The Historic Amusement Parks of Lake Ontario, Lake Erie, and the Hudson River

I have been working from the hypothesis for many years now that the infrastructure of the Old World across the surface of the Earth was part of a highly-advanced and highly-integrated free-energy generating grid that was deliberately destroyed, which in turn destroyed the surface of the Earth and created what we see in the world today and was not there previously.

It is my belief that the historic trolley amusement parks were originally part of that energy grid.

They were located at the end terminals of streetcar lines.

There are two definitions of terminal.

One is: “The end of a railroad or other transport route, or a station at such a point.”

The other is: “A point of connection for closing an electric circuit.”

The history we are told about streetcars and interurbans is inextricably tied to the history of these amusement parks, all of which for the most part were in existence for only a short-time before they were gone.

I have come to believe that originally these historic amusement parks were somehow involved with the original energy grid for the original civilization in a really fun way, and were utilized by the bringers-in of the world’s new system for a short time until they were no longer needed, or just plain inconvenient to the new narrative.

The free-energy grid was replaced as quickly as possible by forms of transportation that are dependent on non-renewable, and controllable, energy sources based on oil and gas, and the infrastructure of the original grid was removed as quickly as possible from physical existence and from our collective memory.

In my last series on the Great Lakes, I kept encountering and documenting historic trolley parks all along the shores of the Great Lakes.

I mean there were a lot of them! Not all were considered trolley parks, but most of them were.

These amusement parks are or were also in strange places, like on small tracts of land surrounded by water or wetlands, and often near areas with high-levels of environmental contamination and degradation.

In this post, I want to specifically talk about the ones I encountered along the shores of Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, as well as ones I found along the Hudson River in my blog post “Star Forts, Gone-Bye Trolley Parks and Lighthouses of New York’s Hudson River Valley & New York Bays” back in 2022.

Star Forts, Gone-Bye Trolley Parks and Lighthouses of New York’s Hudson River Valley & New York Bays

This in a nutshell is what we are told about them.

Trolley parks were said to have started in the United States in the 19th-century as picnic, recreation and entertainment areas at the ends of street car lines, and were precursors to amusement parks.

We are told the first U.S. roller coaster generally credited as the first successful commercial roller coaster was LaMarcus Adna Thompson’s Switchback Railway, which opened as a standalone attraction in 1884 in the West Brighton section of Coney Island in Brooklyn, and preceded Coney Island’s larger trolley amusement parks by a decade, and about which I will talk later in this post.

For a nickel, riders would climb a tower to board the large, bench-like passenger car, and were pushed-off to coast 600-feet, or 183-meters, down the track to another tower, and went about 6 miles/hour or 10 kilometers/hour.

At the top of the other tower, the large passenger car was switched to another track to return back, or “Switchback.”

The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World’s Fair, popularized midways filled with concessions, and first introduced the Ferris Wheel to the world.

The early 20th-century was considered the “Golden Age of the American Amusement Park,” with hundreds of parks in the United States alone at the end-terminals of trolley lines.

The reason for their appearance that is given more often than not was the streetcar companies wanted people to use their systems on weekends when people weren’t commuting to work, so they built these “trolley” amusement parks at the end of their lines to attract customers.

By 1919, there were an estimated 1,500 to 2,000 such parks.

We are told many of these trolley parks disappeared for the given reasons of the Great Depression reducing disposable income and World War II due to disrupting leisure and construction, and that there was also growing competition from movie theaters, radio & television, shopping malls and bowling alleys.

The end result was that either economically the parks couldn’t compete and closed-down, or these parks burned down, allegedly to the inherent fire hazards of the wooden construction, electrical equipment, and combustible materials, like the Forest Park Highlands Amusement Resort that opened in St. Louis on a trolley line in 1896.

On July 19th of 1963, all of the Forest Park Highlands Amusement Resort was destroyed by fire except for the swimming pool and the frame of the roller coaster.

Others were just left to rot in place, like West View Park in Pittsburgh.

Of those estimated 1,500 to 2,000 original trolley parks, today there are about a dozen in the United States that are still in operation as amusement parks, with the trolleys long-gone, and we will see some of these in this post, including my starting point on Lake Ontario at the Seabreeze Amusement Park near Rochester, New York.

The presence of the Seabreeze Amusement Park caught my attention in Irondequoit near Rochester when I was looking on the New York-side of Lake Ontario, where I noticed it is sandwiched between Irondequoit Bay and Lake Ontario on a tiny spit of land.

The Seabreeze Amusement Park is an historic family amusement park in the Irondequoit suburb of Rochester that is the fourth-oldest operating amusement park in the United States, and the thirteenth-oldest in the world, having opened in 1879.

We are told that in the 1870s, the shore of Lake Ontario became a destination for tourists coming from Rochester, and that in 1879, the Rochester and Lake Ontario Railroad built a rail-line from Portland Avenue in Rochester to the Sea Breeze neighborhood at the inlet of Irondequoit Bay as its terminus, and subsequently opened a resort for picnics and other summer activities, which opened on August 5th of 1879.

The Rochester and Suburban Railway took over park operations after the Rochester and Lake Ontario Railroad went bankrupt.

The Rochester and Suburban Railway was a streetcar company, and while there continued to be a lot of ownership mergers and changes over the years, the Sea Breeze streetcar line was closed in 1936, we are told because of the Great Depression.

The Seabreeze Amusement Park is one of the relatively few trolley parks that managed to survive into the present-day, minus the trolleys and probably a lot of other things.

Going west along the south shore of Lake Ontario in New York State, we come to Fantasy Island on Grand Island, which is in an interesting location.

Interstate 190 and State Route 324 provide access to the Niagara Amusement Park and Splash World at Fantasy Island close to the center of Grand Island.

Grand Island is an island town with a population of 21,389 in the 2020 census, and is the third largest island in the State of New York.

It is in the middle of the Niagara River in-between Lakes Ontario and Erie, just above Niagara Falls and several historic power generating stations.

While we are told it is not considered an historic trolley park, it is still operating today as an amusement park over the years since it first opened as “Fantasy Island” in 1961, and has had numerous changes in ownership.

Today it retains its original aspects of being a theme park, and has been expanded over the years with rides and the water park aspects.

It is interesting to note that Love Canal is geographically quite close to Grand Island where this amusement park is located.

Love Canal, a neighborhood of Niagara Falls, New York, became infamous because of an environmental disaster first reported here in 1977 resulting from a highly toxic landfill.

Decades of dumping toxic chemicals harmed residents, from profound health effects to death.

We are told the area was cleaned up as a Superfund project over a 21-year-period.

Today, some parts of Love Canal are considered a neighborhood but that the area is primarily limited to commercial and industrial use.

The next place we come to going west along the south shore of Lake Ontario is Lakeside Park in Ontario, these days Port Dalhousie’s most popular beach.

Lakeside Park was an historic Trolley Park, serving as a major destination for the Niagara, St. Catharines and Thorold electric streetcar, part of the historic Niagara, St. Catharines and Toronto Railway (NS&T), which brought crowds to its amusements, dance halls and beaches from the early 1900s until service ended in 1951.

The Lakeside Park Carousel is the only remaining attraction at Lakeside Park today.

We are told the carousel was moved to Lakeside Park in Port Dalhousie from the Scarborough Beach Park in Toronto in 1921, and then it was moved from its first location in Lakeside Park to its current location between the beach and parking lot in the early 1980s.

Like the Seabreeze Amusement Park in Irondequoit, this historic amusement park location is also on a narrow spit of land, in this case in-between Lake Ontario and the Port Dalhousie Harbor.

The rest of the Lakeside Park Amusement Park was demolished in 1970.

This is the Lakeside Park that was mentioned in the Rush single by the same name from their third album, “Caress of Steel.”

The lyrics were written by band member Neal Peart, who grew up near there.

The Niagara, St. Catharines and Toronto Railroad was an interurban electric railway that operated from the late 1800s until it was dissolved in the 1960s.

It connected communities in the Niagara Region, with significant networks in St. Catharines and Niagara Falls, and between Port Dalhousie and Lakeside Park.

Interurbans were a type of electric railway with self-propelled rail-cars running between cities and towns in North America and Europe.

They were prevalent in North America starting in 1900, and by 1915, interurban railways in the United States were operating along, 15,500-miles, or 24,900-kilometers of track.

It was seen, however, as far more convenient, and cost-efficient to carry cargo by way of truck and other automobiles.

By 1930, most of the interurbans were gone, with a few surviving into the 1950s.

Interurbans functioned as streetcars between cities and were worldwide, and made to go away for the most part a long time ago.

Just a few remain in operation compared to what there once was, like this one on the Isle of Man in the United Kingdom, which is an interurban that connects the island’s capital Douglas with Laxey in the east and Ramsey in the north.

