Strolling Through the Park in 1928

This description of a walk through Rock Springs Park appeared in The Daily Times of Beaver, PA in 1928.

Just for a moment close your eyes and imagine you are in Rock Springs Park. You have just finished a delightful dance to the lilting music of “Billy Coppel” and his boys in beautiful Virginia Gardens, you start on a trip through the park – first the Cyclone Coaster – a bell rings and the brilliantly colored cars start up the incline. Before you go down the first breath-taking dip you get a birdseye view of the park with its sparkling myriad lights and amusements. What a sight – then thrills – some ride – what next – the giant aeroplane swing taking you for a delightful cool ride up into the clouds – next the brilliantly lighted merry-go-round, with its laughing children – what’s this – the new Dangler – more laughs and enjoyment – then down the midway past the many new games and concessions with their richly decorated shelves and sparkling lights with the crowds of enjoyment seeking people. Not forgetting the Monkey Island with its colony of laugh-producing inhabitants.


This postcard shows the new Dangler (left).

Stand in the Place Where You Live and Face North

I’ve always suffered from a strange case of dyslexia when it comes to cardinal directions. For example, I feel slightly panicked when I go through the toll booth entering the Pennsylvania Turnpike. I worry, Am I going east to Harrisburg or west to Pittsburgh? I never understood where this irrational fear came from until I began researching Rock Springs Park and my hometown of Chester, West Virginia. Everything about the area is confusing, as far as directions are concerned.

First off, the northern panhandle of West Virginia extends further north than most people realize. When I went to college at the University of Pittsburgh, I was teased for being from “Down there”, but the truth was, I was from “Up there”. You see, Chester actually lies northwest of Pittsburgh. The Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers meet at the confluence in Pittsburgh and become the Ohio, but the Ohio River, like the Nile in Egypt, actually flows north. George Washington got it right when he drew this map of the region in 1758. The Ohio flows north before turning west at the northern panhandle of West Virginia (then Virginia) and continues south to Cincinnati.

Chester, as I explain in the book, lies at the extreme northern limit of the panhandle. If you stand in Chester and face north, you face East Liverpool, Ohio. All the other towns of Ohio across the river from West Virginia, for the most part, lie to the west, but not Liverpool, and to a lesser degree, Wellsville. They both mark the northern turn of the river before it heads south. So, in this rare instance, Ohio is north and Pennsylvania is south and a little bit east of Chester - sort of.

Then there’s the neighborhood in Chester across from where Rock Springs Park used to be that is known as the Upper End. It’s “Upper” because it is upriver not because it is north as I used to think as a kid. North is up and south is down on the compass rose, right? No, not exactly.

About 75% of the final edits to the book involved correcting descriptions of the park as it related to cardinal directions:

People now enter Chester along Route 30 at the southern end of what used to be the crystal spring lake of Rock Springs Park.

The spring still flows out of a lone pipe that can be found east of the onramp to the Jennings Randolph Bridge to East Liverpool.

East Liverpool is north of Chester.

See what I mean? If it wasn’t for Google Maps I would still be editing. It should be easy, but it isn’t.It’s no wonder some people still don’t get that West Virginia is a state. They think it’s just the western half of Virginia. If those people go to Chester, I wish them all the luck in the world and hopefully some sort of GPS device, because in Chester east is north and up is east and west is south and the south is north.

Let's Ride the Cyclone

This is a virtual ride on Rock Springs Park’s Cyclone, which I created for ACE (American Coaster Enthusiasts) Western PA's Coasterbash 2010 using 62 photographs taken of/on the roller coaster over the course of its 43 year history. If you rode the Cyclone, or always wanted to, this virtual ride is my Easter gift to you. Happy Easter!

