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Lincoln Beachey shows off his daredevil flying skills at Niagara Falls on June 27, 1911. A century ago Beachey won a $1,500 prize in Orlando when he made the first powered airplane flight in Florida in a contest sponsored by the organizers of the Sub-Tropical Mid-Winter Exposition, now the Central Florida Fair. (Library of Congress)
Smell the corn dogs sizzling, the sweet aroma of cotton candy wafting over the midway? Yep, the Central Florida Fair returned Thursday and will rock and roll through March 7.
Its home has long been at the fairgrounds on West Colonial Drive, but for decades, the fair was a downtown event — at "Exposition Park" to the west of what’s now the Mayor Bob Carr Performing Arts Centre.
There, on sunny February days, Orlando schoolchildren could walk to the fair — an event so important that for many years public schools closed for the first day of it.
A century of fun
The fair traces its official founding to 1910, an even century ago. But its roots go back even further. In 1886, Orlando city fathers built a wooden exhibition hall on the shores of Lake Eola, where the Rosalind Club now sits. The aim was to have a kind of county fair to show off agricultural products and enjoy horse racing.
At their first event, the pioneers found their enthusiasm dampened by soggy weather. Lake Eola was so full after a rainy season that folks had to tiptoe into the hall on boards stretched across puddles of water.
Like so much else in Central Florida, the fair fell victim to the Great Freeze of 1894 and 1895, but after 15 years or so, agriculture and business had recovered enough for Central Florida boosters to turn their thoughts again to an exhibition promoting the area.
In 1910, the new Fair Association celebrated with a parade of flower-bedecked automobiles down Orange Avenue. But the organizers had higher aspirations to bring in the crowds, and their efforts made history.
Taking to the skies
The Wright brothers had taken to the air from the dunes of North Carolina’s Outer Banks only a few years before, in 1903.
With the kind of promotional zeal that runs deep in Orlando’s roots, the Fair Association in 1910 offered a whopping $1,500 to the first aviator who could stay in the air for five minutes during the exposition.
Pioneering pilot Lincoln Beachey of California, the 27th person to be licensed as a pilot in the United States, took the prize. It has been called the first powered airplane flight in Florida.
Beachey repeated his triumph for each day of the event, a dashing figure in his biplane built by the Wrights.
He went on to thrill crowds far and wide; his Orlando triumph was one of his first exploits. Soon, in 1911, Beachey returned to Florida for a show at Tampa and flew at night over the city, only a year after the first recorded night flight, in Knoxville, Tenn.
The no-nerves daredevil
Called the "man without nerves," Beachey made a daring flight over Niagara Falls, where he dipped under a railroad bridge and down the gorge.
In August 1911 he set a world altitude record of 11,150 feet in Chicago by climbing until his plane ran out of gas and glided back to earth.
Late that same year, Beachey emerged unhurt from an air-show crash, but two spectators were killed. He gave up flying for a while, but soon returned. Just after his 28th birthday, Beachey’s luck ran out. He survived a crash into the water near the Golden Gate, but drowned in the wreckage.
In Orlando, the no-nerves mantle was picked up by a local man, Carl Kuhl, who as a boy had seen Beachey’s 1910 flight at the fair.
Beachey’s 1910 Orlando triumph had ignited in Kuhl a passion for flying. After training in Jacksonville, he began a career in aviation and taught many other pilots in both World Wars.
In 1917 Kuhl thrilled Orlando fair crowds with flights in his military tractor biplane.
"His frills, curves, turns and twists awed spectators," historian Eve Bacon wrote, "— especially when, at the beginning of his return to earth, he exploded a bomb, and with smoke pouring from a smudge pot, he dipped and looped-the-loop with death-defying nerve."
In those days of early flight, our fair soared into history.
William F. Mangels, the “Wizard of Eighth Street,” was a machinist and a scholar. He immigrated from Germany in 1883 at age sixteen and by 1886 had a small machine shop in Coney Island where he made cast-iron targets for shooting galleries. Mangels then began studying patents and inventing mechanisms for rides. In 1901 he patented an improved version of the overhead jumping-horse suspension for carousels, the standard mechanism still used on most carousels today. He also invented rides such as the Tickler and the Whip and built the mechanisms for countless roller coasters and scenic railways, including the Ziz at Feltmans.