As you can see, the interurban is travelling on a track that is on top of a cliff or bluff that looks like sheared-off land, right next to the water’s edge.

Next, Grimsby Beach in Ontario.

Grimsby Beach is an historic neighborhood.

It was first the location of the Ontario Methodist Camp Meeting ground in 1846, and then in 1910, the land was purchased by a public relations man from Cleveland, Harry Wylie, who built carousels, a movie theater, and a figure-8 roller coaster

We are told the Canada Steamship company bought the park in 1916, but that the park’s popularity decreased because fires kept consuming its wooden buildings.

We are told that by the 1950s, the park’s attractions were all closed, and real estate developers bought the land.

The Hamilton, Grimsby, and Beamsville (HG & B)Electric Railway was said to be the first electric railway in Canada designed for interurban transportation, first starting in 1896.

Passengers could travel the 23-miles, or 37-kilometers, between Beamsville and Hamilton in a little over an hour, with a dozen stops in-between.

Its peak year was 1916, when the HG & B carried over a million passengers.

We are told the last HG & B train pulled into Beamsville in June of 1931 with the increased competition from cars and buses.

Grimsby is located at the eastern end of the Hamilton Census Metropolitan area.

There is a landmark on Google Earth marked “Hamilton: the Electric City,” located just to the west of Rosedale Park and Greenhill Bowl Park and just to the north of the King’s Forest Golf Course in Hamilton.

The landmark and plaque at this location commemorate Hamilton’s significant history with regards to the long-distance transmission of hydroelectric activity in Canada .

Decew Falls Generating Station No. 1 in the St. Catharines-area is the oldest continually-running hydroelectric power-generating station in Canada, said to have been built between 1897 and 1898, the year it started operating.

It was said to have been built by the Cataract Power Company to supply power to the electric street railway in Hamilton, 34-miles or 55-kilometers, to the west of St. Catharines, at high-voltage using three-phase and high-frequency, were unique features of this generating station.

The “Hamilton: the Electric City,” landmark and plaque is located on the Escarpment Rail-Trail, a multi-use trail that was an abandoned Canadian National (CN) Line.

The trail extends from above the Escarpment near Albion Falls to the lower city, following the CN right-of-way along the escarpment to Wentworth Street South, near the bottom of the Wentworth Stairs.

The trail continues through the lower city to Corktown Park, where it ends.

While not associated with an amusement park , Corktown Park is associated with Railway Lands and the Toronto, Hamilton & Buffalo Railway (TH&B) that ran in southern Ontario from 1892 to 1987.

There were three significant historic amusement parks in the Hamilton-area in our historical narrative.

One was Maple Leaf Park in East Hamilton in what today is the Crown Park area, just a couple of blocks to the south of the city’s Bayfront Industrial Area.

The Bayfront Industrial Area is spread across the south-side of Hamilton Harbor and is the city’s largest industrial area.

The “Bayfront” is an almost 4,000-acre, or 1,607-hectare, mixed-industrial area next to some of Hamilton’s oldest neighborhoods.

The Bayfront Industrial Area is home to major steel producers and Canada’s largest Great Lakes Port with marine, rail and road connections.

It is also heavily-polluted, featuring a long-standing legacy of severe industrial contamination and toxic harbor sediments.

Maple Leaf Park opened on May 24th of 1909 as a “Coney Island-style” amusement park, and had a large “Figure 8” roller coaster.

Our historical narrative tells us it failed to attract customers and closed in 1910, after only a year.

The land the park was on was subsequently sold to real estate speculators.

Another historic amusement park here was the Wabasso Amusement Park in the Burlington/Hamilton area, and this amusement park was in operation from around 1918 to the mid-1940s.

It was renamed LaSalle Park in 1926.

Today’s LaSalle Park is a waterfront park that has a marina, walking trails, and an historic pavilion from 1917.

It is located on the north-side of Hamilton Harbor, directly across from the Bayfront Industrial area.

The third place with an historic amusement park here was what was called the Canal Amusement Park, or the “Beach Strip,” near the canal and old lighthouse on Hamilton Beach.

Hamilton Beach is right next to the Bayfront Industrial Area, on the east end of Hamilton Harbor.

We are told that in 1903, Mr. H. Knapman formed the Canadian Amusement Company, and opened the Canal Amusement Park, also known as the Burlington Beach Amusement Park, that operated here from 1903 to 1978, with such attractions over the years as boats, swings and slides, a fun house, carousels, ferris wheels, a roller coaster, and pony rides.

In our historical narrative, on May 24th of 1877, the first “Beach Train” rolled along the strip, the Hamilton and North Western Railway.

Electric Radial Service began on Beach Boulevard in 1905 via the Hamilton Radial Electric Railway, which was said to have been constructed starting in March of 1896, and by January 5th of 1929, all its operations had stopped.

At one time, the Hamilton Radial Electric Railway (HRER) network provided interurban service in the region.

Its parent company was the “Dominion Power and Transmission Company,” which formerly had been the Cataract Power Company of Hamilton, Ltd.

Further up the north shore of Lake Ontario from here, we come to the historic location of the Crowe’s Beach Resort in Humber Bay Park west of Toronto.

Humber Bay Park consists of two spits of land situated around the mouth of Mimico Creek and divided into Humber Bay Park West and Humber Bay Park East.

The spits of land that the park sits on were said to have been constructed using landfill from local construction projects.

Crowe’s Beach resort operated in the area from the 1870s until it was destroyed by fire in 1912.

The Wimbledon House Hotel first opened in the 1860s near the mouth of the Humber River, and the operation was taken over by Catherine Crowe in 1901.

At one time what became known as Crowe’s Beach, besides the hotel, had a pier with a ferry service; bicycle track; dance hall; carousel; and swing rides.

An interurban radial line was operated by the Toronto and Mimico Electric Railway and Light Company beginning in 1892 that was extended from Toronto to Port Credit, passing right through this location at the Humber Bay, and we are told it became an attractive place for businesses and people wanting to leave Toronto in the summer months.

This electric streetcar service ended after buses had completely replaced the radial service by the 1930s.

The next place I want to look into is Toronto, just to the east of here.

The first places of note are in the Toronto Islands.

The Toronto Islands are a chain of 15 small islands off of mainland Toronto right next to the downtown area.

There is still an operating amusement part there today.

It is the Centreville Amusement Park, a children’s amusement park on the Centre Island of the Toronto Islands.

The Centreville Amusement Park has been operated by the Beasley family since 1967.

Open during the summer season, the park’s buildings have a 1900s turn-of-the-century village theme, and rides including a miniature train, carousel, and ferris wheel among others.

What is described as the antique Ferris Wheel there is notable for looking like a windmill.

The Centreville Amusement Park replaced the Sunnyside Amusement Park which closed in 1955, as well as the Hanlan’s Point Amusement Park, which closed in the 1930s.

The Sunnyside Amusement Park operated from 1922 to 1955 on the Lake Ontario Waterfront at the foot of Roncesvalles Avenue, west of downtown Toronto.

It had attractions like a large roller coaster; several carousels, and an enormous bathing pavilion.

Sunnyside Amusement Park was demolished in 1955 to make room for the Metro Toronto Gardiner Expressway.

Hanlan’s Point Amusement Park was located on Hanlan’s Island, and was considered Canada’s answer to Coney Island in New York City.

It operated from the 1880s until the 1930s, and in its heyday, was one of Toronto’s major attractions, with a roller coaster, miniature train, midway, grandstand, a vaudeville theater, and other attractions.

We are told that what was left of the park was demolished in 1937 to make room for the Toronto City Airport.

We are told the construction of the Toronto City Airport, named after Billy Bishop, the Canadian World War I flying ace and World War II Air Marshall, was completed by 1939, which was the beginning of World War II, and that it had originally been conceived of as Toronto’s main airport, but that distinction ended up going to the Toronto Pearson International Airport.

Next I am going to look at the nearby Canadian National Exhibition grounds.

The Canadian National Exhibition is an annual agricultural and provincial fair that takes place every year starting on the 3rd Friday of August and leading up to and including Labor Day, the first Monday in September.

It is Canada’s largest annual community event with approximately 1.6-million visitors each year and one of the top fairs in North America.

We are told it started out as the Toronto Industrial Exhibition in 1879, which promoted agriculture and technology in the Toronto area.

The Princes’ Gates is the name given to a triumphal arch and monumental gateway at Exhibition Place and the eastern gateway of the Canadian National Exhibition.

The triumphal arch is flanked by colonnades on each side, and is altogether 350-feet, or 110-meters, -long.

It was said to have been constructed out of cement and stone between April and August of 1927, only taking four months to complete.

The structure was officially opened by Edward, Prince of Wales, and Prince George on August 30th of 1927, to coincide with the 60th Anniversary of Canadian Confederation.

