken up and sold at auction, to be replaced by a Chance Rides fiberglass carousel.

Ultimately, Wynne decided not to sell the Looff carousel.

Why?

Enter Dean of the City University of New York, also a classics professor, Dr. Floyd Moreland. He’d ridden the carousel as a young child every summer. In his later adolescence and college years, he worked at the Casino Pier, operating the same carousel, coming back from school in California to operate the ride. “It paid my way through college. It paid my way through graduate school,” he is quoted as saying to the paper. He began campaigning to save the carousel when rumors began to spread about its demise.

Ultimately, he succeeded, and with a group of dedicated volunteers and private donors, began to refurbish the carousel in the unheated building during the pier’s off-season. Members of the community were able to donate to support the restoration, and many of the animals are inscribed with the names of particular donors.

One of the prominent people involved in the restoration was veterinarian Dr. Norma Menghetti. She assisted Dr. Moreland in patching and painting: the animals, the chariots, even the original paintings on the center pole. Menghetti operated the ride on weekends for many years. Moreland later described her as having “put her heart and soul into the renovation, upkeep, and operation of the carousel at Casino Pier”. Moreland’s partner, Elaine Egues, also was heavily involved, and Moreland and Egues ran the carousel-themed shop on the boardwalk together, as well, called the Magical Carousel Shoppe. 

1980s and 1990s at Seaside Heights

After the successful preservation of the carousel, things seemed to be going well, both for the carousel and for Seaside Heights.

Glockenspiel bells were added to the carousel’s Wurlitzer organ in 1986, a cheerful upgrade to the sound of the now 62 year old organ.

In the late 1980s, Wynne and Bennett remodeled the original Arcade building and pool area. The original structures had caused a traffic obstruction, requiring motorists to detour around the Casino Pier structures. By tearing down the arcade and remodeling it, Wynne and Bennett granted the municipality the ability to continue their road. This wasn’t just kind-heartedness. This made it easier for people to get to Casino Pier and park, creating more business. ”It is the smartest move we ever made,” Mr. Wynne said, ”because it opened up the town, made everything more accessible, and also made us the middle of the boardwalk, rather than the end.”

The “Water Works” opened on the site of the former swimming pool, with water slides and a lazy river, and the new arcade building was renamed the Palace Amusements building. The centerpiece of the Palace Amusements building remained the original Looff/Dentzel carousel. By 1988, it was said to attract 150,000 visitors per year, and was valued at $750,000. 

In 1988, Wynne sold his family’s share of the business to Robert Bennett, already a partner in the park since the early 80s. Wynne cited excessive governmental regulations and difficulty finding college-age employees as reasons for choosing to sell. It wasn’t as fun in the late 80s as it had been in the mid 60s, was his general opinion at the time as described to the papers.

An E. F. Miler mouse coaster was installed in 1999, some 30+ years after the last time a mouse coaster operated on the pier. It was demolished in 2012, but we’ll get to that in a minute. 

The other big coaster, the Jet Star closed in 2000 and was removed. The only currently operational Jet Star coaster is at Luna Park La Palmyre in France.

Restoration (Again) of the Carousel

Our good carousel friend, the Floyd Moreland Dentzel/Looff carousel, was round about 90 years old at this point, and the Wurlitzer organ was 76 years old. Unfortunately, it was showing its age. In the fall of 2000, the organ was described as “like a poor soul on life support”. That winter, then, the organ was shipped off to Carlisle PA, to the Mechanical Musical Instrument Restoration shop. There, the organ underwent a complete restoration, involving multiple skilled artisans and almost every part re-created, re-machined, or re-built. The restoration is detailed at this link. I strongly recommend reading this article, even if you don’t give a fig about the technical details of Wurlitzer organ restoration. The eight month saga of the restoration involves a sudden death, the mourning of a friendship, and the rebuilding of lives along with the rebuilding of the instrument. When the Wurlitzer organ returned to the carousel in 2001, a new plaque was also added to the carousel, memorializing the artist gone too soon.

More Changes to Casino Pier in the 2000s

In 2002, Bennett sold his portion of Casino Pier to the Storino family. 

You might remember I told you that a ride called the Jet Star closed in 2000. Confusingly, the Star Jet was added in 2002. This isn’t a typo or a misspeak, it’s a different coaster, coming from E & F Miler. Only two of these 52ft tall coasters were made. The other has been at three different parks, currently sitting disassembled at Fun Spot America Atlanta, waiting to be rebuilt. This one was called the Star Jet, and entertained riders for a solid decade with roller coaster thrills right at the end of Casino Pier. 

We’ll get back to the Star Jet in a moment.

In 2004, Water Works, the Casino Pier-associated waterpark, was remodeled, and renamed to its current branding, Breakwater Beach.

2010 saw the 100th anniversary of the Floyd J. Moreland Dentzel/Looff carousel. TV’s “The Cake Boss” (Carlo’s Bakery) was reportedly on hand with a cake depicting the carousel. The carousel continued to do solid business with carousel enthusiasts, though videos and photos show half-empty rides more often than not.

And then we reach 2012.

A Hurricane: 2012’s Hurricane Sandy

Here in 2012 is where I’d originally intended this story to start. Remember how I was telling you this would be a quick story? Yeah, I’m funny.

So if you do searches for abandoned amusement parks (https://www.google.com/search?q=abandoned+amusement+parks), you’ll see a few really popular images – the creepy decayed caterpillar train, the ghostly spiral of the coast at Nara Dreamland, the radioactive rides at Chernobyl’s Pripyat and this. The image of a roller coaster, sitting in the middle of the ocean. 

Remember the Star Jet?

The deadliest, most destructive hurricane of the 2012 season was Hurricane Sandy. Superstorm Sandy. Between October 22 and October 29, Sandy battered the Bahamas, Cuba, the eastern US, and specifically, the Jersey shoreline. She currently stands as the forth-costliest hurricane in US history, estimated at around $65 billion. 

The Jersey Shore and Seaside Heights in particular were among the worst-hit areas. “You can’t even imagine,” was said of the damage. 

The flooding and massive waves caused collapses and damage to both Funtown Pier and Casino Pier. This iconic image, the Star Jet “floating” in the ocean, all by itself from some perspectives. Day after Sandy video shows the immediate aftermath for the coaster and pier: https://youtu.be/y6Xsdx0KGfI?t=117 

All told, eighteen rides, including the Star Jet coaster, were destroyed by Sandy. 

Cleanup took quite some time, not surprisingly. The Star Jet sat in the ocean for almost 7 months before it was finally demolished in May 2013. This has led to incredible images and video of the “abandoned” coaster – search Flickr, Youtube, or Google, and you’ll find them, from incredible photographers and videographers.

This, then, is the source of that mysterious, strange image of a rollercoaster in the ocean, seemingly perfectly intact. Not so mysterious after all, but certainly sad, and iconic.

2013 Seaside Heights Fire

After the hurricane, business along the Jersey shore slowly began to recover. Casino Pier and Funtown Pier began cleaning up in the off-season. 

The century-old carousel was still standing, structure untouched by the ferocious winds of the hurricane.  The pier’s basement had flooded, however, leaving the ride’s mechanics in standing water for some time. There was no way to determine whether the ride had been damaged.

But when electricity to the pier was finally turned on again before Memorial Day, almost seven months after the hurricane? The carousel came to life. It was open for Memorial Day weekend that year, 2013. 

Down the beach, despite surviving the hurricane, in 2013, the fiberglass Chance Rides carousel burned down, along with more than 50 businesses nearby, in a six-alarm fire. The fire was due to a spark from compromised electrical wiring, corroded by Hurricane Sandy’s floodwaters. The Freeman’s Carousel and the Futown Pier end of the boardwalk didn’t reopen. As of a 2018 article, several attractions were in the planning process but had not yet come to fruition. As of the time of this recording, based on my understanding, owners have decided not to rebuild the pier. The borough has limited the max height of rides on the pier to 100ft, plus case by case exemptions, and the owners were seeking to build 200-300 ft tall rides; they could not guarantee profits without guaranteeing their ability to build the rides they wanted, so they chose to walk away.