Mangels’s shop could repair any ride in Coney Island, but carousels became his specialty. He crafted the mechanisms for some of the most popular machines of the day. One was the B&B Carousel, which still operates in Coney Island. He teamed up with M.C. Illions, the famed woodcarver, and together they produced classics like the Feltmans carousel on West Tenth Street. Their combination of artistry and engineering produced what are considered the best carousels ever made.
Mangels was also an historian known for his scholarly work. In 1929 he founded the American Museum of Public Recreation on West Eighth Street and Neptune Avenue, and in 1952, at the age of eighty-five, he wrote a definitive history titled The Outdoor Amusement Industry. Mangels died in 1958 at the age of ninety-two. His former shop building on West Eighth Street is now an office of the Department of Motor Vehicles.
(the above sample is from a really interesting site about the History of Coney Island. Please check it out at http://www.coneyislandhistory.org/index.php)
Beginnings
Original Six Flags train still in operation (2007)
The name refers to the six flags that have flown over the state of Texas during its history, namely those of Spain, France, Mexico, The Republic of Texas, The Confederate States of America and the United States of America.
The Six Flags chain began in 1961 with the creation of Six Flags Over Texas by Angus G. Wynne of Arlington, Texas, which initially featured a Native American village, a gondola ride, a railroad, some Wild West shows, a stagecoach ride, and "Skull Island", a pirate-themed adventure attraction. There was also an excursion aboard "French" boats through a wilderness full of animated puppets. Over time, all of those attractions, except for the railroad, would be replaced by others, such as roller coasters, swing rides, log flumes, and shoot-the-chute rides, as well as an observation tower.
Growth and acquisitions
The original park in Arlington was sold in 1966 to a subsidiary of the Pennsylvania Railroad, which was actively pursuing non-railroad investments in an effort to diversify its sources of income. (In 1968, the company merged with the New York Central Railroad to form Penn Central Corp.) With the new owners came a more abundant supply of capital for geographic expansion and park additions. Six Flags opened Six Flags Over Georgia in 1967 and Six Flags Over Mid-America in 1971, which would, along with Six Flags Over Texas, be the only three parks that would be constructed by the company.
The company continued to grow by acquiring other independent parks. It purchased Astroworld in Houston, Texas in 1975, Great Adventure in Jackson, New Jersey in 1977 and Magic Mountain in Valencia, California in 1979 before Penn Central sold its assets to Bally Manufacturing Corporation in 1982. In 1984, the Great America theme park in Gurnee, Illinois was acquired from the Marriott hotel chain.
In 1984, as a result of its acquisition of Great America, the company acquired the rights to Warner Bros.‘ Looney Tunes animated characters for use in their properties. Bally surrendered control of the chain to Wesray Capital Corporation in a leveraged buyout in 1987. Time Warner quickly began to gain more leverage in the company, gaining a 19.5% stake in Six Flags in 1990 and then 50% in 1991, with the remaining shares of the company being split by Blackstone Group and Wertheim Schroder & Company. Time Warner purchased the remaining stakes in the company in 1993, changing the company’s name from Six Flags Corp. to Six Flags Theme Parks, Inc.
In 1996, Six Flags acquired the Fiesta Texas theme park in San Antonio, Texas.
History of Premier Parks
Premier Parks originally operated as theTierco Group, Inc., an Oklahoma-based real estate company. The company purchased the sleepy Frontier City theme park in Oklahoma City in 1982 for $1.2 million. Tierco had no intention of entering into the amusement park business, however. Company officials described Frontier City as "beat up" and "run down"; they planned to demolish the park, subdivide the land, and build a shopping center. However, given the economic downturns prompted by an oil bust in Oklahoma, developers lost interest in the idea of converting the park into a shopping center. So in 1984 Tierco hired Gary Story as general manager of Frontier City and sunk about $39 million into improving the park. As the new manager of Frontier City, he would quadruple that park’s attendance and revenues. Under his leadership, two new rides and a petting zoo were added to the park along with a new ticket booth, sales office, and improved food service.
