Don't Miss Out!

Rock Springs Park is currently part of a special offer by Arcadia to celebrate the availability of their “Images of America” series on eReaders. A special $2.99 price promotion is being offered now until midnight Tuesday October 1st, 2012.

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.”

Rock Springs or Raccoon Creek Park?

(courtesy of Richard Bowker)

I first learned that Rock Springs Park was going to be torn down while on the playground of Chester Primary School (pictured above, center, with RSP in the background). Unfortunately, by the time I got the news via the playground grapevine, it was "Raccoon Creek Park" and not Rock Springs.

"Did you hear? They're going to tear down Raccoon Creek Park and build a bridge that's going to go right over our school!"

I couldn't figure out why they wanted to build a bridge starting 13 miles away in Pennsylvania and spanning the entire upper panhandle of West Virginia to East Liverpool, Ohio, but it suddenly made sense as to why folks in town were so upset about losing business due to the bridge. I imagined some sort of futuristic bridge casting a giant shadow over our tiny elementary school.

Eventually, I came to understand that it was Rock Springs Park and not Raccoon Creek that was to be razed, and that made me sad. By the time I was in the fourth grade at the junior high/intermediate school the park had been sitting unused for four years. Seeing the Cyclone and the carousel pavilion every day on the playground left me with many daydreams and plenty of questions. It would take 35 years to find some of the answers and I'm still learning.

Library contest in line with historical books

By NANCY TULLIS (ntullis@reviewonline.com)

NEW CUMBERLAND - Just as two books about Hancock County life by men who grew up there are fresh off the press, Swaney Memorial Library staff is encouraging area children to do some "hometown" writing of their own.

The library staff is accepting entries in its first writing contest for children. Entries can be submitted through July 30.

Anna Raines, director of Swaney Memorial Library in New Cumberland, said the library's first story writing contest gives local children a chance to show off their writing talent.

The topic of the library's writing contest is "Life in Hancock County."

Entries will be judged by Swaney Memorial Library board members. Winners will be selected based on content, creativity, organization and mechanics.

"We want to see Hancock County through the eyes of our local children," Raines said.
Stories are to be hand-written by the children and 250-500 words, Raines said. Children may submit entries to the library by July 30 and winners will be announced Aug. 5.

There are two categories for entries: authors in third through fifth grade; and sixth through ninth grade. Entrants are to write on only one side of a sheet of paper.

Stories may include illustrations, but they are not required, Raines said.
Each submission must include a cover sheet with the child's name and grade level, a contact phone number and a word count.

Recently published books "Rock Springs Park" by Joseph A. Comm and "Growing Up in the Last Small Town - A West Virginia Memoir" by Bob Barnett are now available for purchase.

Comm will be a guest of the Chester Kiwanis Club at 7 p.m. Monday in the Chester Municipal Building for a book signing. His book is one in Arcadia Publishing's "Images of America" series. After a meet-and-greet, Comm will speak at 8 p.m. about how his book took shape.

"Rock Springs is near and dear to the hearts of a countless number of people, each of whom has a 'Rock Springs story,'" said Catherine Ferrari, executive vice president and CEO of Hancock County Savings Bank and a member of the Chester Kiwanis' planning committee for the event. "This is truly a special event that will enable us to go back in time and share those stories."
The Rock Springs book release is timed to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the park's last year of operation in 1970.

Comm moved to Chester with his parents when he was 3 years old and grew up witnessing the silent skeleton of the Cyclone, which had been the Rock Springs Park roller coaster, Ferrari said.
Currently a teacher in and resident of Greensburg, Pa., Comm became fascinated by the lost but beloved amusement park.

Alvin Fineman, planning committee chairperson, recalls dancing in the Virginia Gardens dance hall under the crystal ball, riding the Whip and the carousel, listening to the wisdom of Lowell Thomas or the music of Eddy Duchin and enjoying real homemade taffy. "Rock Springs Park is still in our hearts," he said.

Barnett's book is published by the Jesse Stuart Foundation, which regularly republishes many of the books of Kentucky author Jesse Stuart and periodically publishes books with Appalachian themes and settings. The book is about Barnett growing up in the 1950s in Newell.

"Bob Barnett has written an astonishingly accurate account of the innocence and naivete of the 1950s," said Cheryl Johns of Chester. "His memoir of growing up in Newell is both joyful and poignant."

Barnett retired in 2007 after 35 years of service to Marshall University as a coach, faculty member and administrator. He received a bachelor's degree in physical education from Marshall in 1965 and earned both master's and doctoral degrees from the Ohio State University.

"The book is about me, because it is a memoir," Barnett writes in the preface. "however, I also attempt to chronicle the response of people - specifically the people of Newell - as they tried to grasp the changing landscape of a post-war, modern America."

Advances in technology and the shift of traffic from winding two-lanes to multi-laned interstate highways changed the landscape of the American small town, Barnett writes.

"There are still little towns, but they are tied to a national culture in a way that small towns never were," he said. "The world has come into today's little towns through television and the Internet, on interstates, with McDonald's and Wal-Mart; and the unique character of each small town has vanished. ... My generation was the last to know what it meant to grow up in a small town."

Retired Huntington newspaper employee James E. Casto notes that the Homer Laughlin China Co. plays a key role in Barnett's account of his hometown. He said, however, that by substituting a steel mill or a coal mine for the pottery, the conversation could be about any one of countless numbers of small towns in 1950s America.

Casto referenced a passage in Barnett's book where he states, "Small towns in postwar America represented family and friends, security, and a chance to work in the mill and capture a part of the American dream."

"A dream, alas, that today has faded," Casto wrote in a review, "but it has been given new life in Barnett's affectionate memoir.