After four years of research and five months of intensive work interviewing fans and having lots of "scanning parties," my book about Rock Springs Park is only days away from being sent to the publisher. The book is expected to hit the stores next spring coinciding with the 40th Anniversary of the park's final season -1970.Here's the information as it will appear on the back cover of Images of America: Rock Springs Park:
Once described as “a place where god and man went fifty-fifty to produce perfection,” Rock Springs Park was an amusement park located along the Lincoln Highway in Chester, West Virginia. In its hey-day this unique panhandle playground attracted twenty thousand visitors a day with a number of popular attractions including the World’s Greatest Scenic Railway, the Cyclone Roller Coaster, and the classic hand-carved 1927 Dentzel Carousel. The book features over 200 rarely seen images and portrays the life of Rock Springs Park from its earliest history as a Native American hunting ground to its development as a local trolley park and full-fledged amusement park. Rock Springs Park hosted business and community picnic excursions, free-acts, and celebrity performers, such as Bobby Vinton who remembers the dances as “a very romantic time…almost like something in the movies. There was the carousel, the guys in white shoes and girls that were all dressed up with their crinoline skirts.”
Joseph A. Comm is an elementary gifted support teacher with an interest in local history. He studied theater arts and education at the University of Pittsburgh and graduated with BA and MAT degrees. He grew up in Chester at a time when the sun-bleached skeleton of the Cyclone bordered his school’s ball field and remembers well the many tales of Rock Springs Park.
A recent article in the East Liverpool Review can be seen at this website.