In 1988, Tierco shifted its strategic direction from real estate to amusement parks. It sold much of its property during this time, which generated capital to reinvest in Frontier City. Once this reinvestment paid off in terms of increased business and profits, more capital became available, which meant further growth. Tierco opened White Water waterpark in 1991 (the name later being changed to White Water Bay). The company realized the key to boosting a park’s attendance was to add new and exciting rides and make it more attractive to families.
Tierco acquired the financially troubled Wild World in Largo, Maryland, in 1992 and later changed that park’s name to Adventure World. With a $500,000 investment, Tierco expanded Wild World’s kiddie section and remodeled its buildings to give the park a tropical look and feel. Story was promoted to executive vice-president after the purchase of Wild World. In 1994, he was promoted again to president and chief operating officer (COO). More flat rides and a couple more roller coasters were added to that park.
Since Tierco was on its way to becoming a "premier" regional theme park operator, in 1994 it changed its name to Premier Parks, Inc. Kieran E. Burke, chairman and chief executive officer (CEO), noted that the new name signified the beginning of a new era for the company. At the end of 1994, Premier Parks acquired an agreement to manage Elitch Gardens in Denver, Colorado which had just relocated from outside the city.
During the next few years, Premier picked up speed. In 1995, the company acquired parks from Funtime Parks, Inc., namely Geauga Lake near Cleveland, Ohio, Wyandot Lake in Columbus, Ohio, Darien Lake, near Buffalo, New York, and Lake Compounce near Hartford, Connecticut. In 1996, Premier added to its portfolio. It bought Elitch Gardens in Denver, Colorado outright, Waterworld USA waterparks in Sacramento and Concord, California, Riverside Park, near Springfield, Massachusetts, and Great Escape and Splashwater Kingdom at Lake George, New York. Premier immediately sold Lake Compounce to Kennywood.
Geauga Lake, Wyandot Lake, and Adventure World had water parks within their amusement parks while Frontier City had one that was adjacent and has separate admission. Riverside added their water park in 1994 just before selling to Premiere. Premier Parks also added water parks to Darien Lake, Lake Compounce (right before selling it), Elitch Gardens, and Great Escape in 1995 and 1996.
Premier went public in 1996 and raised nearly $70 million through an initial offering at $18 a share. The company planned to use the money to expand its ten parks and acquire new ones. In 1997, Premier purchased Kentucky Kingdom, in Louisville, Kentucky and Marine World, near San Francisco. A second public offering at $29 a share raised an additional two million dollars. A water park was added to Kentucky Kingdom in 1998. Nearly 8.8 million people visited Premier’s parks in 1996, making it the second largest chain in the world by attendance. They added amusement park rides and roller coasters to Marine World in 1997 as well. Premier Parks also made plans to acquire more parks and wound up buying a larger corporation late that year.
Accquisition of Six Flags by Premier Parks
Six Flags México.
Six Flags Theme Parks Inc. was purchased in whole on 1 April, 1998 from Time Warner by Premier Parks for $1.86 billion. Premier then began to apply the Six Flags name to a number of smaller parks that the company had already owned, including Darien Lake, Elitch Gardens, Kentucky Kingdom and Adventure World.
In 2000, Premier Parks assumed the Six Flags Theme Parks, Inc. name and continued re-branding its parks, most notably the former Geauga Lake into Six Flags Ohio. Six Flags began vigorously expanding, attempting to branch out internationally, acquiring numerous properties across the country and overseas including the Walibi chain and historic Belgian park Bellewaerde in Europe, La Ronde in Canada, and Reino Aventura in Mexico. Three of those parks were re-branded as Six Flags parks–Walibi Flevo became Six Flags Holland, Walibi Wavre became Six Flags Belgium and Reino Aventura became Six Flags Mexico.
In 2001, Six Flags acquired the former SeaWorld Ohio from Anheuser-Busch, merged it with the adjacent Six Flags Ohio and re-branded the park again, this time into Six Flags Worlds of Adventure. The park was positioned to compete against northern Ohio’s more famous amusement park, Cedar Point.
In the early evening of May 27, 1911, an electric light fell into hot tar and exploded on the Dreamland amusement pier at Coney Island.