(Images courtesy of Richard Bowker , Rich Brookes and Tish Hand; "Free Ride" is a song written by Dan Hartman and performed by The Edgar Winter Group, 1973)

Thank You Tricyclefetish.com

In July of 2009, Tish Hand sent me a picture of her husband, Richard K. Hand, riding a tricycle near the entrance to Rock Springs Park in the 1940s. My immediate thought was that it must have been very cool to grow up in an amusement park and have the opportunity to ride all along the winding paths and roads of the 11-acre property, but as I studied the photograph I noticed that “Dickie’s” trike had a chain drive rather than the pedals attached to the front wheel like the one I rode as a kid. I began to wonder what kind of tricycle it was and looked on-line to see if I could find the name.
Dickie Hand (left) and Jim Wilson (right). This photograph is from Sherry Emery’s collection. It shows the same tricycle pictured in Images of America Rock Springs Park p. 74. (Courtesy of Sherry Emery)

I soon discovered a brand new website where people were posting pictures of themselves on their childhood trikes and inquiring about the brand, the worth, etc. The website was a blog entitled “Tricycle Fetish”. According to Wikipedia,“fetishism” is the act of “attributing religious or mystical qualities to inanimate objects.” I mean, I liked my trike as a kid, but come on! But as I read over the blog, I soon realized that these guys knew their stuff, so…



I never thought I’d say it but, “Thank you Tricyclefetish.com!”

The Summer Theater Lives Again

I wrote about The Summer Theater, constructed in the lower level of Rock Springs Park by C.A. Smith in 1903, on pages 34 and 35 of Images of America: Rock Springs Park. Although it was used mainly for live shows, like minstrels and vaudeville productions, silent movies were often featured there.


Now you can get a feeling for what it was like to watch a movie in The Summer Theater at Rock Springs Park thanks to an unusual site which uses postcard images of early American theaters to create a very low-tech version of the original. The site called “Cinemat.org”, places moving pictures against the backdrops and prosceniums of these early entertainment venues, so that the viewer can watch a piece of cinematic history from the center aisle.

The Summer Theater show begins when the backdrop is raised and a couple of animated clipart scouts are revealed paddling a canoe in darkness (not exactly the type of animated short one would see in the early days of cinema). Click “Next” and a 1942 Oldsmobile Custom 8 Cruiser ad plays, then it’s a real cartoon short called “Short’nin Bread,” followed by Ozzie and Harriet, Buster Keaton, and a full length feature from 1936: “Daniel Boone,” starring George O'Brien, John Carradine, and Heather Angel. The film, set in 1775, is about the early settlement of Kentucky where Daniel Boone faced, “menacing Indians and renegade whites,” according to IMDb (Internet Movie Database).

To see the film at The Summer Theater click here. Then scroll halfway down until you see the image shown at right. Click on it and continue to hit “Next” to work your way through the show. Like I said, this is extremely low tech, but it’s kind of fun, and more than a little surprising, that The Summer Theater in Rock Springs Park is used since it lasted only fourteen years, having burned down 1917.

Anyway, it is a neat bit of nostalgia and it goes without saying that I’m always glad to find Rock Springs Park included on any site.

Enjoy!

Dancing in the Park

One of the comments I received after the first two of my book talks, was that older people who remember the park wished to see and hear more about dancing, especially with regards to the beautiful ballroom, "Virginia Gardens". Included in this blog post are some of the facts and images I plan to add to my next event in order to boost the conversation about dance platforms and halls enjoyed by park guests in the nearly 117 year history of the area known as Rock Springs.

