“My first memory of Americana was back when it was called LeSourdsville Lake,” remembers Linda Nienaber. “It was in the spring of 1970, toward the end of first grade. We had a great time there. I remember sliding down a giant slide, riding on the mini roller coaster, and having a picnic on the grounds for our lunch. A couple of years later, my family and I went there for my dad’s company picnic. That was the first time I rode on the roller coaster with my older sister.” One of the biggest and best parks of its day was Woodsdale Island Park, located on a now-long-gone island in the Great Miami River. The late Trenton historian Doris Page often talked of the park as the Kings Island of its day, according to her son, Gary Page, drawing tourists by train from Cincinnati and Dayton to its wooded banks. In its heyday, it boasted a restaurant, merry-go-round, boathouse, and other entertainment amenities. Few people are around today, however, who even know exactly where that park stood — it was wiped out during the great flood of 1913, and the river’s fickle channel has changed often over the years. “I’ve talked to others about the location — no one can give me an answer,” Page says. “I believe the river channel has moved so many times over the years, it’s hard to imagine that there was an island in the river.” Farther north, on the western edge of Dayton in what is now Possum Creek MetroPark, the crumbling remains of a dance floor and rusting hulks of old street cars sit silent sentinel at the site of what used to be Argonne Forest Park. Steps to the park’s old swimming pool can still be seen. Michele Taggart of Youngstown recalls Idora Park, one of the nation’s only urban amusement parks, which operated on the south side of town from 1899 until 1984. “It was so fun — they even had a lion’s mouth on the garbage can, so it was fun to throw away trash,” Taggart says. Chippewa Lake Amusement Park in Medina County has proved nearly impossible to kill off. It operated for a century, beginning in 1878 with a roller coaster that had to be manually pushed to the top of the first hill. After the park closed in 1978, it sat largely intact as nature and the elements took their toll. Today, the skeletons of a few old rides and buildings still haunt the now-overgrown park, but the Medina County Park system owns the land, with plans to open it as a public park and wetland. Some old park structures will survive as historical homage.
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OHIO COOPERATIVE LIVING • JUNE 2022
The author of this story explored numerous abandoned Ohio amusement parks with his daughters — finding remains such as the old Sky Ride machinery at the former Americana Park outside Monroe and what’s still left of the old dance floor at Argonne Forest Park, which is now part of Possum Creek MetroPark near Dayton (photos by Kevin Williams).
Mary Boulton grew up in Brunswick, Ohio, and remembers the park well. “I remember when my family, including five siblings, made our yearly trek to Chippewa Lake Amusement Park,” she says. “My dad’s company picnic was held there every summer. We all looked forward to that yearly event, and it would be the one time a year we could catch up with old friends and make new ones.”