Robert Stolarik for The New York Times
The Brooklyn borough president, Marty Markowitz, at the unveiling of the fabled Dreamland Pier bell on Tuesday.
Overnight, the pier’s ornate white buildings, restaurants, thrill rides, ballroom and tents — which attracted 40,000 people a day — were vaporized in the ensuing fire, said Charles Denson, a Coney Island historian. By the time the sun rose on what would have been the opening day of the season, the 1,200-foot-long iron pier had melted into the ocean, taking part of New York’s history with it. “This is the only major item to survive; there aren’t even photos of the fire,” Mr. Denson said on Tuesday morning, gesturing to a 500-pound bronze bell, 3 feet high and 3 feet wide and flecked with the remnants of barnacles, that was recovered by divers last month.
The bell was unveiled at Brooklyn Borough Hall, and there are plans being discussed for a tour of other city buildings, including City Hall and the New York Aquarium.
The bell, marked “James Gregory, New York, 1885,” for its maker and casting date, is suspended in a wooden frame above a bucket of water, which, in a preservation effort, is pumped over the bell to keep it wet.
“It was on the tip of the pier and used to announce the arrivals and departures of steamships from Brooklyn and the tip of Manhattan,” said David Grider, an architect and amateur historian who helped trace the origins of the bell to a foundry on the Lower East Side.
Mr. Denson added, “Millions would have heard this bell during Coney Island’s heyday.”
A picture mounted in Borough Hall shows men in stiff suits, corseted women and excited children as they debarked from boats run by the Iron Steamboat Company between the two boroughs: 35 cents one way and 45 cents round trip, according to a timetable on display.
The pier, and its artifacts, were thought lost forever until Gene Ritter, a professional diver in Brooklyn, discovered remnants of Dreamland in 1990. Many dives later — in the warm, clear water of an afternoon last November — Mr. Ritter and one of his diving partners, Louie Scarcella, found the bell. It sat 25 feet down, upright but tilted slightly in the sand, Mr. Ritter said. “I couldn’t believe my eyes,” he said.
The bell was lifted from the sea with inflatable bags last month and towed to the Gateway Marina on Flatbush Avenue. It was then hauled by crane onto land. The bell was in good condition and had mostly “resisted marine growth,” said Mr. Denson, the executive director of the Coney Island History Project. Mr. Ritter said he wanted to return to the dive site in a bigger boat to check for other items. “Every single artifact we find will stay here,” he said. “They belong to the people.”
Other scuba enthusiasts may have different aims. “There are so many scavengers who would steal something like this and sell it,” said Mr. Denson. “Some people think the bell is worth up to $1 million, as it’s so old and so representative of Coney Island’s history.”
Mr. Ritter said he was pursuing legal means to preserve the underwater find, declining to elaborate for fear of jeopardizing those safeguards. In the meantime, he maintains a network of local spies who inform him when any activity is spotted on the water near the site.
Mr. Denson indulged in a fantasy: “It would just be easier if we could clone this like the DNA of a dinosaur,” he said, looking at the bell, “and grow the whole of Dreamland back.”
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Tue Feb 9, 2010 10:45 pm (PST)
Things have been quiet for awhile, so I thought I might drop a line and take everyone down memory lane. When I was 16, I finally got up the nerve to go see both the Harlem in Havana review and the big Moulin Rouge show….the latter was right across from the Harlem show on the backend of the huge RAS midway. The lot at the Oklahoma City Fairgrounds was a perfect oval and big enough to handle RAS because it was designed for that show. It had been playing there for as long as I could remember. They even made sure to build a separate rail spur to handle the unloading and another to park the sleepers so they would be closer to the midway.
The Harlem show was good…lots of great dancers, singers and one comedian that sort of shocked me with someof the things he alluded to (remember this was in the 50’s). I figured it was an adult show so I pretended it was cool with me. The thing that sticks with me the most is one of the girls in the chorus line dancing on stage, cgewing gum and talking to the girl dancing next to her and never missing a step. I thought she was such a professional…only later did I realize she was just bored out of her mind doing that same routine over and over several times a day! She got her act together, though, when the emcee gave her a dirty look. She stopped talking, but never stopped chewing that gum in beat to the music!