The Queen’s Wharf Lighthouse is also in the area, said to be originally one of a pair of lighthouses built in 1861 at the Queen’s Wharf.

It is noteworthy that the Queen’s Wharf Lighthouse is contained within the “Fleet Loop,” a small Toronto Transit Commission streetcar loop on Fleet Street.

The “Fleet Loop” is a turning loop encircling the lighthouse used by two Toronto streetcars routes, the 509 Harbourfront and the 511 Bathurst, and connects to the Exhibition Loop.

Now I am going to head in the direction of a Toronto neighborhood known as The Beach, or The Beaches, where there were several historical amusement parks.

It is considered part of the old city of Toronto.

I found that the only pictorially documented amusement park here was the Scarboro Beach Park, which was in operation from 1907 until 1925, when apparently the owner of the park, the Toronto Railway Company, locked the gates to the property.

Eventually the Scarboro Beach Park property was sold to a company which removed the rides and buildings, and replaced the land with housing.

The Victoria Park Amusement Park, said to have been in operation from 1878 to 1906, would have been right about where the “x” is, at the intersection of Queen Street and Victoria Park Avenue, right next to the RC Harris Water Treatment Plant.

This megalithic stone wall runs parallel to Queen Street at the front-boundary of the RC Harris complex…

…with the Neville Street Loop for the Queen Street streetcar line, the eastern terminus of Toronto’s longest streetcar route, just off the northwest corner of the RC Harris complex.

The last place I am going to look at on Lake Ontario is Alexandra Park just to the east of Toronto in Oshawa.

We are told that Alexandra Park was established by local authorities in 1906 in order to provide a secure location for sports and recreation, a fairground and general town park.

The first big event held here in 1906 was the first Oshawa Fair, only a few weeks after the park was acquired.

Both the baseball and lacrosse teams won their first games in the brand new park, and it was expressed that they were the best athletic grounds of any city or town in the province.

Alexandra Park even had a historic speedway here.

It was a 1/2-mile, or almost 1-kilometer, dirt oval that was in operation from 1946 to 1952 for car and motorcycle racing.

The grandstand that was once here burned down in 1959.

The park today still has numerous recreational opportunities for people of all ages to enjoy, including tennis courts, a sports field and four baseball diamonds.

Now I am going to turn my attention to the historic amusement parks of Lake Erie.

The first place I am going to take you to see is the Midway State Park in Maple Springs near Jamestown, New York.

We are told it was established in 1898 by the Jamestown and Lake Erie Railway as a picnic ground.

Midway State Park is recognized as the 15th-oldest continually operating amusement park in the United States and the fifth-oldest remaining trolley park of thirteen still operating in the United States.

These days, park-goers can do things like ride on the vintage carousel; play a game of miniature golf; ride the tilt-a-whirl and go-karts; and there are kiddie rides for the children.

Jamestown had an electrified interurban railway, among several in the area.

The Jamestown, Westfield and Northwestern Railroad operated between 1914 and 1950, and was nicknamed the “Chautauqua Lake Route.”

It was used for passenger service, freight transfer to the Erie and New York Central Railroads, and service for factories in Jamestown.

Passenger service ended in 1947, and the line closed completely in 1950.

Jamestown also had streetcars, with horse-drawn streetcars appearing in 1884.

Electric streetcar service began in 1891, making Jamestown one of the earlier cities to electrify its streetcar system.

The Jamestown Street Railway service officially ended during the month of January in 1938, when the last streetcar routes were discontinued and replaced by buses, with interurban passenger service from Westfield continuing until 1947.

Jamestown was a railroad hub in the 19th and 20th-centuries, served primarily by the Erie Railroad, along with other railroads.

The Erie Railroad’s main-line ran through Jamestown, and connected New York City to Chicago.

The railroad carried passengers, mail and industrial freight, helping Jamestown grow into a regional manufacturing center, in particular furniture manufacturing.

Railroads still exist in the area, but primarily for freight, with the Western New York and Pennsylvania Short-Line Railroad operating freight transport on former Erie Railroad lines, and there is no Amtrak service in Jamestown, though bus links the city to Buffalo’s rail station.

Jamestown’s rail history reflects the broader story of American railroading that we have been seeing of rapid-growth in the 19th-century; peak influence in the early 20th-century, and decline in the years preceding and following World War II, in the 1930s and 1940s, again for given reasons like increased automobile ownership; expansion of bus service; and better roads and highways.

Next going west along the south shore of Lake Erie is Waldemeer Park & Water World in Erie, at the entrance to Presque Isle State Park and located on the Seaway Trail.

It is billed, like Midway State Park on Chautauqua Lake, as one of only thirteen of the original trolley parks still operating as an amusement park in the United States, though what we see today is not what it used to be!

Waldemeer Park was first leased as a trolley park in 1896 by the Erie Electric Motor Company, and is the fourth-oldest amusement park in Pennsylvania, and the tenth-oldest in the United States.

Waldemeer has operated continuously since then under different owners, but the trolleys of the park are long-gone.

There was also an historic trolley park south of Erie, Pennsylvania, at Aliquippa.

One of Pittsburgh’s first amusement parks, it was said to have been established sometime in the 1880s by the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad as a way to bolster ridership, but by 1905 had fallen into disrepair, and the land was purchased by the “Jones and Laughlin Steel Corporation” that year to construct the “Aliquippa Works.”

This newspaper article references Beaver Falls at the beginning about two skeletons of gigantic size that were found while workmen were “digging a ditch from the new shovel works to the river at Aliquippa.”

Beaver Falls and Aliquippa were on the Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad line.

The Pittsburgh & Lake Erie Railroad was said to have been incorporated on April 1st of 1858, with operations starting in March of 1860.

It was an 83-mile, or 134-kilometer, -long railroad between Girard just west of Erie, and points south around the Pittsburgh area.

This is an except from a book on the “History of Erie County.”

It makes reference to the following finds in “Chapter 5:”

“When the link of the Erie & Pittsburgh Railroad from the dock at Erie was in the process of construction, the laborers dug into a great mass of bones at the cross of the public road which runs by the rolling mill. From the promiscuous way in which they were thrown together, it is surmised that a terrible battle must of have taken place in the vicinity on some day so far distant that not even a tradition of the event has been preserved…” and that “…at a later date, when the roadway of the Philadelphia & Erie Road…was being widened, another deposit of bones was dug up and summarily disposed of as before. Among the skeletons was one of a giant….”

I find it interesting to note that giant skeletons were randomly found here.

I don’t think they were killed in a terrible battle.

I think they were buried wherever they happened to be at the time that a cataclysmic event involving the destruction of the original energy grid took place, and it wasn’t all that long ago.

Next, I am heading down to Conneaut Lake, Pennsylvania,where there was an historic trolley park.

The historic Exposition Park was founded there in 1892 by Colonel Frank Mantor, owner of the Conneaut Lake Exposition Company, with a stated purpose of being a permanent fairground and exposition for livestock, machinery, and industrial products.

Ownership of the park transferred to the railroad in 1901, and in 1907 trolley service was said to have been extended to the park.

Then the following year, in 1908, Many of the park’s original buildings were lost in a fire.

We are told that while arson was suspected as a cause of the fire at the time, it was never proven.

An amusement park at Conneaut Lake has existed under various ownership over the years, but as of the 2020s it is no longer a full-scale amusement park, but instead a partial event venue with remnants of the park.

Next I am going to move into the Cleveland, Ohio-area.

First stop, the Euclid Beach Park.

The Euclid Beach Park was located on the southern shore of Lake Erie in Cleveland’s Collinwood neighborhood.

It operated as a trolley amusement park until 1963 when daily streetcar service from Public Square ended, and continued as an amusement park until 1969 when it closed for good.

The Switchback Railway at Euclid Beach Park was another roller coaster attributed to LaMarcus Adna Thompson, who was credited with the previously seen Switchback Railway in the West Brighton section of Coney Island in 1884, which we are told was first successful commercial roller coaster.

The one at Euclid Beach Park was in operation from 1894 to 1904, at which time it was closed and subsequently demolished to make room for other rides.

Remnants of the Euclid Beach Park include the arched main gate, which still stands, and having been declared a Cleveland Landmark, it is protected from demolition.

It was moved in January of 2025 from the roadway to an adjacent lot to be made the centerpiece of a park.

Another remnant is a carousel that was sold at auction after the park closed in 1969 and moved to another park in Maine, but efforts were made to get it back, and it finally returned home to Cleveland in 2014 where it is at the Cleveland History Center in University Circle.

The Beachland Ballroom and Tavern is located near the location of the Euclid Beach Park.

