The Only Difference Between the 1st and 2nd Printing

If you ever wondered if your copy of Images of America: Rock Springs Park is a first print edition, there is one quick way to find out. Although there is no discernable difference between first or later printings of Arcadia books, you can tell if your copy of my book is a first print edition by turning to page 10 and looking for a typo which occurred after the book was out of my hands and at the printers. In an effort to eliminate using the phrase “clearly illustrates” too often, I reworded a few of them at the last minute. By changing “illustrates” to displays on the top caption on page 10, the word displays was incorrectly written as “dislays.”

In the second printing, as you can see in the illustration below, this mistake has been corrected.
Unfortunately some other corrections I suggest for the second printing were not made, so I have listed those below for any readers or historians who may be interested. Most of these were just my attempts to fine tune word usage, but some were errors made in the first print run, like the 18,000-square foot dance floor reading “1,800” on page 51. A few of my suggested corrections (below) were made after I discovered some of my primary source information did not mesh with recently discovered newspaper articles from the time the park operated to its closing.

Feel free to make corrections for yourselves.

I’m guessing the typo that made me heartsick over a year ago will make the first edition copy all the more valuable one day. My wife also teases that an unsigned copy will be worth more, as well, because I have signed nearly every first edition copy out there!

Corrections for Second Printing of Images of America: Rock Springs Park

P10 (top) dislays (change to) displays

P13 (first paragraph) less than a dozen homes (change to) fewer than a dozen homes

P16 (bottom) dining pavilion (change to) loading station

P21 (3rd paragraph) constructed in 1918 (change to) constructed in 1915

P22 (top) back row center (change to) back row, 6th from left

P29 (bottom) replace the original dance hall (change to) replace the Casino dance hall

P51 a 1,800-square-foot (change to) an 18,000-square-foot

P53 (3rd paragraph) got showboats (change to) booked showboats

P59 (bottom) “Goat Island” (change to) “Goat Mountain”

P64 (top) Unlike other sources that claim (change to) Unlike other sources which claim

P71 (top) Golden Anniversary of Chester Dance Court (change to) Golden Jubilee of Chester Dance Court

P80 (caption) at end of tree lined street (change to) at the end of tree lined street

P99 (top) historical carvings (change to) historic carvings

P101 (redo final paragraph from original to…)
By the end of July, the twenty-one remaining structures were sold in auction for $5,200. William W. Harper, a well-known business man in Chester, bought the Virginia Gardens dance hall for $550 and William Johnson of East Liverpool bought the mile-long Cyclone for one dollar. According to the Youngstown Vindicator, Johnson planned to use the wood from the coaster to build a new structure at an auto wrecking business he and his father operated near Calcutta, OH. The deconstruction of the park was completed quickly and “within 45 days,” wrote Susan Weaver, “the park was stripped of all its buildings and the bulldozers, backhoes, and earth-movers were brought in.”