The Moulin Rouge show was a different matter. RAS never had any hard core girl shows, but for a dew eyed kid of 16, the semi-scantily clad ladies with more than ample chests were quite daring and exciting. I remember being impressed with how professional it all seemed…a huge stage, live band, big staircases for the girls to walk down…and of course the ladies themselves! I really felt like a grown up! They did a candy pitch (taffy in a box) before the show….and you were ‘almost assured’ there would be a very expensive $5 fountain pen in your box of candy of you would just pop for 25 cents for it. Well, I didn’t see anyone winning any pens…I didn’t. I do remember the spiel the seller had, though…quite the salesman. When the show was over I felt like I had seen more thn my money’s worth. I still have the 15 cent program!!!
One final memory and I’ll stop boring everyone: I saw the "Dancing Waters" show (was it only one year they carried it?) and it was amazing. They had pictures out front of the show when it appeared at Radio City Music Hall and I was sort of expecting that kind of extravaganza…but despite my disappointment that it wasn’t actually a 5,000 seat theater inside the tent…the show was very beautiful to watch. I’m a little confused about the music…either it was pre-recorded or someone played the organ…not sure. There was a lot of press coverage about Dancing Waters because it was quite spectacular. I checked it out after the presentation and remember the tank being quite deep and the huge array of pipes and fixtures completely filling the bottom and all of that was accompanied by a vast number of underwater lighting. Quite amazing to see!
Royal American Shows had to be seen to be believed….it was huge and everything about it was not only top notch, but kept clean. The finest artists did the sideshow bannerlines, sides of wagons and other artwork, and it was like a thundering jewel to see! What memories!
Bob S.
With the sad death of a fabled strongman who performed at Coney Island, an aspect of amusement side shows comes to light again. Joe Rollino, 104, a certified member of Coney Island’s side show history where Charles Atlas once ruled, died recently when he couldn’t stop a Ford minivan as he stepped off a Bay Ridge curb in mid-block.
While we still accept the muscle man image as part of our social makeup, other, less attractive aspects of circus side shows have faded from memory. Out of the Coney Island freak shows that attracted as many as 20,000 daily visitors in 1915, only the revived Freak Show at Dick Zigun’s Coney Island USA still pushes on.
Side shows began in 17th century Europe with “Siamese twins” and “Elephant men” in traveling shows and circuses and attracted audiences of “normal” people who thrilled at seeing “rarities” or deformed, obese, diseased, anemic, genetic mutations, even mutilated people (and disfigured animals) on exhibition. Not only were strongmen, tattooed men and sword swallowers in this class but also natives of foreign climes—such as pygmies, head hunters, Zulu warriors and “Esquimeux.” In the 1930s visitors could see a 5-legged calf and a 6-legged sheep on Surf Avenue.
America caught the fever in the 19th century when P.T. Barnum introduced Tom Thumb among other “oddities” to New York, while Coney Island capitalized on the craze in the early 20th century. Outside the metropolises, traveling circuses brought the attractions to the rural areas. Of course, some acts were exposed as hoaxes.
The so-called “dime museums” of the Victorian Age featured freak shows as their main attraction of the side show, which also included acrobats. The first Coney Island freak show opened in 1880. Dreamland’s Lilliputia, a “Midget City,” opened in 1904 with 300 midgets. In 1905, Dreamland manager Sam Gumpertz imported 212 Bantocs from the Philippines and 18 Algerian horsemen. When the amusement park burned in 1911, Gumpertz continued the Dreamland Circus Side Show starring the Human Cannonball.
“Professor” Sam Wagner started his World Circus freak show at Coney Island in 1922. To legitimize the show, articles about the diseases behind the oddities appeared in the popular press. Steeplechase Circus Big Show entered the competition in 1925 with a 10 platform freak show. Other boardwalk shows appeared at the Strand Museum in 1928 and Humbert’s Museum later. Rosen’s Wonderland Circus Side Show in 1930, featured the Two-Mouthed Boy from Texas (but he was secretly from Brooklyn.)
