Mountain Park Memories

Explores the history of everyone. Members Connecticut or Springfield public television for Deerfield and all of Western New England. It was a part of a summertime tradition at cotton candy you remember popcorn you remember. Remember that it was a place for picnics and parties for theatre. It was a place for families. And I'm

sorry that it's closed here today it's a sad reminder of what once was part memory an amusement park that was a part of a major funding for Mountain Park memories has been provided by people's bank. Additional funding has been provided by the following Holyoke area businesses Commonwealth registry of nurses oil gas and electric department. Well your hospital and the Lathrop retirement communities of East Hampton and North Hampton.

It is affectionately known as the happiness machine carousel number 80 continues to entertain and in thrall all those who pay just a single dollar for one memorable four minute ride. The carousel has a storied history in Holyoke almost as long as the amusement park it came from Mountain Park. The carousel came to the park in 1929 along with the roller coaster both rides were built by the Philadelphia toboggan company. The ride as stamped on the center post it says number 80. So that in sequence is Philadelphia toboggan company's number 80 merry go round they made it a 5. So this is close to the end. They called it a happiness machine that resonate I mean people pick it up and smiled

when they heard it because it was true happiness machine. You can't put kids on here without a man happy. We get a couple who are scared to death the first time. But it's a happiness machine. You know when you're around something all the time you tend not to hear the music anymore because everybody would say How can you stand that. It's like stand what you don't even hear it but then when the when the organ quit working for whatever reason the tape ran out or whatever it's like wow it stopped the calliope music and Carousel stopped for good at Mountain Park in 1970. After nearly 100 years in operation the ownership of the park succumbed to the realization that the small time amusement park had become a thing of the past. The park opened in 1895 is a trolley park. The Holyoke street railway company was looking for a way to increase business on the weekends

and placing an amusement park at the end of their trolley line seemed like a good idea a way to draw people out of the hot mill city of Holyoke and up into the cool mountain air of Mt Tom. Most of your big companies did this. The trolley park tree located at an end or along the way and provided another source of revenue and they have they work rather well. The early park offered beautifully landscaped grounds technic roads and an outdoor theater. It was a small carousel and an early roller coaster restaurant and animal park people boarded the trolley in downtown Holyoke and came to the mountain for a day of fun and relaxation. They would dress up in the best they had to go to Mountain Park because it would have been the weekend it would have been Sunday more than likely the working man didn't take his family out on a working day. You know he worked very long hours and and many of the wives did too. Early entertainment consisted of live theater performed outdoors on an open stage.

People gathered on the grassy hillside to watch fob ville and comic opera. It was no charge for this. Simply it was another clever way of drawing people to the park on weekends. The odd part is many of the people stood for these hour long performances or Several our performances in these long dresses and top which had to be very uncomfortable but the variety of entertainment was well worth that discomfort. The Holyoke street railway company quickly expanded the park and inclined rail road was constructed to shuttle people to the summit of Mount Tong. Two cars operating off the same cable made the trip to the top in about eight minutes at a cost of two bits. If someone house was constructed to provide dining and observation decks many a warm summer day was spent on the summit of Mt.. Enjoying the view and the cool mountain breeze the park offered them a wonderland of landscaping.

Beautiful. It was completely different from the time that they lived in 1908. The twenty fifth president of the United States William McKinley visited the mountain and proclaimed the view from Mount Tom is the best in the world. The Mountain Park tradition at the gun by nine hundred twenty nine people were traveling to Mountain Park by automobile up the newly constructed access roads in that same year at the height of the Depression. The Park added a new roller coaster. Then as the mountain Wildcat it gave a really minute and a half ride for just 15. It was a place for picnics it was a place for parties. It was a wonderful place for people of all ages to go. From my standpoint the best part of it was the theater known as the casino.

The theater at Mountain Park provided another form of entertainment for local people. Built in 1991 as a replacement for the open stage the traditional summer playhouse was a fixture at the park for over 60 years. As I recall there was no air conditioning and it was basically just a big gigantic barn with a persone of stage on it. The only way to ventilate it was these huge gigantic wooden panels that you would raise or open or open with ropes and it would let air in. It would also let every creature to live in the air in the woods at night into the theater which were mosquitoes and moths and so it's not uncommon to have a great show going on with 500 moths and mosquitoes and things flying around the stage it was one of the things you put up with in 1041 a theater company known as the valley players began performing summer stock plays at the casino in those days quality entertainment was at a premium. So an opportunity to see live theater on stage was a big night out.