It is a popular music venue and tavern that got its start in 1950 as the “Croatian Liberty Home,” a center for social activities for the local immigrant community, with the original structure including the ballroom and tavern, with more bar facilities added later.

The ballroom floor is a vintage, well-maintained, hardwood floor.

This location got my attention because I have had occasion to research historic dance halls with amazing hardwood floors that have long been demolished and replaced by housing.

Like the Cloudland Dance Hall in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

Cloudland was used as a Ballroom and Dance Hall, and during the 40’s was especially popular in the local scene.

The viewer who told me about it said that the Cloudland hardwood dance floor was naturally-sprung, and when the dancers were pumping, the floor could bounce around nine inches.  

The Cloudland Ballroom and Dance Hall itself was demolished by a developer in November of 1982, and the Cloudland Apartments occupy the former location of this iconic landmark.

The Cleveland, Southwestern and Columbus Railway (CS&C) was the primary interurban line connecting Cleveland to Medina, Wooster, and Columbus.

It was a horse-drawn service from around 1870 to the 1890s, at which time it was electrified, and offered passenger and freight service until it was abandoned in 1931.

The Cleveland, Southwestern and Columbus interurban line serviced popular leisure spots like the Puritas Springs Park.

We are told the Puritas Springs Park was the first amusement park on the west-side of Cleveland, and that it was developed by the Cleveland, Berea, Elyria, & Oberlin Railway after it purchased land in the area and began to bottle and sell water from the local springs.

It was located on a deep ravine overlooking the Rocky River Valley, and had things like a carousel, the largest roller coaster in Cleveland, and daily shows featuring exotic animals.

The park closed in 1958, and the land was turned into a residential development.

Another historic amusement in the Cleveland-area was in Chippewa Lake, a town directly on the Cleveland, Southwestern and Columbus interurban line, just past Medina.

In its hey-day, the interurban transported massive summer crowds – sometimes up to 40,000 passengers – for weekend getaways, dancing and recreation.

It featured roller coasters, a ballroom, games, and concerts.

We are told that the park was in operation from 1878 to 1978, when it closed because of declining attendance.

It was abandoned after it closed for 45-years, with many of the original rides left to deteriorate in place.

The famous grand ballroom and dance hall at Chippewa Park was a premier regional musical destination from both the Big Band Era and early Rock-and-Roll Years.

It operated from 1922 until the park’s closure in 1978, and the structure burned-down in June of 2002.

Another famous interurban line that ran along the south-shore of Lake Erie was the Lake Shore Electric Railway that served the region from 1901 until 1938 and connected Cleveland to Toledo, Detroit and other points west.

Remnants of the interurban line can be found in what’s left of the Lake Shore Electric Railway trestle in the Huntington Beach Reservation just west of Cleveland.

There is also an historical marker at the Rotary Park in Vermilion Ohio commemorating the site where the Lake Shore Electric Railway crossed a bridge over the Vermilion River.

Known at one time as the “Greatest Electric Railway,” the Lake Shore Electric Railway along the southern shore of Lake Erie could reach speeds of 60-mph, or 97-kph.

The next place I would like to take a look at is the Cedar Point Amusement Park in Sandusky, Ohio.

We are told the Lake Shore Electric Railway played a major role in developing Cedar Point as a regional draw in the early 20^th-century, bringing passengers in for the day for the lake, beach, and early amusements.

Sandusky became a hub where rail passengers could transfer via steamboats or ferries to reach the Cedar Point Peninsula.

The Cedar Point Amusement Park was not called a classic trolley park in our narrative, in that it was not said to have been built or owned by a streetcar company, but that it instead evolved as a “trolley-park-style” destination, with the rail and streetcar connections from Sandusky making it easier for people coming for the day to visit, and offered picnic grounds, beaches and dances to encourage repeat visits and transportation use.

Just like we saw on Lake Ontario at the Seabreeze Amusement Park in Irondequoit, New York, and the Lakeside Amusement Park in Port Dalhousie, Ontario, the Cedar Park Amusement Park is on a narrow strip of land called the Cedar Point Peninsula, and is surrounded by water – Sandusky Bay to the west, Lake Erie to the east.

Cedar Point, one of the world’s most famous amusement parks, is particularly known for its large number of roller coaster rides, of which there are 18.

We are told Cedar Point was considered a testing ground for roller coaster technology, with many industry milestones achieved there like height, speeds and inversions that influenced parks around the world.

Cedar Point has been owned and operated by Six Flags since 2024.

First opening in 1870, Cedar Point is said to the second-oldest operating amusement park in the United States after Lake Compounce in Connecticut which first opened in 1846.

Cedar Point was said to have started out as a lakeside resort with a beer garden, dance hall, and bathhouse, but that by the 1890s it shifted to rides and entertainment, with its first roller coaster debuting in 1892, the Switchback Railway.

This Switchback Railway was said to have been built by the American Railway Coaster Company of Chicago.

It operated near the site of the Lakeside Pavilion for 8-years, until it was removed in 1900.

Next, Johnson’s Island.

It is located in Sandusky Harbor near Cedar Point Amusement Park.

Johnson’s Island was known historically for a couple of things, and I want to bring forward it being the location for the “Johnson’s Island Pleasure Resort.”

It was a recreational destination starting in the late 19th-century that operated between 1894 and 1906, shortly after its time as a Confederate Prisoner-of-War destination.

The resort featured pavilion entertainment, baseball park and grandstand, and fishing, but faced competition from Cedar Point and had a problem with fires, and was short-lived.

It eventually became a residential area and remains so to this day.

We are moving into the historic location of the “Great Black Swamp” in this part of Ohio.

The original Black Swamp was a huge 900,000-acre, or 364,200-hectare, wetland that once covered northwest Ohio, and the swampland was drained in the mid-to-late 19th-century.

Only a tiny fraction remains today at the 500-acre, or 202-hectare Black Swamp Preserve in Bowling Green, Ohio, a protected remnant of the historical swampland.

Bowling Green was also the location of another giant skeleton.

This newspaper clipping was from the Newark Advocate in 1902 describing a giant skeleton that was found in Bowling Green in northwestern Ohio that was over 8-feet, or 2.5-meters, -tall.

It is also interesting to note all the historic rail-lines that go through the same area as the Great Black Swamp in Northwest Ohio, circa this 1914 Ohio Public Utilities Commission Railroad map of Ohio, with Bowling Green where the giant skeleton was found circled in red.

The story that accompanies the existence of the railroads is that they were all constructed after the swamp land was drained, and that was what made the construction of the railroads possible.

But I continue to have serious doubts that railroads were constructed by the people who said they built them when they were said to have been built.

My belief falls along the lines that they were already there and being made serviceable once again after the swamp land was drained and/or reclaimed.

This area in western Lake Erie where the Great Black Swamp was historically located was also the location of several historic trolley parks.

The Willow Beach Amusement Park was located where Toledo’s Cullen Park is today.

The Willow Beach Park, which opened in 1929, was a haven for food, games, gambling rides and entertainment at what was known as Point Place.

Setbacks to the park were said to have included the October 1929 stock market crash just months after the park opened in June of 1929…

…and a fire in 1932, and permanent park closure in 1947 due to a death on one of the rides.

This photo was taken by someone in 2006 to show what remains of the original amusement park today.

Located on the western shore of the Maumee River in Toledo, Cullen Park today is a public park known for its boat-launches and is an official stop on the “Lake Erie Birding Trail.”

The park is known for its long and narrow causeway that goes out toward Grassy Island that people hike for a variety of reasons, including bird-watching and sunset-viewing.

The causeway’s trail is described as uneven and muddy, with driftwood, poison ivy and flooding depending on the water-level.

Cullen Park is located in the Point Place neighborhood on the far north-side of Toledo.

Historically, Point Place was a place known for being a resort and amusement destination for Toledo residents during the streetcar and early automobile era from the late 1800s to the mid-1900s.

They would go to places like the Willow Beach Amusement Park; dance halls; and casino-style entertainment venues, like the Lake Erie Park and Casino.

The Lake Erie Park and Casino operated at today’s Bayview Park, and said to have been built in 1895.

It was a major entertainment and trolley destination in Toledo until it burned down in 1910.

Interesting to note that right across the Maumee Shipping Channel, from the highly-exclusive Point Place neighborhood where these places were located, is a heavily industrialized area, with the Harborview Yacht Club located on the east-side of the industrial area.

The industrial area at the entrance to the Maumee River is one of the historically most important shipping and heavy-industry zones on the Great Lakes.

The lower river and harbor area became lined with refineries, grain elevators, steel mills, power plants, and rail and shipping terminals.

There was an interurban line that went through this part of Ohio to Cleveland that was once part of the Lake Shore Electric Railway system.

The Lima-Toledo Railroad would combine with two other Ohio interurbans in 1929– the Cincinnati, Hamilton and Dayton, and the Indiana, Columbus and Eastern.

