Last Saturday was a gem of a day in this part of northeast Ohio. It was a bit chilly and the sky was vast and blue, with only the whisper of high, high cirrus clouds painting the upper reaches of the air. The still-strengthening spring sun lit the earth like a spotlight from the azure heights and every object in view boasted an aura of silvery-gold. It was a day in early April that almost made the gloom of the long preceding winter worth it.
The wife and I were on a bit of a trip on that marvelous Saturday afternoon to a small town north of where we live. We had been invited to share in the surprise 85th birthday party in honor of the mother of a dear friend. While making plans to attend the party I thought it might be an ideal time to also visit a place I hadn't been to for over 45 years. It was only a few miles up the road from the birthday site, so I thought we'd stop there before returning home.
Why did I want to visit that place on that day? Well...
While at work recently I'd heard talk of a big construction project commencing in a village close to the city I worked in. A plot of land in that village was being cleared to make room for the construction of a four-story Hilton Hotel along with cabins and boathouses on the adjacent lake front. Then, in a following phase of construction, a conference center, restaurants and retail shops were slated to be constructed. Then, after that, possibly a Japanese-style spa, a wellness center and an accredited culinary institute would also be built.
It wasn't so much the development of the land that sat on the edge of Chippewa Lake that interested me as much as the previous use of the land now being cleared for that development.
That site, for exactly one hundred years, had been the home of the Chippewa Lake Amusement Park. And this park, which had been closed and abandoned since 1978, now had its gate open (to allow the dozer's access) and, on weekends, was allowing people to wander through the nearly-cleared park once again without the worry of a trespassing violation.
The Park was established in 1878 on 90 acres abutting Chippewa Lake in Medina County, Ohio. In the 1880's the Miss Chippewa Steamboat operated from a dock at the Park and the first roller coaster in the area was built there. It was a primitive contraption compared to the modern ones you see nowadays, by being a single car on a narrow gauge track with one steep drop. After each ride the workers had to manually push the car back to the top to pick up the next load of Victorian merry-makers. The park's upkeep was minimal in those early days and the liquor flowed freely. The park soon deteriorated with trash strewn everywhere and drunks all over. In 1898 a new owner made many improvements to the park. He first outlawed liquor, then brought in a carousel, which was a major craze in those days, along with many other improvements. Later, this owner's son inherited the park and saw it into the Roaring Twenties, when Chippewa's bandstand hosted live music seven nights a week and frequently sold out every show. It was the place to go in those days.
Here's some facts about Chippewa Lake Park you might find interesting:
It is one of the few natural lakes in Ohio and was not created by damming. The 385-acre lake was created by the glaciers that carved the basin the lake sits in around 12,000 years ago.
The first radio broadcast of the Lawrence Welk Orchestra was at Chippewa Lake in the summer of 1933.
Jungle Larry, animal trainer, expedition leader, conservationist and local legend, was at the park every weekend until 1964 when he moved to another well-known Ohio amusement park, Cedar Point.
In the “Swinging Sixties” there was an annual fan appreciation day held at the park that was hosted originally by WIXY radio 1260 AM and later by WHLO radio 640 AM. They booked some of the biggest stars in rock 'n roll to appear at the bandstand there in the park, including: Tommy James and the Shondells, The Outsiders, Music Explosion, Paul Revere and the Raiders, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, Neil Diamond, Left Bank, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Chylds. There was also Alice Cooper, Ted Nugent, Bob Seger and Glass Harp.
The price of admission in the rock 'n roll days? Fifty-cents to a buck and a half. Earlier on it was only a dime.
A horror movie, “Closed for the Season”, was filmed at the abandoned park in 2008. It should be released sometime later this year.
After a wonderful time at my friend's mother's birthday party, the wife and I headed up the road toward Chippewa Lake. I suppose the drive took 15 minutes.
As we turned from Lake Road onto Main Street, the short road that ended at the gates to the park, we could see that we were not the only people on that bright Saturday interested in getting a close look at the old park. There were maybe 20-25 cars parked near the old gate and we could see some people wandering inside the fence at the site. We parked our car, grabbed our camera and walked up to the old entrance gates. A man near there was telling us “visitors” that we were allowed to go in and look around, but to stay out of the buildings. They were unsafe.