Recent Years at Seaside Heights

In 2014, the Moreland carousel was nearly sold, again.

As of 2014, an article described the carousel as “quietly for sale” the prior few years, and openly for sale in the last few years, meaning the late 2010s. The carousel was described as in poor shape, needing major repairs, and ridership was decreasing. At the time, the owners blamed the economy, declining ridership, and maintenance expenses for the historic carousel.

Locals and carousel enthusiasts were worried. They feared a terrible carousel fate, last seen at the Whalom Park carousel in 2000: being split up, horses and animals and machinery sold away in pieces, boxed and split up. Support groups were started to “Save The Carousel”.

A deal was proposed by the mayor at the time and ultimately went forward, where the borough would take control of the carousel as well as a Casino Pier-owned parking lot, swapping oceanfront public property north of the pier with Casino Pier in return. The deal generated controversy and legal challenges, although the general public opinion of the deal was positive. 

Rebuilding of Casino Pier

The land swap actually enabled Casino Pier to rebuild and expand after their losses during Hurricane Sandy.

2016 saw a mini-golf course with 36-holes, as well as a wave pool at Breakwater Beach, the “water park” side of the park. Construction also began on the new expansion to the pier on the land traded in the carousel-land swap. By January of 2017, a new Ferris wheel and the new extreme Hydrus coaster began to be constructed on the newly-built newly-expanded pier. 

Hydrus is a so-called Euro-Fighter coaster. It features a 70+ foot vertical lift and a quote “beyond-vertical” drop, where the coaster goes past 90 degrees after the hill. The Hydrus coaster opened in May 2017, and the Ferris wheel in June of 2017.

2019: Temporary Closure of the Moreland Carousel

In April of 2019, the carousel took its last ride there at Seaside Heights, after 87 years of operation. 

I’m recording this episode on the first of October, 2019. Later this month, the Floyd Moreland carousel is slated to be disassembled by the Ohio restoration group Carousels and Carvings, with parts to be stored in a pole barn workshop owned by the city nearby. 

The borough estimated a cost of approximately $4.5 M to construct a new building for the carousel, according to the local paper. Earlier in the year, the group applied for several grants, including one specifically for historical preservation and repair of the physical structure of the carousel, including machinery, decking, and horses. 

This is obviously a lot of money for a local government to cover. In November, voters will actually help decide how easy the carousel’s restoration can be. The “Natural Lands Trust Fund Program” is on the ballot. Currently, the county’s open space tax provides a small dedicated revenue stream for the local governments to step in and acquire lands for “general conservation or farmland preservation”, but this money currently can’t be used for historical landmarks, either to save them from destruction or preserve them. The ballot issue would change that, and allow Ocean County to use taxes to do things not currently financially feasible, such as preserve things like the carousel. 

The Seaside Heights Historical Society was planned to be created years ago, after Sandy, but was delayed until its formation earlier in 2019, a non-profit, volunteer-run group that is the official fundraising group for the Moreland carousel restoration. Their website contains some information about the project, and includes a set of detail shots from the carousel, as well as blueprints for the future new building.

A few weeks ago, a new sign was put up at the location of the carousel’s future home.

The mayor of Seaside Heights is quoted as saying that he hopes the carousel will be up and running by summer 2021. 

Conclusions

For many years, the carousel was the symbol of Seaside Heights, decorating official insignia, flags, and police cars. The carousel, as Moreland himself once wrote, was the soul that shaped the development of this once-barren mile-long stretch of Jersey shoreline. 

Today, the carousel is a declining breed. The majority of the masterfully hand-carved wooden animals from a century ago were burned or destroyed following the Depression, and many still extant fell into disrepair. But even a modern aluminum or fiberglass carousel can be an excellent connection to the golden days. Riding one, you might close your eyes and sit back, picturing a different time, when the simple pleasure of a carousel, going round and round, was the pinnacle of the amusement scene. And maybe if you’re lucky, you are close enough to a beautifully restored wooden classic to ride one of those, too.

Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of The Abandoned Carousel, where I told you about Burlington Island and Casino Pier, and about the historic century-old Floyd Moreland Dentzel/Looff Carousel. Please check out the official historical society page: seasideheightshistory.org, or find them on Facebook: Facebook.com/seasideheightshistoricalsociety. 

I’m always interested in hearing about your experiences with the places I talk about. I also love suggestions for future episodes, and corrections for this or past episodes. Contact me through my website or across social media as The Abandoned Carousel. 

I’ll be back soon with another great episode. It’s October, so maybe the episodes will take a bit of a spookier tilt? You’ll have to come back to find out. Remember what Lucy Maud Montgomery once said: nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.

References

1. http://web.archive.org/web/20180130002029/http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/recommendations/ad.html. Accessed September 23, 2019.
2. http://www.dryl.org/2010/Burlington_Island/Burlington%20Island.htm. Accessed September 23, 2019.
3. http://web.archive.org/web/20150526000808/http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/recommendations/ad.html. Accessed September 27, 2019.
4. https://carousels.org/psp/CasinoPier/. Accessed September 28, 2019.
5. Seaside Heights Historical Society – Home. https://www.facebook.com/seasideheightshistoricalsociety. Accessed October 1, 2019.
6. Historical Society of Riverton – Posts. https://www.facebook.com/rivertonhistory/posts/2357080464359335?__tn__=-R. Accessed September 30, 2019.
7. 2013 Seaside Park, New Jersey fire. In: Wikipedia. ; 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2013_Seaside_Park,_New_Jersey_fire&oldid=892943079. Accessed September 29, 2019.
8. McCormick AJ. A historian adds details and corrects the record for the origin of the Seaside Heights carousel. Historical Society of Riverton, NJ. August 2019. https://rivertonhistory.com/2019/08/a-historian-adds-details-and-corrects-the-record-for-the-origin-of-the-seaside-heights-carousel/. Accessed September 30, 2019.
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The post Floyd Moreland Dentzel/Looff Carousel 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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American Adventure’s Earliest History

The Shipley estate is an ancient manor in Derbeyshire, England, and when I say ancient, I mean ancient. The Domesday Book, the 1086 England survey ordered by King William the Conqueror, mentions the Shipley estate. 

Early on, the land was used primarily for hunting and farming. Starting in the 16th century and fully entrenched by 1722, coal mining began to be the primary source of profit for the land owners, the Miller-Mundy family. The mines continued operating under family ownership for the next 200+ years. 

(If you’re wondering whether you stumbled into the wrong podcast, fear not. We’ll get to the theme park soon enough.)

In 1920, the Shipley Colliery Company took over the running of the mines from the Miller-Mundy family who’d owned the land previously. During World War II, coal reserves in the UK were taken under the control of the government for the war effort. The National Coal Board was created to run all UK collieries, and took over operations completely as of Jan 1, 1947. This included the Shipley Colliery.

Once there were 3 coal mines, working 15 seams of coal and 30 railway sidings covering 176 acres in the vicinity. However, coal mining in the UK peaked in the 1910s, and began drastically falling in the 1960s. Coalpits of Woodside and Coppice, located at Shipley, were regarded as uneconomical and closed at this time.

Shipley Country Park

Working with the National Coal Board, the Derbyshire Country Council purchased the land, and decided to create a park as a memorial for the former mining activities in the area. The NCB and KLF mining spent four years reclaiming the former colliery land using opencast methods. Two additional years were spent contouring, seeding, planting, and constructing, in order to make the land available for public use. 

Shipley Country Park opened in 1976. Shipley Lake, to the west, was artificial and had originally been created for and near Shipley Hall, the long-gone estate manor. During the open-cast mining in the early 1969s, the lake had been drained. As part of the reclamation process, it was lined with clay and refilled, becoming the 37-acre freshwater Shipley Lake.

Surrounding Shipley Lake was Shipley Lakeside, which was designated for privately-owned leisure development. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, discussions began to occur about the future of the area. A tentative agreement was settled on for a park about the best of all things British, past, present, and future.