This merge formed the 323-mile, or 520-kilometer, -long Cincinnati and Lake Erie Railroad, providing service from Toledo to Cincinnati.

Then the Great Depression hit the Cincinnati and Lake Erie Railroad hard, and this would soon bring an early end to operations.

With a collapsing national and local economy throughout the 1930s, things were headed for the worst.

It was seen as far more convenient, and cost-efficient to carry cargo by way of truck and other automobiles and by 1937, the Cincinnati and Lake Erie Railroad was no more.

There is an abandoned interurban bridge crossing the Maumee River in Waterville between Lucas and Wood counties.

It is an historic, concrete, multi-arch bridge, that was said to have been built in 1908.

We are told that at the time of its construction, and for some time thereafter, it was the world’s largest earth-filled, reinforced concrete bridge.

There was another historic amusement park just a short ways up the shore of Lake Erie from Toledo in Ohio, before you get to Monroe in Michigan, called Toledo Beach.

We are told the Toledo Light Rail and Power Company bought the Ottawa Beach Resort in 1907, and created the Toledo Beach Amusement Park, and an electric trolley service brought visitors from Ohio into the park.

The trolley also made stops at Lakeside, Lakewood, Allen’s Cove, and Luna Pier along the way to Toledo Beach, the end, also known as terminal, of the streetcar line.

We are told that the peak of the popularity of the Toledo Beach Park was in the early 1900s, and that attendance slowly declined after the electric interurban trolleys stopped running in 1927.

The Toledo Beach Park had its ups-and-downs over the years, having been shut down during hard economic times, until the amusement park was purchased in 1961 for the land on which the buyer wanted to build a marina.

We are told the former location of the Toledo Beach Amusement park was dredged, and the Safe Harbor Toledo Marina was built and opened in 1962.

This historic trolley park location was also on the lake shore.

The adjacent Allen’s Cove on what appears to be marshy land is an historical landmark and former stop along the electric interurban trolley line in LaSalle, Michigan.

It was described as dredged and transformed alongside the surrounding area and the Safe Harbor Toledo Beach Marina.

The next two places I want to talk about are in the Detroit area on the Detroit River – Riverview Park and Boblo Island.

First, Riverview Park.

Also known as Electric Park and Wolff’s Park, Riverview Park was located on East Jefferson Drive in Detroit, adjacent to the bridge to Belle Isle.

It opened in 1905 and grew into one of the Midwest’s best-known amusement parks with roller coasters, a Ferris wheel, dance halls, and midway attractions.

Originally a trolley park, the Electric Park in Detroit was at the end of three trolley lines, but we are told public transportation shifted to buses by the 1920s as trolleys were already becoming obsolete.

The 1920s saw legal battles not only over the ownership of the park, but also challenging its existence.

In 1927, the city of Detroit condemned many of the park’s structures as a blight, closing the park permanently.

Detroit’s Electric Park was levelled the following year, and became a new public park.

Next, popularly known as “Boblo Island,” Bois Blanc Island in Ontario, located in the Detroit River between the southern end of Grosse Ile in Michigan and the city of Amherstburg on the mainland in Ontario, was the location of a former amusement park.

The island is most famous for the Boblo Island Amusement Park on the southside of the island, which operated from 1898 to 1993

Visitors to the park would come via excursion steamships like the SS Columbia and the SS Ste. Claire from the Boblo docks in Detroit.

The SS Columbia was said to have been built in 1902 and the SS Ste. Claire in 1910.

They were said to have been designed by naval architect Francis E. Kirby.

Each ship spanned 208-feet, or 63-meters, in length, and 45-feet, or 14-meters, in width, and had a carrying capacity of 2,500 to 3,000 passengers.

The boats featured dance floors, concession stands, and polished woodwork.

We are told that regular steamship service ended when the park closed in 1991 due to rising costs and declining attendance, and were designated as National Historic Landmarks in 1992.

The SS Ste. Claire suffered damage in a severe fire during restoration efforts in Detroit, and the SS Columbia was moved first to New York, and later Ohio.

We are told that in the early years of the Boblo Island Amusement Park, Henry Ford financed a dance hall that was rumored to have been designed and built by the famous Detroit architect Albert Kahn, but then was determined to have been built by John Scott, another Detroit architect.

We are told the dance hall was the second-largest in the world, holding 5,000 dancers at full capacity.

To me, the Boblo Dance Hall has that airship hangar look to it.

The amusement park was left largely abandoned after its final closure in September of 1993, though parts of the property have since been redeveloped into a private upscale residential and waterfront community.

The park’s rides were sold off in 1994, leaving empty grounds, overgrown paths, and decaying historic structures like its famous dance pavilion.

Boblo Island is just a short-distance downriver from both Fighting Island and Hennepin Point.

Fighting Island is the largest Canadian Island in the Detroit River. and part of the town of LaSalle, Ontario.

In 1918, Fighting Island was purchased by John Ford of the Michigan Alkali Company, and was used as a location to deposit waste from their industrial plants, which produced soda ash, lye, and baking soda, and nearly 20,000,000-yards-squared, or 15,000,000-meters-squared, was dumped on the island in its industrial history, which ended in 1982.

The Michigan Alkali Company became the Wyandotte Chemicals Corporation, which was subsequently bought by BASF, a German Multinational company and the largest chemical producer in the world, who currently owns the island and we are told successfully removed the waste for proper disposal and rebuilt the natural habitat of the island.

BASF now manages Fighting Island as an ecological restoration and wildlife habitat area.

BASF operates a major chemical manufacturing facility across from Fighting Island in Wyandotte, Michigan.

It generates $1.9-billion in annual economic impact, and employs a significant portion of the region’s workforce.

Hennepin Point at the northern end of Grosse Ile was named after the 17th-century French explorer, Father Louis Hennepin, who was said to have travelled through the Great Lakes Region with the French explorer LaSalle in 1679 and that they explored the Detroit River region.

Father Hennepin is probably best-known for being credited with having been the first European to see the Niagara Falls.

Father Hennepin was a contemporary of the French Jesuit Father Jacques Marquette, who explored all over Lake Superior, Lake Michigan and Green Bay in our historical narrative.

Father Hennepin was said to have left written journals describing the wild animals and abundant fruit orchards of Grosse Ile.

Hennepin Point today is described as an uninhabited, 225-acre, or 91-hectare, section at the northern tip of Grosse Ile.

It is known for a mix of historic maritime landmarks, wetlands, and long-standing environmental contamination concerns, including, but not limited to, toxic mercury waste.

It is separated from the rest of Grosse Ile’s main island by a narrow canal.

The next place I want to mention here is Oxley Beach.

The Oxley Bluffs at Oxley Beach are described as a scenic stretch of elevated shoreline along the north shore of Lake Erie in the Hamlet of Oxley near Harrow in Ontario’s Essex County.

The bluffs rise 30 to 65-feet, or 10- to 20-meters above Lake Erie.

Oxley was a popular summer resort around the turn of the 20th-century, with many visitors arriving by rail from Detroit to Harrow, and would travel to the bluff overlooking Lake Erie to stay at places like the Ravine Hotel.

The rail-line that came through Harrow was originally the Lake Erie and Detroit River Railway.

It was said to have been founded by Whiskey-Baron Hiram Walker in 1885 to connect Walkerville in Windsor and southern Essex County.

Hiram Walker was a 19th-century American entrepreneur that established a whiskey-distillery that produced the top export whiskey Canadian Club in Windsor in 1890, in what was called a model community specifically for the distillery that became known as “Walkerville.”

There was also the interurban known the Windsor, Essex and Lake Shore Rapid Railway was an historic 37-mile, or 60-kilometer, electric radial railway in southern Ontario, connecting cities in this region from Windsor to Leamington from 1907 to 1932, and was dismantled completely in 1935.

Seacliff Park in Leamington was created in 1907 and was one of southwestern Ontario’s popular summer destinations.

Visitors came to enjoy a boathouse and a bathhouse; a baseball diamond; a boardwalk connecting the waterfront and dock to the park; a large pavilion for dances, picnics, and community events; and a pavilion for concerts and performances.

The pavilion was one of the park’s best-known landmarks and was said to have been built in 1914, which would have been the first year of World War I.

It hosted dances, celebrations and gatherings for years before being demolished in the 1950s.

Today, Seacliff Beach is one of Essex County’s most popular public beaches, with recreational amenities and connections to Lake Erie’s Canadian Pelee Island.

Port Dover is the next place I am going to talk about.

These days Port Dover is an unincorporated community and former town.

It lost its independent town status when it was incorporated into the new city of Nanticoke in 1974.

For much of the 19th-century, however, Port Dover was an important commercial harbor for things like grain, lumber, coal, fish and passengers.

