We are not amused.
But evidently, we used to be.
Between 1906 and 1908, Indianapolis boasted not one – or even two – but three distinct amusement parks. For three supposedly fun-filled summers, Indy families could hop into their Model T’s and begin a day of leisure with the question, “Which theme park today, kids?”
I shudder to think of the innumerable sibling wars incited over this decision.
There was Wonderland Amusement Park, at Washington and Gray Street; Riverside City Park on 30th Street, near the Central Canal; and White City Amusement Park, in what is now Broad Ripple Park.
If you’re thinking that’s awfully close quarters to sustain three amusement parks at the turn of the twentieth century, you’re absolutely right. Sparked by the zeitgeist of highly-successful Coney Island in New York, investors nationwide saw dollar signs and wetted their lips over the idea of replicating the mass profiteering on the east coast. (And if I know my history, Coney Island was definitely the economic model to follow.)
The amazing thing about the concurrent existence of these three Indianapolis fun parks isn’t just the audacity of their founders, or the trajectory of their demise, but the rivalry among them and the madcap charlatanism it birthed.
In the perpetual scramble for public attention (and ticket sales), park masterminds introduced rides and attractions of escalating bizarreness. “No, no! Look over here!” the parks seemed to be saying with every press release and poster. “Not those guys! Those guys are boring! Look at us!”
Wonderland quickly graduated from run-of-the-mill swing circles and slides to flying in an elephant Operation-Dumbo-Drop-style and setting it loose in an artificial lagoon to publicly bathe. A funhouse based in part on the McCutcheon novel Brewster’s Millions (the most “funhouse” novel in literature, no one would argue) and a live show featuring cigarette-smoking bears soon followed. Rounding out this elaborate exercise in good taste was a ride that recreated the tragic 1889 flood of Johnstown, Pennsylvania for entertainment purposes. Before you balk, please note that such simulations were all the rage in American theme parks at the time. Then balk.
Meanwhile, Riverside – the first of these parks to open its gates – added to its ranks of roller coasters and mirror mazes the surefire hit of the season: a boat ride through a simulated flour mill. It stretches the imagination that market research might’ve indicated families were clamoring for an intricate imitation of factory flour production in a darkened tunnel, but there you have it. (Though it will be later, it should also be noted here that Riverside outlasted the other two parks by decades.) In later years, to its directors’ credit, Riverside would introduce impressive roller coasters with names like The Flash and The Thriller, a precursor to bumper cars called “Dodgems,” and its own skate rink.
And finally, White City, the littlest sibling of the three, held its own with a panoply of brazen oddities. Harkened on its opening day by an airship that dropped money orders on the gathered masses below, White City was home to the cream of the crazy carnival crop. “The amusement park that satisfied,” as it was called, hosted a virtual recreation of the destruction of Pompeii via volcano; a dedicated firefighting exhibition; a bath house that could serve up to 1,000 men at a time; something called a “human roulette wheel;” and a baby incubator exhibit, which is exactly what it sounds like.
But such fun could not last forever. Each park would meet demise in its own time – or in Wonderland and White City’s cases, perhaps a tad prematurely, helped along by devastating fires. Ending the brief reign of the theme park trifecta first was White City, out-weirding the others to the bitter end with a 1908 inferno that began in a mock opium den and spread through the park entire. Wonderland met its similar fate three years later by a blaze that authorities blamed on a stray cigarette, though that explanation is dubious at best and maybe deserves a closer examination in a different, darker essay. (And no, I do not suspect one of the chain-smoking bears.)
As stated earlier, Riverside would outshine them all by lasting well into the 1970s, disappointing everyone by giving in to economic collapse instead of natural disaster.
So what lesson can Indianapolis glean from the rise and fall of the amusement park boom? I’ll go out on a limb and say the city can get along just fine without three new amusement parks opening within its limits by 2017. History need not repeat itself here. The State Fair comes around every summer, and King’s Island isn’t that far away.
Even so, the age of the Theme Park Trinity in Indianapolis was so short-lived, so enchantingly misguided, and such a shameless product of its time that I can’t help but be a little sorry I missed it.