Private company KLF group negotiated a 100-year-lease from the Derbyshire County Council (DCC) on the property, and discussion moved forward about the leirsure park. The residents of Shipley caught wind of this agreement, however, and were against the concept and its expected traffic congestion and noise pollution. There was much political infighting in the best local style, but KLF finally got the go-ahead to begin construction for their park.

Britannia Park

The park was to be called Britannia Park. 

Britannia Park was envisioned as quite the grand affair, with multiple themed areas, largely based off the EPCOT idea. In Festival Village, there was to be a traditional village green with a Blacksmith, and of course plenty of cafes and shops. A 1/25th scale display was planned with displays of English landmarks done in miniature. Traditional British crafts would also be showcased. 

A Wonderland area was proposed for children; an Adventureland area for a family-friendly amusement park; and the lake for water activities and sports.

The star of the park was the eight pavilions of the British Genius exhibit, where commercial investors could highlight the importance of their products to the average Brit. 

It looked like it could be a charming park, but after irritating both the locals and the DCC taxpayers, there was a steep hill to climb. And since this episode is called American Adventures Park and not Britannia Park, I’m sure that you can guess things didn’t go well.

Money troubles happened, for one. KLF hoped sponsors would cover some costs (“To participate in Britannia Park is to contribute to the success and share in the benefits of a major national tourist centre,” was the promise in the park’s brochure.) and ultimately only about 20M lbs were raised (EPCOT cost approximately $800M).

The park opened on June 27th, 1985, and it wasn’t at all complete. The former heavyweight champion Henry Cooper gave a speech. There was a flyover by the Concorde. Then things began to go downhill. Only five of the eight British Genius pavilions were complete (occupied by the National Coal Board, the Royal Mint, and the Bass beer brewery) and there was half a mile of miniature railway. And that was it. The rest of the park was reportedly a muddy mess, much not even landscaped. 

The season was a disaster. Mother Nature even seemed to be out for the park – it was an extremely rainy summer. This rain kept both visitors and construction workers away. 

Only weeks after the grand opening, KLF was already selling shares in its business to pay off the creditors for the park, and staff were even laid off.

By November of 1985, Britannia Park was closed for good, after only 12 weeks of operation.

Ramifications of Britannia Park’s Closure

There were no buyers waiting to take on the failed Britannia Park. Derbyshire County Council was forced to buy back the land for 2.5M lbs. 

Years later, Peter Kellard and the KLF Group were the subjects of (reportedly) the longest criminal trial in UK history. Over 14 months, it was revealed that KLF was in debt to the tune of 8.7M. Park debts went unpaid, even the appearance fee for Henry Cooper.

Peter Kellard was found guilty on several counts of fraud, for which he was sentenced to four years in prison (and served one). The chairman of Britannia Park, John Wright, received a six-month sentence for his part in the fraud.

The Origin of American Adventure Theme Park

Enter John Rigby, associated with Park Hall Leisure. This company is perhaps better known for its association with the UK theme park called Camelot Theme Park, which opened in 1984. Rigby negotiated a deal with DCC in August of 1986. Another 100-year lease, but this time reportedly with less strings attached. 

Rigby wanted to capitalize on his success with Camelot and open a new theme park. This was going to be a “fully-fledged Cowboy vs. Native” theme park.

Rigby essentially took the infrastructure from the old Britannia Park, and put an overlay on it: Native Americans on one half of the park, Cowboys on the other half. The entrance pavilion was given a stars and stripes paint scheme. 

Rides at American Adventure

American Adventure opened with incredible theming for the time – Alton Towers was the other big park at the time and wouldn’t add a big themed ride for a few years. “Major new theme park”

The former British Genius pavilion, essentially an empty warehouse, was given a fiberglass makeover. Possibly the most famous part of the park (at least in its abandonment), the building was covered in faux hills and giant fiberglass faces painted as Native Americans. Inside, a giant play area for kids under 8. 

A replica of the Alamo, reportedly quite convincing, camoflagued an area for horseback stunt shows called Wild West Shootout. Lazy Lil Saloon was another area for live shows, where saloon girls would dance to entertain guests. 

A Zamperla Buffalo coaster opened with the park. 

A log flume called Cherokee Falls. At the time of the park’s opening, this ride was the tallest in the UK. 

A small miniature train ride went around the park, repurposing old Britannia Park tracks. The train was called Santa Fe Railway, and went all the way around the park – popular for both transportation and excellent views.

Fort St. Lawrence opened the next year with the Great Niagra Falls Rapids (later called Grand Canyon Rapids and then Rocky Mountain Rapids). The rapids ride had 12-seater round boats and was considered by some to be the best ride of its type in the UK.

Boom Years for American Adventure

American Adventure was a moderate success after its opening, but it didn’t do as well as expected. The park was still overshadowed by fallout from the Britannia Park disaster, which the media was still focusing on.  

Possibly in a bid to distract the media and boost attendance, in 1989, a new ride came to the park via the Glasgow Garden Festival. It was called The Missile and was a Vekoma boomerang ride. Astronaut Buzz Aldrin opened the ride. “Most intense ride in the UK” at the time, despite being similar to another ride at West Midlands Safari Park, nearby. The next year in the 1989 season, “Spaceport USA” section was added around The Missile.  5 years before similar Nemesis opened at Alton Towers nearby – cost of 4M pounds for the section. 

1991 was American Adventure park’s most popular season.

In 1993, cowboys vs natives theme dropped for all over red, white, and blue. The time for immersive theming was over. 

“Nightmare Niagra” was an upgrade to the log flume ride formerly called Cherokee Falls. This became a highlight of the park – The extra drop made it the tallest log-flume in the UK throughout its operational life (this record has now reverted to Loggers Leap at Thorpe Park as this ride used to hold the record before the new drop was added). Unfortunately this new ride was never advertised to any great extent.

Competition from the other parks in the area during the 1994 season was intense, with most of them opening major rides. American Adventure didn’t have anything new to offer. They began throwing things at the wall to see what would stick:

The children’s play area Pioneer Playground was closed and the space given to a Motion Master 4D movie.

Go-karts were installed at the expense of one of the live horse stunt shows. 

Lightwater Valley, a theme park in Yorkshire, was looking to free up some capital. They sold a ride to American Adventure in 1995. It was called “Iron Wolf” and themed as the Gladiator’s Arena from the itv game show. This was a double loop coaster. Opinions are mixed on this one, with some loving it and some hating it. Quote: “It was a massive mistake buying something as uninspiring as Twin Looper.” The ride reportedly still had Lightwater Valley logos visible on it throughout its first operational year.

Soon, there were struggles with attendance. It became clear that there was no longer any interest in detailed theming like in the early years of the park. Although the detailed theming had been dropped in 1993 with the change to the red, white, and blue “theme”, it wasn’t until 1996 that this became an obvious negative.

1997 heralded big changes for American Adventure, and potentially the turning point in the park’s history. Granada sold the leases to Venture World, and John Broome, the original developer of Alton Towers. This was part of a broader movement during that time, where public companies exited from the attractions sector. Following the sale of American Adventure, Granada also sold Camelot, the neighboring amusement park, to that park’s management in a buyout. The Tussauds Group, which owned three major UK parks, was sold by its parent company around the same time.

A Skycoaster was installed at an upcharge.

1998 saw a short-lived attraction called the Flying Island. The ride had a habit of getting stuck, requiring fire department intervention, and the ride closed after two years. 

1998 also saw the closure of the grand entrance. The main entrance to the park was suffering from mining subsidence (essentially sinking and collapsing). What was once one of the most attractive areas of the park was closed off. The amazing feeling of walking down the steps from the entrance plaza and seeing the park unfold in front of you was gone. It was another negative for the park, particularly as the new entrance had a view of the portapotties.

Around this time, John Broome tried to promote name changes – he very much disliked the American theming. “American Adventure World” was the new name, and the long term goals was to remove the “American” aspect of the park. The name changes were short-lived, however, as was Broome’s position.

John Broome left management of American Adventure in 1999. The park was sold to the THG Group, who owned Blackpool Tower, Winter Gardens, and Piers (other UK parks). Major changes were afoot and many smaller rides were removed and sections closed off. A series of extra-pay attractions were added, including the JCB diggers, where guests could pay to spend five minutes in a real digger. Most rides were beginning to show wear, with malfunctioning parts and ride structures badly in need of paint.