Important railways operated here like the Hamilton and Lake Erie Railway…

…and the Port Dover and Lake Huron Railway, one of the most important regional railways in southwestern Ontario during the late-19th-century.

It allowed Port Dover to develop into a busy shipping port and connected the agricultural Norfolk and Oxford counties to larger rail networks, and became the backbone of a rail-system that reached Lake Huron.

The South Norfolk Railway started operating in the county in 1889, an historic branch line that connected indirectly to the primary lake port network centered around Port Dover via the Port Dover and Lake Huron Railway.

The interurban that served Port Dover was the Lake Erie & Northern Railway (LE & N), and operated for passenger service between 1916 and 1955, with freight service continuing until 1961.

The route of the LE & N was Galt (now part of Cambridge) – Brantford – Simcoe – Port Dover.

It used 1,500-volt DC overhead, which was unusually high-voltage for a North American interurban, and it became famous as the “Dover Beach” train carrying thousands of vacationers to Lake Erie’s beaches in the summer months.

We are told that in 1921 alone, it carried over 600,000 passengers.

The Port Dover Beach had a seasonal waterfront midway area; a ferris wheel; bumper cars and skee-ball, and was anchored by the “Summer Garden,” a dance hall that operated between 1921 and 1979, hosting big bands and later musical events.

The last place I want to bring to your attention is the location of the former Crystal Beach Amusement Park on the north shore of Lake Erie, near Fort Erie, Ontario, and Buffalo, New York.

This was the location of the historic Crystal Beach Amusement Park.

It first opened in 1888 and was in operation until 1989.

In 1896, the Ontario Southern Railway began to provide a connection for a short-time between the park and the Grand Trunk Railway mainline rail station in Ridgeway.

The Ontario Southern Railway was described as a unique, 1.5-mile, or 2.5-kilometer, battery-powered and electric monorail and trolley line often described as an early interurban.

We are told overhead trolley wires were added in 1898, but that the line was dismantled the same year when the season ended because of “shifting wooden infrastructure, heavy maintenance, and low-ridership.”

Ferry service had connected the park with nearby Buffalo starting in 1890s, and ferries like the SS Canadiana operated between Buffalo and Crystal Beach Park from 1910 to 1956.

The park was known for its innovative roller coasters, most notably the “Backety-Back Scenic Railway,” which was in operation from 1909 to 1926…

…the “Cyclone,” pictured here next to the “Crystal Ball Room,” and the “Cyclone” was in operation from 1927 to 1946…

…and the “Comet,” which was in operation at Crystal Beach from 1948 to 1989 when the amusement park closed.

It was subsequently relocated to “The Great Escape Fun Park” in Queensbury, New York, in 1994 and is still in operation today.

The Crystal Ball Room at Crystal Beach first opened in the spring of 1925 as the largest unobstructed dance hall in North America, which could hold up to 3,000 dancers on its gleaming wooden floor.

We are told it was built by George C. Hall Sr, and featured a unique cantilevered design with no interior support posts or beams.

It was a popular venue during the Big Band era.

Its fate was ultimately demolition after the Crystal Beach Amusement closed in 1989.

Now I am going to turn my attention to the historic amusement parks of the Hudson River Valley in New York State.

Between Fort Ingoldsby near Saratoga Springs and a cluster of three historic star forts at West Point, New York, there were four historic trolley parks – Kinderhook Lake Electric Park in Niverville; Kingston Point Amusement Park in Kingston; Woodcliff Pleasure Park in Poughkeepsie; and the Orange Lake Amusement Park in Newburgh.

First, Niverville.

Niverville is 68-miles, or 109-kilometers, south of Fort Ingoldsby on the Hudson River, where Electric Park was located on Kinderhook Lake.

The Electric Park there was described as the largest amusement park on the east coast between Manhattan and Montreal during its 16-year run from 1901 to 1917.

We are told this Electric Park was created by the Albany & Hudson Railroad Company in order to increase ridership on weekends.

The reasons given for the closure of the Electric Park of Niverville in 1917 was that the popularity of automobiles no longer restricted people to rails and river steamer transportation; World War I; and high insurance premiums due to the number of trolley parks that had burned down.

Next we come to Kingston, New York, where the historic Kingston Point Park was located, 106-miles, or 171-kilometers, south of Fort Ingoldsby.

Kingston Point Park was said to have been built by Samuel Coykendall, the wealthy owner of the Cornell Steamboat Company and Ulster and Delaware Railroad.

The stated purpose of the park was to serve as a steamboat landing for the Hudson River Day Line, and a place where trains and trolleys would take passengers into Kingston and the Catskill Mountains.

Kingston Point Park opened in 1896, and had a Ferris Wheel, Merry-go-Round, bandstand and boat rentals.

A fire in the 1920s destroyed most of the buildings.

All that remains today at the Kingston Point Rotary Park is a park-setting, beach, and trolley tracks.

We come to Poughkeepsie next, 121-miles, or 194-kilometers, south of Fort Ingoldsby, where the Woodcliff Pleasure Park operated from 1927 to 1941.

It was the home of the Blue Streak roller coaster, the highest and fastest roller coaster anywhere during its time, and one of the largest swimming pools in the country.

The Woodcliff Pleasure Park was said to fall on difficult times, and permanently closed in 1941.

The next historic trolley park we would have come to was the Orange Lake Amusement Park that was located 6-miles, or 10-kilometers, west of Newburgh, New York.

It was a place where people could enjoy fishing, boating, swimming and a pleasant walk.

The advent of the trolley line in 1886 was said to have increased the popularity of the park, leading it to become one of the most popular parks in the northeast.

We are told the president of the Central Hudson Steamship Company, former New York Governor Benjamin Barker O’Dell, Jr, and Board member of the Trolley Company, developed Orange Lake Park into a showcase, and added a roller skating rink, snack bars, a midway with games of chance, a Ferris Wheel and other rides, a beach for swimming, and boat rentals.

During the Great Depression, the Orange Lake Park was forced to close for a number of years.

It was eventually dismantled in 1941, and turned into a residential community with nothing of the amusement park remaining.

Fort Clinton at Stony Point is adjacent to Bear Mountain State Park.

Along with the variety of recreational opportunities to be found at Bear Mountain State Park, including biking, hiking boating, picnic facilities, swimming, and winter activities like cross-country skiing and ice skating, other places of interest in the park include the Perkins Memorial Tower, said to have been built in 1934; Trailside Museum & Zoo; the Bear Mountain Inn; a merry-go-round; pool and skating rink.

With regards to the history of the park, this is what we are told.

In January of 1909, the State of New York purchased a 740-acre tract of land at Bear Mountain, with plans to build Sing-Sing Prison there, but conservationists stopped the prison from being built.

Later that year, the newly-widowed Mary Averell Harriman, wife of Union Pacific Railroad President and American Financier Edward Henry Harriman who died in September of 1909, offered the state another 10,000 acres – and $1,000,000 – towards the creation of a state park.

American Progressive politician and businessman George W. Perkins, a partner in the J. P. Morgan Company and President of the Palisades Interstate Commission since 1900, with whom Mary Harriman had been working, managed to raise another $1.5-million from a dozen wealthy contributors, including John D. Rockefeller and J. P. Morgan.

The state matched the contributions with a $2.5-million appropriation, and Bear Mountain-Harriman State Park came into being in 1910.

Right away, a steamboat dock was built excursion for excursions to the Bear Mountain State Park and the West Shore Railroad Station was built near the dock.

What was called a replica of Henry Hudson’s ship the “Half Moon” was said to have been built in 1912 and moored at the dock of the Bear Mountain State Park on the Hudson River.

Henry Hudson was credited in our historical narrative as being an English navigator and explorer during the early 17th-century, best known for his explorations of parts of the northeastern United States and Canada, and that

his ship, the Half Moon, travelled down the coast, from LaHave in Nova Scotia; to Cape Cod; to the Chesapeake Bay; to Delaware Bay; and the New York Bay and Hudson River which bears his name.

Shortly after leaving Fort Clinton at Stony Point on the Hudson River, we come to Buchanan, New York, the historic location of Indian Point Amusement Park.

Indian Point Amusement Park was said to have been created in 1923 on a former farm by the Hudson Day Line, the premier steamboat line on the Hudson River from the 1860s through the 1940s, as a recreational park for its passengers as a rival for the popular park at Bear Mountain.

The Indian Point Park had a cafeteria, picnic facilities, baseball diamonds, rides and games, dance hall, beer hall, miniature golf, swimming pool and speedboat rides.

The property backed up to the Croton and Mt. Kisco Reservoirs that provided water to New York City.

From 1923 to 1948, the Hudson Day Line operated Indian Point Park, at which time the park was closed.

