Stakes Through the Heart

The Midway of Rock Springs Park with the Fish Pond Game, Carport, Dodgem Cars and the Log House.

(Courtesy of Richard Bowker)

The same view with the Log House gone; moved by crane approximately 100 yards to the west. Only the foundations of the other buildings remain.

 (Courtesy of Rich Brookes, Photographed by Clarence O. Durbin)

The images above show the midway of Rock Springs Park. The first taken in 1970, the park’s final season, and the second in 1974, after the park had been sold to the state of West Virginia and the buildings and rides auctioned off to the highest bidder. The flagged stakes in the center and running through the heart of the midway show where the highway approach to the new bridge (pictured in the background below) would run. Travelers entering Chester, WV, along Route 30 today most likely have no idea that beneath their spinning wheels rests the remains of the onetime “Showcase of the East.” (Click on images to enlarge.)

The Midway in 1974 looking in the opposite direction toward Ohio and the recently erected truss of the Jennings Randolph Bridge. The Carousel Pavilion (left) was the last structure to be razed.

(Courtesy of Rich Brookes, Photographed by Clarence O. Durbin)

See more photographs of the park in the waning years in Images of America: Rock Springs Park, Chapter 6, "The Long Farewell: 1971 - 1974."