2003 saw a JCB overlay including a JCB digging attraction, at an upcharge.

Less and less attention began to be paid to maintenance of the park. 

2004-2005 was another period of huge turmoil for the park. It was the end of Nightmare Niagara.

Around the same time, the Missile closed, standing empty for all of 2005. So too did the water rapids ride, which was said to be because of structural issues and water pollution.

The park became a shell of its former self. Most structures and buildings were left standing, despite being abandoned/closed.

In 2006, new marketing came out, promoting American Adventure as a place for cartoons and family rides. New rides opened up, including a handful of “carnival” type rides and a Zamperla runaway mine train ride.

On January 4, 2007, American Adventure Park announced it would not reopen after 19 years of operation. The lease went back to the county council.

American Adventure Rides: Sold

Missile closed at end of 2004 season, stood unused for all of 2005; sold to Pleasurewood Hills in 2006 as “Wipeout” and is still open

Buffalo Stampede → Twin Lakes Theme Park in May 2007

Mini Mine Rush → Flamingoland (via Gullivers)

Twin Looper → Poland – lagendia theme park Tic Tac Tornado

Many rides → billings aquadrome

Big Country Motioneering – runaway train (near CF/NN) – ride was sold and traveled, went to Dubai

Abandonment of American Adventure

Many people began visiting the abandoned site – 2008 videos with the Aztec faces. In 2008 or 2009, much of the park was demo’d in order to avoid becoming an attractive nuisance.

In 2012, an announcement was made that the land would be redeveloped. However, nothing seemed to come of it.

In Feb 2018, “Shipley Lakeside by Waystone” was supposed to begin construction. This site would be a housing development, business park, possible healthcare, retirement facility, and pub. However, 2018 came and went. 

Many petitions went around, looking to reopen the park. One had over 10,000 signatures.

Derbyshire Wildlife Trust is said to be purchasing 160 acres surrounding the site to create a nature preserve.

Many urbex videos are available on Youtube. A 2018 video really establishes what is left.

there are signs marking what was located in the different areas. Nearly all that is left are concrete footings. Paths are overgrown with weeds, pavement and brick crumbling. 

Near the Missile, was Lunch Pad (restaurant) and Space Port Driving School (kids driving ride). Spaceport Cinema, a 3D/4D ride, like a big circle. The concrete portion of a lift hill at the rapids ride is still partially visible. 

Trees were all reportedly cut down in 2016 and many have grown back.

Water and many canals for Nightmare Niagra (log flume) are still visible, though crumbling and incredibly overgrown with flora. Nearby, there is a rusted metal footing that used to support the Runaway Train ride. In this area, the pavement is very crumbly.

The bare outlines of the arena can still be seen. 

Pier 49, nearby the arena, is sinking into the water on one side.

Out on Tentacle Island, the footings for the ride can still be seen, with large rusted bolts sticking out of solid concrete blocks. Floating aimlessly in the lake where the wind takes it, the platform that once held fireworks and a hole for the golf game sits. No longer covered in any astroturf, sadly.

Near the main shop area, traintracks from the miniature train are still visible and relatively clear of weeds – wooden logs on a gravel sea. By the original main entrance, a nearly-rotten wooden bridge stands. 

In the former staff parking lot, on grass-covered ground, sits one of the former river rapids cars – now solely the structural components, “concrete”-looking plastic and rusted metal, upside down. A thin border of red paint is all that makes it clear that this once was a ride car.

A wheel that could be a spare from the Twin Looper coaster sits in a patch of weeds, rusted and falling apart.

Work for the Shipley Lakeside development is finally about to begin. Concrete crushing of all old foundations said to start in mid-2019, with land ready for housebuilders in 2020.

Helen McLoughlin, development director, said there was still 12 to 18 months of work to do on the old foundations before the first homes could be built. 

Quote: “This is all weather dependent because what we have to do is take out old foundations that were left behind from the legacy of the American Adventure and they have to be re-crushed and used on site.” 

Quote: “It’s literally just a lake surrounded by the overgrown foundations of all the rides, you can still see where the rides used to be. It just felt eerie, really eerie – you wouldn’t think it had ever been a theme park.”

In April 2019, four construction vehicles at the site were set on fire by arsonists. 

American Adventure was once one of the largest and most popular theme parks in the UK. A series of poor management choices spelled the end for the park; change came too little and too late for the American Adventure park. However, the land has carried on since the Dark Ages, and it will continue on in a new form soon. For now, nature is reclaiming the land.

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

References

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

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History of the Yangon Amusement Park

Myanmar, also called Burma, is located in Southeast Asia. For much of its history, Myanmar has faced violent civil wars and military dictatorships and isolationist policies. Yangon was for many years the capital city. However, the brutal military junta officially established Naypyidaw (200 miles north of Yangon) as the new capital in 2006, and moved governmental functions there. Rationale behind the move is, like most things in today’s story, unclear; The Guardian called it a “vanity project”. Climate considerations may also have been a significant factor. Located close to the coast, Yangon suffered terrible damages several years later during 2008’s Cyclone Nagis: 100,000 people killed and over ¾ of the industrial infrastructure wiped out. Much of Yangon today lacks basic services like 24-hour electrical service and regular garbage collection.

It is against this background that we begin to talk about the Yangon Amusement Park. If you think it’s odd that I keep saying “Yangon Amusement Park”, that’s because the park doesn’t clearly have a readily available name. Most sources refer to the place as the “abandoned Yangon Amusement Park”. Some sources call it “Game City”, which may or may not be accurate given that there is another “Game City” nearby. Coconuts, a major Asian multimedia company, produced a short documentary calling the site “Best Zone”, but it is the only source to do so. For the purposes of our story today, I’ll keep it simple and call it the “Yangon Amusement Park”.

Yangon Amusement Park

The Yangon Amusement Park was opened in 1997. As we’ve briefly mentioned, the government at the time was a brutal dictatorship constantly engaged in violence and civil war. The Yangon Amusement Park was likely built to serve as a flashy distraction from the evil things the military rulers were doing elsewhere in the country. It does seem the distraction from life under tyranny worked to some extent, with some locals remembering the park fondly from their childhoods.

Several big names from the Burmese government attended the opening ceremony for the park, as well as the Japanese ambassador. The park was heralded as a “world-class” amusement park with modern attractions. Reportedly, many of the rides came via Japan. The Yangon Amusement Park was notable for opening the first roller coaster in Myanmar (yes, in 1997).

Click here to view a series of images from the park in 2009 during the park’s operation.

Though the park is located next to the Yangon Zoo and were both reportedly meant to be one attraction originally, a dispute over ticketing meant that the companies in charge of each ran them separately.

Yangoon Amusement Park covers ten acres next to the Yangon Zoo. The zoo still operates, although the majority of its animals were moved to the new capital of Myanmar, Naypyidaw, around 2006. Today, hundreds of visitors walk past the park each day while visiting the zoo, unaware of the delights that once echoed just yards away.

Closure of the Yangon Amusement Park

As with the name of the park, the date and reasons for the closure of the Yangon Amusement Park are also shrouded in mystery. The park operated for about 15 years, reportedly closing in 2012 or 2013. No one is willing to say much about why the park closed, either. One source says that the director of the company leasing the land failed to renew the contract, apparently because he couldn’t attend a meeting with the Ministry of Forest due to being “out of town”.

Other rumors says the area around the karaoke bars at the park got too noisy, with gossip about authorities stepping in to break up fights and rumors about a murder or death in the park. Some locals say the park is haunted.

Abandonment of the Yangon Amusement Park

Due to the tropical climate, the park has fallen into decay quite rapidly, after being closed only 5 to 6 years. Think Jurassic Park, but with roller coasters instead of dinosaurs. No demolition was done; the park was simply closed, so all of the rides are still in place despite the years of abandonment.