It was a place to. Friends I mean you just it was a wonderful gaffing with people and if you bought a season subscription and you went on the same night you always saw the same people in the early fifties a young actor named Hal Holbrook came to Holyoke for the summer to join the cast of the valley players in those days you did a new play every week I guess people know that every week you had to learn all these lines. The whole play. I mean if it was a big part it was a whole play I can't even believe today what we did. You would stay up till 2 o'clock working real hard on your lines you go back you try to get six seven hours sleep get up wears all day of the show again tonight then learn the lines in the middle of the night for the next. And you do that every night every day week after week. And it it it took spirit how Holbrooke and his wife Ruby were both featured performers at the Valley players. And Hal got the idea

of doing a one man show. And the one man show was Mark Twain. He did great make up. He appeared onstage my husband and I were there for opening night and we gassed because you would swear it was Mark. I mean the you know the gray hair the rumpled white suit. And he came out and he really brought a magic. It was fabulous really successful. I don't know how many times how has done Mark Twain on stage but there'd be many many many times and many many cities around the United States that have seen him do this and it started here. You know right here in Holyoke you know the valley players call the casino home for more than 20 years eventually leaving in 1962 from that point on the theater struggled to stay open new management and some big names were brought in to try to revive the classic playhouse. People like Lloyd Bridges or Cesar Romero Martha Raye

the list goes on and on every week it was someone we see can't believe that I'm just a kid and I'm getting to meet all of these people to little bank it was a lady. I didn't have a car. That first year in the Cesar Romero the week he was there used to bring me home drop me off at my front door and here's a man who was just known all over the world and he's giving me a ride home. The Mount Tom playhouse lasted just two short years. Financially it just wasn't feasible. So it closed for good and never reopened. The Holyoke street railway company sold Mountain Park to the Collins family in 1950 to a new design to transform the park into an art deco wonderland. Colorful figures made out of plywood and fiberglass begin to pop up throughout the park edition of fun houses and dark rides were distinctly created to thrill park visitors

rides like the dodgems and the tempest. The whip and the satellite jets all dotted the Midway among the game booze and concessions. You knew you were at Mountain Park when you were there because of the big clown heads and the pastel colors and the real angled designs the buildings and the way the Midway was lit and the colors on the rides everything had a feel to it. Mountain Park became the hot spot for entertainment talent shows beauty contests Mussulmen competitions and high school proms. There were motorcycle hill climbs up the mountain and road races down the midway. If there was an event to be held or an entertainer to perform chances are you'd find a ballpark and know people who do remember seeing him on the Midway was Arnold Schwarzenegger and the movie Pumping Iron.

Part of it was filmed at Mountain Park. They used to have a guy that would come up there on Friday nights. This guy was nuts. He would open a tower 100 feet tall and dove into six feet of water and everybody would go like this I would go back and ride. Like you think of the guy's name he did the polka shows there Larry Cesky. He was there every Sunday faithfully for years and years and years. They call me the legend of the mountain every Cesky the legend I understand. Larry just the name is synonymous with Mountain Park. It seemed that way it seemed like Sunday's that was the place to be Mountain Park. It was it was at the expense of everybody if they could but the children are the rights in my power I would go down to the pavilion and have a

beer it's a little refreshment this and enjoy the music. You're back. I really feel like you're beating everybody welcome to the start of my memoir W H Y and welcoming you would do well at the time I was a co-host on the channel 40 dance party and we had the kids coming in and dancing and record stars appearing on the show on a Saturday afternoon and many times they go from the TV show up to mountain park on a on a Saturday night. We had people there from the Beach Boys and Jerry Lee Lewis to the kings men the dog bells I mean you name somebody the times and they could see him in Mountain Park. In the mid 60s the station w h y n got involved with the park in a promotion whereby we

would offer free rides to everybody all day long on a particular day. The first one we did was just the most amazing thing because the the Holyoke police had calls coming into the radio station and you got announced no more traffic on Route 5 it's blocked for miles and miles and miles. We had all the deejays there from W H Y N on the stage of my park and we had some local talent some bands. All the rides were a free ride as many rides as you want. Bring the family and everybody did. Brought the 60s in the 70s Mountain Park just became the place to go. Local kids weren't there in the summer. Companies like Steiger's and Monsanto held annual picnics at the park for their employees and families. Coronation balls and high school proms were celebrated in the ballroom. It was safe and affordable prices in the Mountain Park restaurant reflected the times the sandwich was thirty