It reopened in 1950 under new management and operated for a few more years until it closed in the mid-1950s and the property was purchased by Consolidated Edison Gas and Electric Company for the Nuclear Power Plant which opened in 1962…

…and which was in operation until April 30th of 2021 when Indian Point Energy Center was permanently closed.

Before its closure, the two reactors there provided an estimated 25% of New York City’s electrical power usage.

The Rockefeller Estate Kykuit is located roughly in-between Indian Point and Fort George in Upper Manhattan’s Washington Heights.

Situated on the highest point in neighboring Pocantino Hills, the Rockefeller Estate was said to have been completed in 1913 in the Neo-Georgian Classical Revival architectural-style.

The 40-room mansion was said to have been conceived by John D. Rockefeller Jr. and built for oil tycoon John D. Rockefeller Sr. and was the home of four-generations of Rockefellers.

It has been open to the public for guided tours since 1994.

It has two basement-levels with interconnecting passageways and service tunnel, which include galleries housing their art collection of Picassos, Warhols, Chagalls and other modern masterpieces.

John D. Rockefeller Sr., along with Henry Flagler, an American Industrialist and major developer in the state of Florida, founded the Standard Oil Company in 1870, an American oil producing, transporting, refining, and marketing company.

This was roughly a decade after the birth of the American Oil Industry in Titusville, Pennsylvania, in 1859.

John D. Rockefeller Sr. was born in the United States in 1839, and was the progenitor of the wealthy Rockefeller family.

He was considered to be the wealthiest American of all time, as seen in this #1 ranking by CNN Business.

Rockefeller’s wealth soared as kerosene and gasoline grew in importance.

At his peak, he controlled 90% of all oil.

It would seem that as quickly as possible, a way was found by the Earth’s new Controllers to replace what remained of the original free-energy grid system, which I believe included lighthouses, railroads and bridges, with their own coal- and oil-based system, and in the process make money hand over fist from the total control of the new system.

Next I am going to take a look at Fort George in the neighborhood of Upper Manhattan called “Washington Heights.”

Fort George was said to have been built in 1776 on Fort George Hill near the intersection of Audubon Avenue and 192nd Street.

The historic Fort George Trolley Park operated here from 1895 to 1914.

Fort George was located at the end of the Third Avenue Trolley Line, and was said to have been developed as a Trolley Park starting in 1894 in order to give people a reason to use their trolley services at the end of their lines on the weekends and draw the residents of Manhattan to the riverside neighborhood for summer recreation.

The park’s attractions included things like rides, saloons, casinos, the Harlem River Speedway, and vaudeville shows.

While the park prospered for years, but we are told that local residents began to petition for its closure in 1910 as benefits to the local economy faded, and the neighborhood suffered from social problems stemming from the park, like public drunkenness and high crime.

There was a suspicious fire on the property in 1911, but repairs were made and the park reopened.

Then in 1913, another suspicious fire that devastated the park, and after this one, the property was condemned and the land of the former trolley park was incorporated into Highbridge Park.

Palisades Amusement Park was across the Hudson River in Cliffside, New Jersey, adjacent to Fort Lee.

This trolley park was in operation from 1898 until its closure in 1971.

We are told that in 1898, the Bergen County Traction Company trolley operator originally conceived of the Park to attract evening and weekend riders for its service.

Over the years, and under different owners at different times, from the trolley park-era to the coming of cars and buses, the Palisades Amusement Park was one of the most visited in the country.

The pool at Palisades Park was said to have been 1912, and was the largest outdoor saltwater pool in the country.

The Cyclone roller coasters were a highlight for visitors.

The first Cyclone was in operation from 1927-1934, and we are told it was built near the edge of the park’s rocky cliffs due to limited space and uneven terrain.

It has been called the scariest roller coaster ever built, and was known for being excessively rough with tight spiral turns and rapid undulations.

It was removed following maintenance troubles and track damage from a 1934 fire in the park.

The second Cyclone roller coaster was in operation from 1945 to 1971.

We are told it was built from the surviving structure of the earlier Skyrocket roller coaster after a major fire in 1944.

The Cyclone coaster itself was demolished in 1972 after the parked closed in 1971,and its cars were sold and moved to Williams Grove Amusement Park in Pennsylvania.

The Palisade Line was the electric streetcar line that travelled from the Edgewater Ferry Plaza on the Hudson River waterfront up the cliffs to the Palisades Amusement Park.

It originated at the transportation terminal in Hoboken, New Jersey, and provided elevated trolley service from 1886 until 1949.

One of the New York area’s major transportation hubs, the terminal at Hoboken in New Jersey was said to have been constructed by the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad in 1907, and combined railroad, ferry, subway, streetcar and pedestrian services.

We are told that numerous electric streetcar lines originated and ended at the station until the completion of “Bustitution” in August of 1949, at which time they were replaced by buses.

We are told that three main factors contributed to the park’s closure in 1971 – inadequate parking facilities; growing uncertainty about the park’s future; and an increase in the number of visitors who were injured or killed.

The land subsequently was sold to real estate developers.

While four high-rise luxury apartments now stand where the amusement park was located, it is interesting to note there are still old stone ruins on the former park’s grounds.

The 1962 hit song “Palisades Park” was written by Chuck Barris and recorded by Freddy Cannon.

In the song, the singer takes a walk after dark, where he discovers Palisades Park, where he meets and falls in love with a girl.

Among the rides and attractions named in the song are: Shoot the Chute; Rocket Ship; Roller Coaster; Loop the Loop; Merry-Go-Round; Tunnel of Love; and the Ferris Wheel.

The next places I want to talk about were the three historic trolley parks on Coney Island in Brooklyn.

While they were not directly on the Hudson River, they are several miles to the southeast of where the Hudson River empties into the Upper New York Bay.

This is what we are told about Steeplechase Park, Luna Park and Dreamland.

Steeplechase Park was created by entrepreneur George Tilyou in 1897.

He bought and improved the Steeplechase Horses attraction, which featured mechanical horses pulled along metal tracks.

The owner George Tilyou adopted a “Funny Face” mascot depicting a smiling man with several dozen teeth, nicknamed “the Tilly,” as the icon for his park.

The entrance to Steeplechase Park had a grand archway and the park included over 50 attractions on its midway alone.

Tilyou was said to have been inspired to build a Ferris Wheel after having seen the one at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair on his honeymoon.

In Steeplechase Park’s history between its opening in 1897 and closing in 1964, there were things like fires, rebuilding, rides added, and so on.

The land of the former amusement park today is Maimonades Park, the location of a minor league baseball stadium…

…and the only remaining structure from Steeplechase Park is the defunct Parachute Jump.

Luna Park at Coney Island opened in 1903.

It was said to have replaced Sea Lion Park that was operated by a man named Paul Boyton between 1895 and 1902, the first enclosed and permanent amusement park in North America.

He was credited with being the first person to pay an admission fee to a large enclosed area containing multiple amusement rides and activities.

The so-named Captain Paul Boyton was a world-famous back in the day aquatic daredevil and showman who travelled the world’s rivers in an inflatable rubber suit.

The Flip Flap Railroad mentioned at the bottom of this image of Sea Lion Park…

…was said to be the first looping roller coaster.

Paul Boyton’s remaining long-term lease on the park was bought ou starting on October 1st of 1902 by Frederic Thompson and Elmer “Skip” Dundy.

Thompson and Dundy were invited to the Steeplechase Park by George Tilyou for the 1902 Season.

They were known for their ride called “A Trip to the Moon” that was at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition that was held in Buffalo, New York.

The name of the fanciful airship that was the main part of the “A Trip to the Moon” ride was “Luna,” the Latin word for “moon’ for which, we are told, Luna Park in Coney Island was built around.

Interesting to note that there were, and still are, amusement parks named Luna Park all over the world, including Shiraz, Iran, and Ankara, Turkey.

We are told the architectural-style of Luna Park in Coney Island was an oriental theme, with over 1,000 red and white painted spires, minarets, and domes on buildings constructed on a grand scale.

All the domes, spires, and towers were lit-up at night with hundreds of thousands of incandescent lights.

In the middle of the lake at the center of the park was a 200-foot, or 61-meter, tall Electric Tower that was decorated with 20,000 incandescent lamps, said to be a smaller version of the Electric Tower featured in the 1901 Pan American Exposition in Buffalo.

Luna Park was accessible from Culver Depot, the terminals of the West End and Sea Beach Streetcar and Railroad lines.

Besides a multitude of rides, attractions at Luna Park included infant incubators, described as a new type of infant care where infant incubators containing premature babies were displayed in shows called “Infantoriums.

They were touted as “neonatal healthcare,” helping newborn babies with compromised immune systems by providing a sanitary environment to reduce the possibility of getting an infection.