Online, you’ll find that Yangon amusement park is popular for being friendly to those new to the urbex world. Why? It’s easy to enter, with several broken down fences or back doors through restaurants. There is little to no security, as local residents still live in the buildings in or adjacent to the park. The materials are primarily steel, and most rides are on ground level, so there is little worry of falling through floors. The main hazards are packs of roaming dogs (common to the city as a whole) and mosquitoes.

Monkeys and birds call noisily from overhead at times as visitors enter the park.

Even though the park has been abandoned for several years, it’s notable that there is little to no graffiti or vandalism in the park. A few minor tags exist, mostly in the arcade hall, and other incidents are harmless, such as moving the pirate around in the Viking boat. Had this park been left abandoned in the US, the images and video would paint a very different story.

#Yangon #AmusementPark offers an exciting #urbanExploration in a creepy #abandonedPark with wild dogs: exciting urban exploration in a creepy abandoned park with wild dogs Personal highlights – Saturday, March 10, 2018 https://t.co/Z9pc8KSwHM pic.twitter.com/1AOacnowS1

— Adrian Sameli (@aSabbatical_com) July 16, 2018

Rides at the Yangon Amusement Park

Let’s talk about rides, babee.

Roller Coaster at the Yangon Amusement Park

Always a good first draw for an abandoned theme park, the decaying roller coaster is often the most visible symbol of a once-vibrant amusement park. In the Yangon Amusement Park as well, we have one. The rollercoaster now decays under a tangle of quickly-growing vines. The RCDB only gives the details that this was called “Roller Coaster” and is a steel coaster. Pictures from its operation show a track, already rusting, perched on support poles painted a brilliant yellow and blue. The cars were standard coaster cars, top half red, bottom half white.

Today, with the park abandoned, tattered advertising flags still hang from the fence surrounding the coaster, where the cars and track come alarmingly close (by modern safety standards) to fences and pedestrians.

Fast-growing vines and small trees are quickly engulfing the structure, but the view from the top does appear magnificent. Climbing to the top of the coaster is popular with explorers due to the excellent view of the park and city.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Elise (@zesty_ruffles) on Dec 1, 2018 at 10:13pm PST

The Rocket at the Yangon Amusement Park

From the top of the roller coaster, you can see a strange oblong object peering up above the canopy. What could it be?

This ride, called The Rocket, is a classic Roll-o-plane or Dive Bomber type ride, where two capsules sit at the end of a long metal shaft, attached to a seemingly flimsy tower. The capsules spin as the shaft rotates, for extra thrills. According to Sam Aung Moon, who visited the park as a child, “people with heart conditions weren’t allowed to get on” that one.

In its abandoned state, the Rocket is incredibly eerie. One capsule rises high up in the air, like a rusting lookout peeking over the top of the green canopy of trees. The other capsule sits at ground level, doors falling open, tilting to one side. Lichen covers the once brilliant blue paint.

Abandoned entertainment park in Yangon, Myanmar (Burma) [4032×3024] [OC] #Abandoned #AbandonedPorn #Cool pic.twitter.com/PVLS0AW8xm

— Explore the world! (@Traversed) January 16, 2018

Viking Ship + Pirate at the Yangon Amusement Park

Another popular and fascinating ride is the Viking pirate ship. The designer of this ride, or perhaps just the designer of the park, certainly had a fun time. One sign for this ride indicates that the crew is seafaring pirate bandits, and the other promotes the idea that the crew is 10th-century Scandinavians with battle-axes.

The ride itself is a small, standard swinging pendulum ship. A lifesize figure of a pirate stands guard on the ship. The pirate is eerie, with a pale face and haunted-looking eyes, one hand reaching up empty towards the sky. He is not permanently attached to the ride, and does move around at the whims of explorers.

Not often mentioned or photographed is another pirate figure, up in the structure of the ride’s supports, looking out from a circus-like crows’ nest at nothing but the green, ever-encroaching trees.

Of course, there is the boat: covered in mildew, grime, and faded, peeling paint. A rather fearsome dragon face is on the prow, and Viking helms decorate the sides of the structure.

Adventurous visitors can push the ride back and forth, frighteningly enough. Tree branches have grown between the support struts, slowing the motion down.

The locals are said to enjoy relaxing on the ship and gently rocking back and forth after a game of ball.

Abandoned Amusement Park in #Yangon #Myanmar pic.twitter.com/iA98pwBbZ5

— SIMONTIDE (@SiMONTiDE) November 21, 2018

UFO Cycle at the Yangon Amusement Park

The UFO Cycle is a unique ride from the perspective of an American audience. The attraction is still manufactured today by “Ali Brothers” ride company in China, and is primarily seen in small parks around India, China, and other countries in Asia.

The UFO Cycles ride is a large wheel sitting on end, with seats for two people inside. As the guests pedal, the wheel turns and pushes the “monorail” car along the elevated track. Multiple wheels move along on the same track, independently.

At Yangon Amusement Park, the pedal mechanisms have long been removed from the abandoned UFO Cycle cars. However, the cars themselves can still be pushed along the track by adventurous explorers without a fear of heights. Painted with faded stars in a classic primary color scheme, the UFO Cycle is my personal highlight from the images of the park. I would’ve enjoyed riding this ride in the park’s heyday, and find it particularly attractive in abandonment.

View this post on Instagram

Lifecycle of an abandoned amusement park.This somewhat spooky but fascinating amusement park is hidden in plain sight in the middle of Yangon, with all the rides still there. Look around for yourself: I made a video of my urban exploration of the park – see my blog (link in profile bio @matthewseow #xennialtraveller) #yangonoftheday

A post shared by Xennial Traveller Vlogger (@matthewseow) on Jan 14, 2019 at 6:08am PST

Bumper Cars at the Yangon Amusement Park

The Yangon park reportedly had not one but two classic bumper car halls. These are open air structures with half-height walls, and a classic Dodgem bumper car attraction is inside. In the current abandoned state of Yangon amusement park, the bumper cars lie piled in a corner of the open-air hall, as if a giant hand tossed them away in a fit of spite.

Today, the youth of Yangon use the bumper car halls as a free, shady area for playing football.

Snuck into this incredible abandoned amusement park in #Yangon #Myanmar. I was chased away twice before a friendly man let me in through a hole in the fence beside his shop. pic.twitter.com/ddtZneULfS

— Karen Sweeney (@karenlsweeney) July 16, 2018

The Twister at the Yangon Amusement Park

This one is quite popular in the social media images these days, perhaps just for the questions it inspires. The Twister is a ride consisting of a series of round capsules, like giant tuna cans. Each capsule holds two riders, and the capsules rock back and forth. I’ve been unable to find a name for this type of ride – if you know, please comment or reach out on social media!

Yes, it’s possible to do a complete 360 on the ride, even now in the park’s abandonment. Back when the ride was operating, an engine spun all the capsules around simultaneously.

In the abandoned state of the Yangon amusement park, a family of wild dogs has made itself at home in the mechanical parts that once operated the ride. Adventurous explorers can still rotate themselves 360 degrees in the capsules, if they wish.

Attempting (unsuccessfully) to find the entrance to Yangon`s new Elephant Museum this weekend, I instead stumbled into the abandoned theme park. Just me and the crows. Amazing place. Reminded me of Berlin`s Spreepark, sitting somewhere between the unearthly and the exuberant. pic.twitter.com/xpqjwPajtL

— Bertie Alexander (@Bertie_Alexandr) March 4, 2019

Carousel at the Yangon Amusement Park

You know I love a good abandoned carousel, right? The carousel in Yangon Amusement Park is delightful in its abandoned state. Paint is faded and chipping, and the classically carved horses look wistfully at the viewer, as if longing for better days. Faded banners flap nearby, and dried leaves collect underfoot.

A second, smaller carousel nearby features toddler-sized horses. They’re much more cutesy and cherubic and this mini-carousel stands next to several decaying photobooths.

Abandoned theme park in Yangon, Myanmar. via /r/urbanexploration https://t.co/Z0x3xBNkZz pic.twitter.com/fyabfwb3i0

— Emanon (@RadioMy) August 29, 2018

Other Rides at the Yangon Amusement Park

Enterprise

Though not often photographed on social media, the park does have an “Enterprise” type ride – yes, named after the ship from Star Trek. The ride is manufactured by a Hungarian company, and can still be seen operating in 30-40 places around the world.