five cents and a beer was a quarter. My first memories of Mountain Park were nine hundred fifty nine thousand nine hundred sixty when I was two and three years old. Our family and extended family used to go up lawn park all the time for recreation. That was the place that we all went where he saw cars that man around on a track and just ran around on a lawn area. And you thought you were driving and every little kid did. But obviously if you weren't you had nothing to do with it but we all thought we were driving the one least to go there that cross-cutting go so every week we meet up with my parents my grandparents and they would sit and play bingo and the kids would warm around and sometimes we'd go on Sundays and down to the picnic area and the parents would stay there and we going up to the right time. I remember one time where I finally got above the line and said You must be this tall. That was a thrill for me because I could drive a little race cars around the US going into the park

down there. I remember that one thinking Someday I'm going to get it. When they did that was a thrill. One of the more unique traditions started at the park in the late 60s billed as a day of fun nuns from various local conference came to the park by bus to ride the rides and enjoy the day. Well when you look at the pictures and you look back on the years you see them writing the dodgem cars the roller coaster the aero planes I take for instance like myself I love the roller coaster but it seems like when people are at the top they would if they ever wanted to give out screams or anything like that that's the time they did it you know just to let everybody who was down there not on a roller coaster you know that it was a thrilling ride a roller coaster. I did it just once and I can tell you I was scared stiff. Absolutely happy and.

Thank you. And it was a fairly modest roller coaster I mean compared to some of the other ones. But but I liked all the other rides I like the little bumper cars and things like that. But the rollercoaster was scary. The roller coaster was probably the highlight of the park. That was first of all because of its size and every time the car went by everybody in the park would look up and watch the car go over the loops. It was the one thing you wanted to go on and maybe a save that for last roller coaster the best best one of the world. I rode that every day that I was there that I possibly could at least at least once a day. That was the apex. When you got into the roller coaster this is what Mountain Park is all about. People were excited they knew they were getting out of a roller coaster. You sat in that car and you just waited and waited and people got in and then the bars would come down and you'd feel if you were running away and it would pull you up this interminable hill we would wait and you'd wait and wait and when you get to the

top of the box and then you just went with the OS. And the rest of it was almost a blur. You just raced around that thing and it was over far too fast. Possibly I am the unofficial record holder for the person that wrote the roller coaster longest nonstop at Mountain Park was one hundred seventy four times and the roller coaster that was in 1980 in June and I have never been a min since tragedy struck the park in the early 70s. The Stardust ballroom caught fire during a high school prom bringing an end to a piece of history at the park. Seeing you seems to be the peak of the few years experienced in high school. Last night I was 150. One cop is attending the whole yōkai school for fun and a terrifying new experience the prom held at the Stardust Lodge in Hollyoaks Mountain

Park was dropped dropped drastically when any given explosion and fire ripped through the building a fire on that June night in 1971 leveled the Stardust ballroom and put billions to park employees were killed in the inferno. All of the members of the Holyoke high school class of nine hundred seventy one escaped safely. The ballroom had been a part of the park for more than 50 years. Big bands played there in the 30s and 40s dances and record hops in the 50s and 60s who stayed there too early morning I was watching a burnout tester because I had a lot to take. Today this set of stairs leading to a concrete slab are all that is left of the Stardust ballroom at Mountain Park. Since the opening of the park in 1895 it was a sense of freedom and excitement that attracted thousands

from Mountain Park. The 1980s ushered in an era of change however people's appetites for entertainment were growing. They wanted bigger faster higher and that wasn't Mountain Park. The interstate highway shopping malls and movie theaters all contributed to the demise of the small time amusement park. I remember that day in 1987 in the fall and I was coming in to do my shift after the park closed season and Roger Goodwin who used to run the cotton candy stand came in he says. Close the park. We're never going to open again. He's he's he's the park is closing the park. First reaction was why second reactions now what are we going to do this park. It's been here almost a hundred years it's going to be here another hundred years it doesn't go like that it doesn't look doesn't just disappear overnight. And he was like No no JCL in the park it's we're it's closing down. In the following years it became evident that mountain park would never reopen

displays and boos were taken down. Vandalism began to take its toll. The park started to sell off its rides one by one. The roller coaster was torn down and its cars sold to another amusement park. It was one ride remaining that hadn't been sold. It probably had more value than all the other rides in the park and the people Holyoke knew us. I remember when I was watchman at Mountain Park after it closed in 1970 and a guy came up to the park walking through the midway and said Hi can I help you. He said Well hi my name is John Hickey and you know I would have worked for the water department in Holyoke and we're going to save this ride the carousel for the city of Holyoke. And I looked and I went yeah ok sure. Carousel number 80 was the sentimental favorite of the park. It's antique band organ played hocus and waltzes for the thousands that visited the park.