As we walked past the gate in the fence that had kept people out of the site since 1978, the first thing we noticed were the bulldozer tracks. They were all over. The trees and some of the brush had already been removed leaving lots of stumps and churned up dirt. Most of the buildings that had been there from the amusement park days were either crumbling ruins or were charred from vandalism fires over the long decades of neglect. On the hillside to our right as we walked up the hill was the remains of the grand ballroom. A bored teen vandal had torched the place in 2002 and most of the building had been lost in the fire. There was still even a faint hint of charcoal smell in the air from that old fire.
On our left as we entered the park sat the Big Dipper roller coaster. Although this ride was in ruin, the tracks were still held aloft by the tough old timbers that had held them for so many years. Trees sprouted between the ties of the tracks in places and you could see that some of the railings had rotted away over the years. Further into the park to the left you could still see the loading/unloading platform for the coaster, the handrails to direct the lines of excited riders still standing in places, even some paint still on the old boards here and there. If you closed your eyes and listened very closely you could almost hear the faint screams of the coaster riders as they started down that first steep hill.
Moving further into the park the view opened up to the lake ahead and a number of collapsing buildings near the waterfront. Boat ride pier? Boathouse? Possibly parts of the old bathhouse. Maybe. It was hard to tell now.
About halfway toward the lake and a bit to the south stood the old ferris wheel. It still stood on its vee-shaped stanchion, looking as if a slight touch or even a stiff breeze might cause it to start turning again. But when you approached closer you saw a large tree had sprouted and grown up completely through the wheel. Its turning days were long over.
If you looked down, from place to place you could see the narrow-gauge tracks that used to allow the old steam engine and tour train to travel around the park. They were mostly gone, but if you looked closely you could see them rising out of the earth for a couple dozen feet then descending again into the ground.
Not too far from the entrance sat the remains of the Tumble-Bug ride. It still even had the four round cars sitting on the tracks, looking like, with a little brush clearing, some oil and some electricity, the thing could start right up. The stories I've heard also say there were only four Tumble-Bugs built in the world, three in the U.S. and one in Europe, and one of them was sitting right there in front of us.
There were other sojourners wandering the grounds that Saturday. Most of them gray-bearded men and gray-haired women, contemporaries of the wife and I. We pilgrims passed each other, looked in each other's eyes and saw a kinship, a sharing and stirring of old memories and common experiences. We'd nod and say, “Been a long time” or “Lots of memories” or “Man, would you just look at this place!” Our aged eyes moved over the grounds, recording, measuring the present to the ghost of the past that lived in our memories. Sometimes they jibed in odd and interesting ways. Most of the times you drew a blank. You'd say to yourself, “I remember this and I remember that but where is this now and where the hell is that?”
I remember going there as a child in the early '50's. I have pictures my dad took that chronicle my attendance there. I remember going there on dates in the mid-'60's. I still remember the girl's names. Dad even talked about visiting there back in the 30's and early 40's in his childhood, before the war. And my grandfather even mentioned it in passing a couple times as how he rode the trolley there in the old, old days.
Chipp had been there for a long time.
But today it was akin to going to a funeral. You looked at the deceased and saw who it was but also who it wasn't. The essence of the individual was gone. All that was left was the husk of what once was, an empty vessel.
Chippewa Lake Park is now like that deceased friend. It's still there. It has the same name. It resides on the same 90 acres it's always sat on. But it's not really there anymore. It's a ghost, a shadow, a mirage of its former self.
It sits in the sunlight and the starlight, in the rain and the snow and the echoing years, dreaming its long, long dreams of the long-ago times. It waits for the sounds of the turnstiles in the old ticket booths to turn again, for the excited voices of the people coming into the park again, for the hum of rides getting up to speed and the shrieks and laughter of the people riding them again. It knows that its last days are here and that, in a few weeks or a few months, what it was will no longer be.
But, of Chippewa Lake Park, this I will certainly believe:
On particular days in the future, years and years in the future, from certain hotel room windows or from the front doors of new beach-side cabins, it will still be possible to catch a fleeting glimpse of a gleaming new roller coaster full of riders roaring with screams of delight. If you squint your eyes a bit out the window of the restaurant you're sitting in you might even catch a sudden sight of a brightly-lit ferris wheel turning and turning in a star-filled summer night. And if you pay close attention as you wander through the newly landscaped grounds of the hotel or school or whatever might be eventually built there, the faint scent of hot dogs, caramel apples and cotton candy will be easily recognized wafting in the breezes from some unknown origin.
And if you listen closely you're likely to hear a rock 'n roll classic come trickling and echoing into your ears from a ghostly bandstand just around an unseen corner from where you are standing.
The ghost on Main Street will live a long, long time, both in our memories and in our hearts.
May she not go quietly into that dark night.
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