The Enterprise ride starts with the riders seated in one of 20 gondolas (space themed) on the ground. There are no seatbelts. The ride begins to spin clockwise, and then a hydraulic arm shifts the entire circle from the horizontal plane into a nearly vertical plane.

Though this ride looks like a basic flat ride in its abandoned state, this would’ve been quite impressive in action.

The ride at Yangon’s abandoned park will never operate again, covered in rust, slick algae and mold, and creeping vines from the trees nearby. The logo for the Japanese “Justmeet Corporation” is barely visible on the control panels, flaking away with the rain and the rust.

Astro Swinger

Another ride not often seen in urbex shots is the “Astro Swinger”. This is a chair swing ride with a bright yellow frame. Most chair swing rides have a circular top support and a solid central cylinder. This ride, however, has a very open upside down funnel shape for its support framework.

The cars of the Astro Swinger could very generously be said to have a car theme: they are boxlike with two small faux headlights for theming. Disneyland this is not (though there is a photo Disney stand underneath another of the rides).

Balloon Cycle

On social media, one of the most photogenic and popular rides is the hot air balloon ride. It is named the “Balloon Cycle”, and is located just a few feet from the carousel.

This ride appears to be similar to the Zamperla “Balloon Race” ride, and would raise guests and their balloons up in the air before tilting and spinning them.

Several of the canopies for the balloons at Yangon Amusement Park have collapsed, and a small tree appears to be growing through the center of the frame now. The classic rainbow color scheme on the balloons is now faded, adding more sad, picturesque beauty to the scene. Occasionally, music and laughter echo over from the neighboring zoo, making the scene even more surreal.

Happy Child World Arcade Hall

Don’t get confused with another local theme park called “Happy World”. This is the name for a small arcade hall at the Yangon Amusement Park. Inside, boxy, clunky video game consoles are piled up, covered in dust and grime.

There are also plenty of large animals and other cute figures. Each holds its own defunct game console, like one might find in a mall. A simple ride features two cars that once soared over the hall at ceiling height.

This is also where the “baby garden” is located. The baby garden is a small maze of nets and plastic ball pit balls with a few basic climbing structures.

This area can be the most eerie, with the sudden appearance of a grimacing plastic face from under a tumble of leaves.

The park had a bustling variety of other buildings, as well – shops, massage parlors, restaurants, karaoke halls. Most were independently owned. Some of the owners still live on the property. Diners, bars, and other small businesses back onto the property. Some residents (the younger ones, as a whole) enjoy the park in their backyard. Others don’t. “No one has driven the staff out of the shops, so they can stay here for now,” says resident Ko Soe.

The children in the area treat the park as their own personal playground. Some even call the abandoned park a “living museum” in the heart of Yangon. Images and video from the park show a serene place, set back away from the hustle and bustle of the city.

Future of the Yangon Amusement Park

The park appears calm on the surface. However, things are not all that they seem. The company that built the park in conjunction with the Ministry of Forest (Doh Pyi Thar Enterprises) was dissolved in 2016. Their office near the park’s former entrance has been closed since 2016.

The land currently belongs to the Yangon authorities.

Around June 2017, rumors went out that the government was calling for the land to be “put out to tender”, or opened up for bids for redevelopment. Reports from the site “Myanmar Builders Hub” officially describe the park as being up for redevelopment as of November 2018. A design proposal was revealed in April 2019.

It appears that the park will be razed and rebuilt as a new Yangon amusement park, designed by the Amenity Design Group. Time will tell, but it seems that the days for this picturesque abandoned park may be numbered.

At least we’ll always have photos.

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

References

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

The post Yangon Amusement Park appeared first on The Abandoned Carousel.

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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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One thing that I’ve learned even over the short course of this show, is that despite the fascinating images of abandoned places, these parks are really all about people and families and communities. The story of Joyland, in particular, epitomizes that community connection.

The Ottaway Family

Joyland all started with a family: the Ottaway family, of Wichita, Kansas. Our story begins with the patriarch, Lester A. Ottaway.

Lester was a businessman, farmer, and mechanic who arrived in Wichita around the turn of the century, in 1904. He opened and ran the Ottaway Alfalfa Mill from 1909 until 1921. From 1929 to 1945, he opened and ran the L. A. Ottaway Sand Company. During this time, he married Ms. Gladys Woolworth, and they began having children. Lester had ten children: three daughters and seven sons.

Herbert Ottaway, born in 1912, was a mechanical whiz and a bike aficionado. The story goes that he walked home from school each day. One day in the 20s, he spotted a 1913 Indian motorcycle leaning up against the house – the next day he returned, found the owner, and tried to buy it. The owner, a Mr. Laff Glatner, refused. Herb came back the following day with a bag full of change, $12 (“which was all the money I had managed to save in my life”) which would be about $300 in today’s dollars. Glatner took the bag without counting the money and gave Herb the broken-down motorcycle, which Herb pushed all the way home.

This was the start of Herb’s love of racing and motorcycles, and an indicator of his persistance in accomplishing his goals.

Herb Ottaway and Motorcycles

Professionally, Herbert began as a welder in the local Wichita aircraft plants. In the mid-20s, Wichita was already throwing off its image of a “sleepy cow-town”, and was well becoming essential for both agriculture and aviation. Boeing, Beech, Culver, and Cessna were all big names in the area, as the Depression shifted into wartime production.

By the age of 17, Herb had built his own motorcycles from the ground up. He won the biggest race of his career, The Oklahoma State Championship, in the 1930, winning roughly $600 (about $9000 in 2019). He continues to race on tracks throughout Kansas in the 1930s, retiring without injury from the sport.

Population was booming in the formative time period between the world wars. With the huge amount of aviation production booming in Wichita starting in 1927 (Beech, Cessna, and Boeing, among others), the population was growing rapidly as well. Wichita was essential for warcraft production prior to and during the second World War. The city’s population doubled between 1940 and 1943 alone. Against this background arose Joyland: the perfect thing for a population in need of diversion and recreation.

The Early Seeds of Joyland

Motorcycles and Miniature Trains

It was through motorcycle racing that Herb met some friends that would help him along in his future career goals: Gerald Chance and Max Wilson. Gerald Chance was the Indian Motorcycle dealer in Wichita in the 1930s, and Herb and Gerald became good friends. Gerald introduced Herb to his son, Richard “Harold” Chance. R. H. Chance was nine years junior to Herb, and also served as a welder at the local aviation manufacturers in the years prior to the war draft in 1944.

Max Wilson, also a fellow motorcycle rider, was interested in miniature trains. This inspired Herb.

The First Ottaway Train

Here is where stories diverge. If you do a quick search for Joyland, you’ll see the same block of text copied over from nearly every single site: the Wikipedia text. “The park was founded by Lester Ottaway and his sons Herbert and Harold to serve as the home for a miniature 12-inch (300 mm) gauge steam locomotive that Herb Ottaway had purchased in Fort Scott, back in 1933. The train had been part of a defunct amusement park there and was originally built by the Miniature Railway Company of Elgin, Illinois, between 1905 and 1910.”

It’s difficult, given that the relevant articles from the main Kansas paper aren’t available online for these years, but this Wikipedia account doesn’t ring quite true. Fort Scott is a small place that had one amusement park: Fern Lake Park, which later became Gunn Park. This was a fairly typical pleasure garden of the time, which operated movie theaters, vaudeville acts, and even a zoo. The park was purchased by the city somewhere between 1910 and 1912, however, and the amusement aspects were stripped away to become a typical city park. Nowhere in the newspaper sources at the time was there mention of a miniature train, which would’ve been huge news in the papers and magazines of the time.

Another possible source could be nearby Hutchinson, KS, the former home of Riverside Park. This amusement park was known for its miniature train; however it was sold in 1916, also far earlier than the known acquisition date in the mid-1930s.