Infant incubators for premature babies became widely available at fairs and amusement parks across America, rather than hospitals, which we are told, had nothing to help them.

What we are told is that many parents of premature, at-risk babies pretty much had to bring their infants to a side-show infantorium at an amusement park or fair, and that these infant shows were the main source of healthcare for premature babies for over forty years. 

Over the years, Luna Park would continue under different management, with constant changes.

The end of Luna Park came with two fires in 1944, one in August and one in October, which destroyed the park, and in 1946, the whole park was demolished.

There has been a Luna Park operating near the original location since 2010 that has no connection to the 1903 park.

Dreamland was the third and last of the three original parks said to have been built on Coney Island in the early 20th-century.

Dreamland was said to have been founded by successful Brooklyn real estate developer and former State Senator William H. Reynolds as a refined and elegant competitor to the chaotic noise of Luna Park, and opened in May of 1904.

The location of Dreamland was near the West Eighth Street subway station opposite Culver Depot.

Everything at Dreamland was touted to be bigger than Luna Park, including the larger Electric Tower, and four times as many incandescent lights than Luna Park.

Besides having high-class entertainment, morality plays, and rides, Dreamland had human zoos featuring dwarf inhabitants in what was called “Midget City…”

…a Somali Village…

…and a Filipino Village.

Like Luna Park, Dreamland also had an infant incubator sideshow attraction.

Dreamland’s life on Coney Island was ended only 7-years after opening.

On May 27th of 1911, a fire started at the Hell Gate attraction the night before the season’s opening day, and spread quickly, completely destroying the park by morning.

Coney Island was also one of the places that had a permanent exhibit about the Johnstown Flood, which was located across from Steeplechase Park.

It was originally at the 1901 Pan-American Exposition in Buffalo, and we are told was moved to Coney Island by the owners after that came to an end.

The show was a cyclorama, which involved a series of different scenes being reenacted, each with a different large, panoramic backdrop painting to make the audience feel immersed in the scene, and actually used large amounts of water and steam to reenact the flood.

Here’s the back-story of the Johnstown Flood, the details of which are easily available to find on-line AND leads me to the conclusion that the 1889 Johnstown Flood was deliberately caused.

The famous Johnstown Flood on May 31st of 1889, the worst flood in the United States in the 19th-century, was caused by the catastrophic failure of the South Fork Dam, and was the second major disaster the American Red Cross responded to, after the Michigan Thumb Fire, which started on September 5th of 1881, with hurricane-force winds and hot and dry conditions this was less than four months after the establishment of the American Red Cross in May of 1881.

John D. Rockefeller was amongst several that donated to create a national headquarters for the American Red Cross near the White House in Washington, DC, said to have been built between 1915 and 1917.

In 1881, speculators had bought the abandoned South Fork dam and reservoir and built a clubhouse called the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club and cottages, turning it into an exclusive retreat for 61 steel and coal financiers from Pittsburgh, including Andrew Carnegie, Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Mellon, Philander Knox, John Leishman, and Daniel Johnson Morrell.

The South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club was a Pennsylvania Corporation and owned the South Fork Dam.

Henry Clay Frick was a founding member of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, and was actually said to have been largely responsible for the alterations to the South Fork Dam that led to its failure.

What we are told is that the South Fork Dam failed after days of unusually heavy rain, and 14.3-million-tons of water from the reservoir of Lake Conemaugh devastated the South Fork Valley, including Johnstown 12-miles, or 19-kilometers, downstream from the dam, killing an estimated 2,209 people and causing $17-million in damages in 1889, which would be $490-million in 2020.

Though there were years of claims and litigation, the elite and wealthy members of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club were never found liable for damages.

In 1904, the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club corporation was disbanded and assets sold at a public auction by the sheriff, and there were permanent exhibits in many places, like Atlantic City in addition to Coney Island, depicting the horrors of the Johnstown Flood experience for public consumption, billed as a “Thrilling Account of the awful floods and their appalling ruin.”

I believe the things I’ve shared here like the World Exhibitions & Expositions as well as the permanent expositions, like those in Coney Island with the Human Zoos and the Johnstown Flood Cyclorama, and the example of the replica of Hudson’s “Half-Moon” moored at Bear Mountain State Park, were all part of how the new narrative was shaped and seeded into the collective consciousness.

There are two definitions of the word exposition.

One is a device used to give background information to the audience about the setting and characters of the story.

Exposition is used in television programs, movies, literature, plays and even music.

What better way to tell your audience the story you want them to believe than the other definition of exposition, a large exhibition of art or trade goods.

Besides his significant presence on the Hudson River in New York, John D. Rockefeller also had a significant presence on Lake Erie in Cleveland, Ohio.

Cleveland was where John D. Rockefeller founded Standard Oil in 1870, which transformed the city into a major oil refining hub.

Cleveland became one of America’s key manufacturing centers in the late 18th- and early 19th-centuries.

Where it was located on Lake Erie made it perfect for shipping raw materials like iron ore and coal, and oil-refining and steel- and machinery-manufacturing boomed here.

The Rockefeller Mansion in Cleveland was located at Euclid Avenue and East 40th Street, that he was said to have purchased in 1868 and where his children were born.

This mansion on Euclid Avenue was demolished in 1938, and where it was located is now part of an inter-belt highway.

The years between 1873-1930s were known as Cleveland’s Gilded Age, when nearly half of the world’s millionaires lived in Cleveland. 

Euclid Avenue was known as Millionaire’s Row, and it was home to some of the nation’s most powerful industrialist’s, including John D. Rockefeller and Samuel Mather, a co-founder of Pickands Mather and Company, the shipping and iron mining company.

The Rockefeller Obelisk is also in the Lake View Cemetery, which is on Euclid Avenue.

It is almost 70-feet, or 21-meters, -high obelisk and marks the final resting place of John D. Rockefeller, along with his wife and mother.

Rockefeller Park is the largest park within city limits and was first opened to the public in 1897, and named in honor of Standard Oil magnate John D. Rockefeller, who donated land for the park.

The Rockefeller Building was said to have been built between 1903 and 1905 at the corner of West 6th and Superior Avenue, and displays the Rockefeller name on the side of the building since it was built.

As we have already seen, John D. Rockefeller’s companies were instrumental in turning Cleveland into an industrial powerhouse.

The location in Cleveland where John D. Rockefeller established Standard Oil in 1870 is a heavily industrialized district along the banks of the Cuyahoga River south of downtown Cleveland called “Industrial Valley.”

It is a hub for heavy industry, which includes, besides the Cleveland Cliffs steel manufacturer, chemical manufacturers, petroleum terminals, and scrap metal recycling centers.

The intense industrial use of the Cuyahoga River caused extreme pollution, and the river caught fire thirteen times in our history between 1868 and 1969.

The 1969 fire on the Cuyahoga River led to the creation of the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972 which mandated industrial pollution control and provided investments for modernizing sewage infrastructure.

In today’s world, the Cuyahoga River has shifted to a center for recreation and tourism, though it is still a working waterway for large freighters to transport raw materials to the factories that remain.

In summary, I believe that the circuit board of the Earth’s original free-energy grid system was destroyed in a deliberately-caused cataclysm relatively recently, and that these historic trolley parks were once part of that energy grid.

This cataclysm caused the entire surface of the Earth to undulate and buckle around key infrastructure of the energy grid, creating what we see on the surface of the Earth today – the swamps, marshes, bogs, deserts, dunes, and places where it appears land masses sheared-off and submerged under the bodies of water we see today.

Those behind the destruction of the Old World were shovel-ready to dig enough of the original infrastructure out of the ruined Earth so they could be used and civilization restarted, which I think started in earnest in the mid-to-late 1700s and early 1800s, and that the Crystal Palace Exhibition in London in 1851 was the official kick-off to the New World Order timeline.

They only used the pre-existing infrastructure until they developed replacement fuel sources that were extracted from the original grid to bring everything back on-line as quickly as possible.

These replacement fuel sources, and the new cars and buses that replaced the city streetcars and electric interurban systems, could be monetized and controlled by them and they became incredibly wealthy.

Then, when what remained of the original infrastructure was no longer useful to them, or inconvenient to their agenda, they had it destroyed, discontinued, or abandoned, typically in a very short time after it was said to have been constructed.

The historic trolley amusement parks and expositions played a role in seeding the new narrative in the collective consciousness for a relatively-short period of time before they were no longer used, and other forms of shaping the narrative took over the job – like movies, radio, and television.

Shapers of the New Narrative – Part 3 Early Radio and Television

All of this led has to the industrialized world we live in today that is the only thing we know about, and part of a system in which our energy is extracted and manipulated, giving us the illusion of freedom while feeding the artificial and industrial systems that are all around us without us even being aware of it.