This image from the very early years shows an outdoor covered dancing platform at the end of a tree-lined path used before any dance halls were constructed. According to Roy C. Cashdollar, the very first structure built on the site of Rock Springs Grove was “a sixteen foot square platform used for dancing.” (Courtesy of Richard L. Bowker)

The original dance hall in Rock Springs Park faced Carolina Avenue. Before the trolley loop lower entrance was added during C.A. Smith’s years, people would get off the street car and go right up the steps into the dance hall. (See Images of America: Rock Springs Park, p. 15) This side view of the original dance hall, constructed in 1897 by J.E. MacDonald was removed from the Images book in place of one from Doug Arner and Arner Funeral Chapel. Also a side view, Arner’s photograph (p. 16 top) shows pleasure-seekers filling the awning covered porch and walking the grounds. (Courtesy of Richard L. Bowker)

The second floor of the Casino Dance Hall (1906) had an 18,000 square foot hard white maple dance floor, which was larger than 4 high school-size basketball courts put together. Not only did people dance in the dance halls in the evening, but they also danced aboard steamships which carried them from Wheeling and Pittsburgh. (See a series of photographs of the Homer Smith in my book, pp. 56-57)

The Virginia Gardens Dance Hall (1927 – 1974) was used for proms and school dances, as well as, for skating. This article from Youngstown Vindicator – Jul 28, 1957, tells of the Golden Jubilee of Chester Celebration held in Virginia Gardens. (See p. 71 of my book for a photograph of the Jubilee Court)



In his History of Chester: The Gateway to the West (Part II), Roy C. Cashdollar notes some of the rules for couples dancing the tango in 1914: Do not, (1) wiggle shoulders, (2) shake hips, (3) twist the body, (4) hop, (5) flounce elbows, or (6) clasp your partner in a death grip.

(What? No "hopping?" Look out Easter Bunny!)

A Real Field of Dreams

In a recent blog post I mentioned some of the odd coincidences that I’ve experienced while researching, writing, and now promoting my book about Rock Springs Park in Chester, West Virginia. In fact, last month I posted a six-part series entitled, “Rock Springs Park: My Field of Dreams,” about a recent book talk and signing event for the Wellsville Arts Club. In it, I compared my experiences with that of Kevin Costner’s character, Ray Kinsella, who pursues his dream of bringing the past back to life by building a baseball field on his farm in Iowa after hearing voices. In a sense, I found myself also called upon to bring the past alive by writing a picture-history of Rock Springs Park.

On a trip to my alma-mater, Oak Glen High School, this week for another book talk, I was more than a little surprised to see a recently erected archway between the middle and high schools which reads, “Field of Dreams.” This brick archway is the dream of the Oak Glen High Class of 2011. Workers will put the finishing touches on the gateway this week. (Photo by Nancy Tullis of the East Liverpool Review)



As I was backing my Honda into a parking spot behind the high school library doors, I let out an audible, “No way! ‘Field of Dreams’? That is a sign.” Of course it is literally “a sign”, but for me it was just another in a long list of unusual coincidences that I’ve encountered while on this amusement park book quest. Moments like these lead me to think there is more behind it than simply my answer to author Toni Morrison’s call: "If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it." Something bigger is at work.


Toni Morrison

When I returned home and thought about that arch, shown in a rendering in the image below, I discovered this article by Nancy Tullis of the East Liverpool Review, who, coincidentally, also wrote the article about my book talk last summer in Chester. Nancy’s article dated last Monday, April 11, 2001 states, “The Hancock County Schools Board of Education will have a groundbreaking at 1 p.m. Tuesday in anticipation of the start of construction on the OGHS athletic complex to be paid with bond levy money (and) at 11 a.m. Saturday, the OGHS Class of 2011 will have a dedication-ribbon cutting for the completed gateway,” which means that I held my book talk event for the Sisters of Alpha Delta Kappa, an international honorary organization of women educators, on the same day as the groundbreaking. I had assumed, as I have never been to the middle school, that the arch had been around for some time, but it was just being finished THAT DAY! (Cue the “Twilight Zone” music) Joey Davis, president of the Oak Glen High Class of 2011, stands near the entrance to the Field of Dreams complex with a rendering of the proposed entrance archway the class has taken on as a legacy gift to the school district. (Photo by Nancy Tullis)

More next time on some of things I learned about Rock Springs Park at the actual book talk event held Tuesday evening , April 12 with the ADK Sorority Group.