Other Accounts of the First Train

A more reliable source may be the account of Jerry Ottaway, Herb’s son, on “The Ottaway Steam Train”. Jerry wrote: “About 1932 my Dad, Herb Ottaway, purchased a steam train from a popular recreation area located on South Meridian (Avenue). He rebuilt the engine and coaches the following winter.” Another account states: “Herb had built a miniature live steam locomotive” following advice of his friend Max Wilson.

One final source may hold the ultimate key to tie all these accounts together. In 2004, Ed Kelley wrote a history of the Ottaway Amusement Company. The site is now defunct, but was fortunately saved by the Wayback Machine. Quote: “An important chapter of ‘park train’ history began in 1933, when a Kansas family by the name of Ottaway bought a 12” gauge steam locomotive from an old amusement park at the Kansas/Missouri border in Fort Scott, Kansas. This locomotive was built between 1905 and 1910 by the International Miniature Railway Company of Elgin, Illinois for White City, a Chicago amusement park. Replaced by a larger 15” gauge Cagney locomotive, the little engine passed through amusement parks in Iowa, and Kansas…as well as received many extreme modifications.”

Kelley’s post references a photo of the train taken in Iowa, which unfortunately was not archived.

One way or another, we know that Herb purchased a miniature steam train, after getting into the hobby via his motorcycle friend Max Wilson.

Traveling Carnivals (1933-1946)

So in 1933, Herb Ottaway acquired a miniature steam train. Together with Harold and Lester, he rebuilt and refurbished the little train over the next year. The train was styled as a miniature  AT&SF (Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe) railway.

The trio began taking the train around for rides for children in Kansas, which was quite popular. They expanded their reach, setting themselves up with Gerald Chance and his family (remember Gerald, the owner of the local motorcycle shop?). Chance built “four gasoline powered cars and a kiddie auto ride” that was called “the Little Motorcycle”. Together, they spent spring and summer in Manitou, Colorado, providing rides on their small carnival, each summer from 1934-1940. The carnival came to a halt with the onset of war in 1941.

Ottaway Amusement Company

The train was the star of the show, and in 1940, they Ottaways opened Ottaway Amusement Company, a business for building the trains. By 1944, their shop was set up in Wichita and had produced two engines. They hired Harold Chance, Gerald’s son, to work in the train shop, located at that time on North St. Francis St in Wichita.

By 1945, five more locomotives had been built from scratch, and the Ottaways were advertising their locomotives in papers and magazines. It was essentially a complete mail-order miniature railroad setup: an engine, three cars, and 270 feet of track, plus maintenance accessories, for $2500. (In today’s money, about $35k.)

The Ottaway Theme Park in Planeview

Around this time, Herb and Harold opened a small amusement park in Planeview, Kansas, a suburb on the outskirts of Wichita. With the war in full swing, a town called Planeview had sprung up near the Boeing and other aviation plants. Thousands of people were looking for entertainment, and the Ottaways provided.

This park was quite small. It opened in 1942 or 1943, and was called Playland or Playtime, depending on the source. There was a Tilt-A-Whirl, a Ferris wheel, and a merry-go-round.

This was a difficult time to have a leisure business during the war years. It’s said that any non-war business uses, say such as a theme park, were taxed at 20 percent (compare to your current state tax rate that might be somewhere around 5%). But the park was hugely popular with its captive crowds.

Joyland Central (1946-1949)

Perhaps inspired by his sons, patriarch Lester Ottaway purchased the land in the heart of Wichita, between Central and New York streets. Joyland first opened at 1515 E. Central, on the south side of the street, sometime in 1946. Soon afterwards, Herb and Harold closed the small park in Planeview, moving the rides from Planeview to what we’ll call Joyland Central.

Joyland Central is sometimes confused with “Kiddieland” in modern accounts; however, these were separate parks. Kiddieland was another Wichita theme park, owned by the Consolver family. This park opened in 1947. One visitor remembers “The things that made it special for me were the boats and the pony rides, two attractions that Joyland did not have”. Kiddieland in Wichita was closed in 1968 and torn down to build what is now the Wichita Mall. There is, of course, a Facebook group for fans of the Kiddieland park.

More Rides for Joyland

New rides were added to Joyland Central, including a shooting range, a child’s auto ride, a Roll-o-Plane, and the Dodgem bumper cars. The fondly-remembered “Old Woman’s Shoe” attraction (a giant shoe that kids could climb in) also was located at Joyland Central originally.

The city’s electric company also would not provide service to the park – they didn’t think it was “necessary”. The park therefore had to operate on a generator, which had to be turned on by hand each time the park opened.

Success of Joyland Central

Still, the people came to Joyland. After the end of World War II, people were hungry for lightness, entertainment, and leisure. Joyland was a hit with both children and adults, and business was booming.

As the Ottaways eyed the addition of a large roller coaster at Joyland, they needed to look for a new location for their park: the Central location was just too small. The Wichita Eagle wrote about the planning of the park in November of 1948.

Joyland

The Ottaways found the land they were looking for at 2801 South Hillside. Joyland Hillside, or just Joyland, had found its new home.

1949 Opening of Joyland Hillside Opening

Joyland Park opened on June 12, 1949.

At the time, it was considered the biggest amusement park in the area, with the roller coaster being a particularly big deal. “A huge deal. It was amazing,” said Roger Nelson, son of Stanley and Margaret Nelson, who would later own the park.

More than 1200 people attended on the day the mayor cut the ribbon for the roller coaster’s opening ceremony. “The coaster is said to have the steepest drop of any in the country,” they said at the time.

Two Joylands Become One

Joyland Central and Joyland Hillside were open simultaneously for only a short period of time. The land value of the Central location was increasing, so the Ottaways sold Joyland Central and combined the parks at the Hillside location.

Some of the rides moved to Joyland’s Hillside location, but the Joyland Central carousel was sold, and a brand new 1949 carousel made by Allan Herschell, under the Herschell-Spillman name. By the time of its closure, every single one of its original horses was still present and accounted for, primarily because the carousel was completely disassembled every winter beginning in 1951. The horses were hand-carved, with wood bodies and aluminium heads and tails for durability. These can be dated to a specific point in history, as these were only manufactured for a short time before and after World War II.

Joyland opened with several rides right from the start in 1949, including the famous Roller Coaster, the Dodgem bumper cars, the Carousel, and the Ferris Wheel.

Joyland’s Roller Coaster

The park’s coaster, called “Roller Coaster”, was built in 1949 for Joyland by the Philadelphia Toboggan Company, and was ready on open day. The coaster was designed by Herbert Paul Schmeck, whose work has often been listed among the top ten coasters in the world.

“Roller Coaster” was one of the last original wooden coasters, one of the 44 “ACE Coaster Classics”. Not until 2006 was the park given any other name, at which point it was briefly called “Nightmare”.

“They ran that roller coaster from one in the afternoon until one in the morning at 25 cents a ride, and it was full every time,” Roger Nelson said.

A 2001 trip report describes the ride thusly: “The ride, featuring an ‘L’ dog leg and a lift hill that is slightly askew from the “out” run of the coaster, is bigger than you think. Immediately off the lift, riders are shot skyward as the train tumbles down the steep first hill, then slammed down as it bottoms out. The first three hills all have great air time”. The report goes on to say “Rarely do I find a roller coaster that changes in intensity so much over the course of a day. This coaster, tame in its early runs, becomes an airtime machine by late afternoon and a bat out of hell by nighttime.”

Roller Coaster’s Operating Stats

The coaster covered 2,600 feet, with an 80 foot drop and 50mph top speed. The ride was notable as the years went on for being only North American coaster using vintage cars with fixed lap bars, allowing for great “airtime”.

The coaster used what is called “skid brakes” to slow the coaster cars. Sections of the track had manually operated brakes, which were controlled by the ride operator using large, four to five foot tall levers. A barrel underneath the tracks hung, filled with cement, which also tripped the skid brakes.

Ferris Wheel at Joyland

The Ferris wheel was an original Joyland attraction from the park’s opening in 1949, though it wasn’t always bright yellow. Eli Bridge is the country’s oldest maker of Ferris wheels, and they manufactured this wheel in Jacksonville, IL. The company actually still operates in their original production building there, opened in 1919.