The three rows of forty eight prancing horses and two chariots were more than just an amusement ride. I think it's the most beautiful piece of property in the city high oak I might say that community college is more valuable in the ski area was an institution but it's nothing like this carousel. It's a very unique and yet this unique ride sat abandoned up at the park awaiting its fate. Other cities had tried to save their carousels without much success. Times were tough in the blue collar city of Holyoke and the state was in a recession. On a late summer afternoon in 1988 a small group of financially strong people were invited up to the closed amusement park. People knew what they were coming up for a letter said we want you to look at this merry go round it's got to be safe for our city and they came up and they just stood around there and we all talked and somebody gave a speech and then they threw the switch and America started going around and whoa

whoa whoa. These people were levitating off the ground they were. They couldn't believe what an experience this was and this is their merry go round. And I remember writing it. And I said OK I can all get out and when they all took a ride we really drew him into it. I came in because of my financial fund raising ability and the numbers of people and I felt in the city that could come together to raise the money that we needed to raise which was a million dollars. I didn't know what a million dollars was so much money until we had a collected $10 at a time. And that's a lot of money. The community immediately rallied with an overwhelming response. With the fund raising well underway the carousel was dismantled and placed in storage. An army of volunteers begin the painstaking process of restoring the ride.

Jimmy Curran who took the Merry-Go-Round down at mom park moved it into his warehouse and it was there for five years and it was during that period of time again all volunteers who painted every stick of wood on this merry go round. And John he had all of the horses the outside horses 12 or 14 in his living room and you could drive by there at night and it was a little eerie but there were the horses in the shadows of his living room. When the reports were coming in about the school kids raising $3000 in a couple weeks time and the community just donating like mad to try to save part of their heritage it became obvious that this community was mobilized that this community was actively interested in saving part of their heritage right from the start. I think the enthusiasm of the community. I think basically when we were doing the campaign we convinced people that just give us your money because if it doesn't work we'll give you your money back. And I don't know of any campaign that's ever made that

promise. We didn't have to give a dime back. When enough money was raised to purchase the carousel plans for a building to house it were drawn up and construction got underway. The refurbished ride was put back together and in December of 1993 five years after he did stop running at Mountain Park carousel number 80 had a new home and a new life in downtown Holyoke. And my recollection is it was two big days. One was the day we were able to go out and announce that we had the money had the check in our hand and we've given it to Mr. Collins And we took possession of the merry go round. The next big day the day that we had the building in the merry go round we pulled the plug and everything. The music filled the air and go to the very two great days you know and they were both very satisfying. Today the Holyoke carousel is one of approximately a hundred and fifty

antique wooden carousels still in Operation Mountain Park employee Jade Tucson can still be seen at the controls on occasion. There still is no married around operating in the country that's self-sustaining like this one. It survives because people love it and people pay a simple dollar bill just to get a ride on John he's a real happiness machine. It's a chunk of wood basically chunk of wood and metal. That's all it is. But with great skill it was crafted into something that somehow appeals to people. Kids just look at this and they're an oh like wow. And it's not a pretty vast scale. It's a very large ride and to see it moving that gracefully and to hear the music playing it does something to people I don't know what but I get a real joy in seeing other people get a lot of joy out of this ride. Each year Mother Nature reclaims a little bit more of the abandoned amusement park. It's hard to tell

where certain rides were or how the buildings used to look but the memories live on. Perhaps it's a particular smell popcorn cotton candy or a sign on the barker shouting the click click click of the roller coaster or a ride on the old carousel number 8. It brings you back to those summer days at the quaint little amusement park on the Hill. Whatever it was a year of Mountain Park is a memory to treasure a time in our lives when things seemed less complicated. A perfect escape from the concerns of everyday life. Major funding for Mountain Park memories has been provided by people's bank.

Additional funding has been provided by the following Holyoke area businesses Commonwealth registry of nurses oil gas and electric department hospital and the lake communities of East Hampton and North Hampton is your chance to own fine art in contemporary crafts from some of the nation's leading artisans is coming in may present the city collection. Taking Chances. Find out more at. This is Springfield. All the television and all of Western

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