In earlier days, the Ferris wheel was silver, with its 16 chairs painted in bright blue, red and yellow. As the years went on, the frame was painted a distinctive sunshine yellow. Bucket seats featured a detailed “JP” on the backs, for Joyland Park.

Joyland’s Mammoth Wurlitzer Organ

As you entered Joyland, you passed a small showbuilding. It was impossible to miss, with the cheerful organ music playing and the strange, grinning clown in front. This was Joyland’s Mammoth Wurlitzer 160 Organ, and Louie the Clown.

The Mammoth was the largest of the early Wurlitzer models, and was built around 1905.

Jess Gibbs and the Joyland Mammoth Wurlitzer

In 1947, the Ottaways were contact by organ man Jess Gibbs, about an old band organ that was sitting at an estate in Coffeyville, the old Brown Mansion, where it had reportedly sat abandoned for the previous twenty years. The Brown Mansion had served as a spa in the heyday of the 1920s known as the Siluran Springs Bath House, where guests whirled in the ballroom to the music of the Mammoth Wurlitzer. When the Brown Mansion closed during the Depression, the organ sat, abandoned and forgotten.

Harold and Herbert went out to take a look, They bought the organ “as is” for somewhere between $350-500 (roughly $4000 to $5500 in 2019 dollars). Gibbs took the organ and repaired it for the Ottaways, a process which took two years. Mice had eaten the glue joints, and there were no brass pipes in the organ, having been reportedly removed for the war effort between 1941-1945. Additionally, the organ was water damaged, which took time and skill to repair. The Joyland Wurlitzer was one of only two Mammoth organs still in existence, and at the time was the only one available for public viewing.

After delivery of the completed organ to Joyland, Gibbs stayed on with the Ottaways, being one of only three people throughout the tenure of Joyland to maintain the organ and its creepy clown player.

Joyland’s Louie the Clown

Perhaps the most memorable part of the park for some, Louie was an essential part of the Joyland Wurlitzer experience. The story goes that the Ottaways acquired Louie at an amusement park tradeshow they were attending sometime in 1949.They purchased Louie for $750, and set him up in front of the organ, where he “pretended to play”, his randomized movements reportedly good enough to fool some guests.

Visitors either loved or hated Louie. He had a white face, painted with blue swirls amongst the classic clown makeup. Each season, he wore a new outfit. One visitor remembers: “I loved Louie. He was the first thing I’d run to see when I entered the park as a little girl, before hopping in line to ride the merry-go-round.”

“Louie was very important to the park and the whole atmosphere of going to Joyland, It just provided excitement instantly as you walked into this park,” said Hal Ottaway, son of Harold. Excitement, or fear, it was always hard to tell which.

Original Darkride at Joyland

During the Joyland Central years, Dodgem (bumper cars) was one of the most popular rides. When the two parks were merged into one, management decided to install both Dodgem rides in the park to double capacity. The idea, of course, being that two must be better than one. This didn’t work in practice, and so one of the buildings was closed.

This closed building was reused, however, as the park’s first dark ride, a one-story fright house common for the era. Some sources say that the Philadelphia Toboggan Company may have been involved. The ride later was updated with a safari theme, including lions, alligators, snakes, and other scares.

Porky the Paper Eater

Not a ride, but memorable still the same, Porky the Paper Eater was also there at Joyland from the beginning. Porky was developed by Harry J. Batt Associates for the Ponchartrain Beach fun center. He is one of several models, which also include Leo the Lion and Pepe the Clown.

Joyland’s Porky was housed in a mushroom, where he waited for visitors to bring him trash to suck up through his open mouth (a vacuum). Slightly menacing from an adult perspective now, kids at the time loved Porky.

“Porky was the best thing because the kids would run all over picking up trash,” Roger Nelson said.

Booming Business at Joyland

Joyland worked with the State Department to help promote their park in the first few years. The Ottaways were cognizant that they wanted to promote the park differently, in order to avoid comparisons with the carnivals of the time, which were seen as “seedy”. They took a number of tacts, including humanizing themselves and tying the welfare of their park to the growth of Wichita.

The Ottaways also took surveys to identify their target audience: most of the Joyland attendees, at least in the first few years, were from rural farms around Kansas. With this in mind, much of the early advertising was directed at the rural audience and not the city audience of the time. Since the Ottaways were all avid collectors of steam and gas engine tractors, they held “Steam Tractor Shows” and tractor-pulling contests at the park through at least 1956. (As an interesting side-bar, Herb Ottaway invented the steam-powered pogo stick!)

Programs were tied in with schools and the local police department. In one, the “School’s Out” party, students got free admission to the park by bringing in school supplies, which were then sent to partner schools in Europe by the state department. (This particular promotion occured in the years after the second World War, remember.) Films were then jointly taken at both Joyland and at the partner school, allowing for cross-promotion of all entities involved.

Other Local Joyland Promotions

Later on, Joyland offered a “good grades” promotion, where students would receive free entrance to the park with good grades on their report card. Wichita resident Erica Davis remembers, “My parents used to take me when report cards came out. It was an excellent motivator.”

Other promotions included days only for employees of local groups and businesses, such as the local aviation industry. Resident Jaqueline DeFever remembers: “My Dad worked at Beech Aircraft and they had nights where if you brought a can of pop you got in free. We would go all the time! Loved the Tilt-A-Whirl, Log Jam and Whacky Shack! Super scary!”

The Sale of Ottaway Amusement Company

In 1948, with the park business booming, the Ottaways had their hands full, and couldn’t devote the attention to their miniature train business, Ottaway Amusement Co. They sold their train business to Harold Chance, who continued to build the miniature steam trains, adding gasoline and electric powered trains to the fleet.

Chance built some new trains for the park in 1951 as part of the transaction: a set of ABA Santa Fe Streamliners, sleek and modern in contrast to the more classic styling of the Ottaway model that had opened the park.

By 1961, Harold Chance had incorporated Chance Rides, which went on to become the largest amusement ride manufacturer in the world.

The Joyland Pool

In the 1950s, after Joyland had been open for several years, it was time for renovations, including the Olympic-sized pool. This pool had a tall slide and high dives, and if you forgot your swimsuit, you could buy a Joyland pair right at the park.

The pool was, unsurprisingly, a huge crowd-pleaser during the hot summers, when air conditioning wasn’t a regular feature in the average home.

Resident Angi Amos remembers: “I remember as a little girl getting to go to the pool that was there for years. That pool seemed so big, and the slide was so tall. The diving boards were really high up. There were always a lot of people in and around the pool.”

Joyland later won an award in 1964 for its “Moonlight Swim” promotion, in conjunction with the local radio station KLEO.

Joyland’s New Frontier Town

Kansas celebrated its centennial as a state in 1961. To celebrate, Joyland added an old West town section, called “Frontier Town”. This old West section had a genuine old Aitchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway caboose, which had originally been built in the 1920s. This new section also had a general store, dry goods, and saloon. Of course, an old West town wouldn’t be complete without “cowboys” who regularly performed shootouts on the town’s main street, much to the delight of Joyland’s visitors.

Passing of the Joyland Torch

Life at Joyland was moving along smoothly, and the atmosphere was thrilling. “I walked through the screams, shots, cries, laughter, music, bells, buzzers, rails, rollers, rides, explosions, flashing lights and grinding gears,” guest John Roe said, describing the atmosphere of the park. Joyland park continued to increase in popularity with guests.

So…

In the mid-1960s, the Ottaways retired from the park business (Lester had passed away in the 1950s).

The original steam train retired with them, moving into their personal collection. A new train joined the park in its place, in 1961, manufactured by Harold Chance and Chance Rides. It was the first-ever C. P. Huntington miniature train from Chance Rides, and it came with serial number 1 from the factory.

“Joyland’s train really launched Chance Rides,” said Larry Breitenstein, National Sales Director at Chance Rides, some time later. The C. P. Huntington miniature train is one of Chance Rides’ most popular offerings.

Joyland would continue in a new chapter under the ownership of Stanley and Margaret Nelson.

We’ll continue next week with the second half of the Joyland story.

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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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