Harry Houdini (Erich Weiss) began his public life as a strong man in traveling circuses but then focused on magic. Charles Atlas (Angelo Siciliano) became a Coney Island muscle man in the 1920s. Spike Howard, featured in the Dreamland Circus in 1930, pulled a truck with his teeth. Warren Travis joined the World Circus Side Show. Lou Ferrigno, later “The Hulk,” worked out on Avenue U alongside Arnold Schwarzenegger. Joe Rollino not only demonstrated superhuman strength, but had also been a boxer under the name Kid Dundee and was an active member of the Polar Bear Club. However, some “strongmen” weakened phone books by baking them before tearing them in half.
While strongmen and acrobats attracted many, the more unusual “displays” became the big moneymakers for circus managers. So dwarves joined Jolly Irene (689 lbs.) and Lady Olga (Jane Barnell), the bearded lady with a 13 inch long beard; Jean Carroll, with 700 tattoo designs on her body; and Percilla, The Monkey Girl, who married Benjano, the Alligator Boy. In 1941 Ramona was billed as Europe’s “miracle sex girl.”
Some exhibitors were contortionists; Julee-Julian was a hermaphrodite; the Gibbs Sisters were conjoined; Edna Price became a “neon tube swallower”; Zippo and Pippo “pinheads,” had sub-normal intelligence; and Capt. Fred Walters, the Blue Man, ate silver nitrate.
In 1938 Parks Commissioner Robert Moses, who previously restricted side shows to Coney Island’s Bowery, brought Wagner, Rosen and Fred Sidell into court in an attempt to rid the amusement park of side shows, but the next year Wagner returned with “Uncle Charlie Pascansas,” a 130 year old who had married 17 times. By the 1950s, interest in exploiting “freaks” faded until Zigun opened his Sideshows by the Seashore in 1983, prompting resurgence at traveling circuses across the country.
The entertainment industry saw a profitable angle from side shows. In 1932 Tod Browning’s film Freaks told the story of a traveling freak show. The film, Johnny Got His Gun, by Dalton Trumbo tells of a maimed World War I veteran who requests to be put in a freak show to demonstrate the inhumanity of war.
A well-received 1997 Broadway musical, Side Show, re-tells the story of conjoined twins, Daisy and Violet Hilton, who capitalized on their malformation to leave the circus act and become entertainers in the 1930s. In the novel, Phantom of Manhattan, a sequel to Phantom of the Opera, by Frederick Forsythe, the phantom flees to America in 1906 and hides in a Coney Island side show. It will soon be an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, Love Never Dies.
So the life of the unusual may not be enviable but audiences still crave to be enthralled by the strange and abnormal—which may explain today’s fascination with “reality” shows.
Mankind’s yen for low-brow entertainment often is considered modern-era folly – a love of violent films, trashy celebrities and pants-on-the-ground reality television.
The past was wholesome and thoughtful.
Then along comes another reminder of that misperception: A Colo man wrecked trains for entertainment, and 50,000 people witnessed his first crash on Sept. 9, 1890, at the Iowa State Fair.
"Head-On Joe" Connolly would buy old locomotives, lay down track, face the engines off, fire them up and drive them into each other, creating a metal-crunching, thunderous crash producing showers of steam and flashes of fire. Spectators cheered, then ran to the wreckage to strip it apart for souvenirs.
We’re amateurs today: We just turn on a rerun of "Die Hard."
"I’m no different than anyone else as far as the human race," said Jim Reisdorff, the David City, Neb., author of the new book, "The Man Who Wrecked 146 Locomotives: The Story of ‘Head-On Joe’ Connolly" (South Platte Press, $19.95). "Just the idea of seeing two locomotives crash together is intriguing – to see destruction."
This goofy part of Iowa State Fair history is known to visitors of the State Fair Museum’s exhibit and short film showing Connolly’s wreck.
But Reisdorff expands on the early 20th Century entertainment trend with text and photographs, showing that Connolly was among the nation’s finest wreckers.
Reisdorff’s interests mirror Connolly, who grew up with 10 siblings near Colo and watched the Cedar Rapids and Missouri Railroads pass through. Reisdorff’s earliest memories as a young boy were picking up his sisters at the Omaha station as they were coming home from college.
Reisdorff eventually started a publishing business that produces books on railroad history, including Connolly’s rather odd story.
Connolly was in the theatrical business for 40 years in Des Moines but in a stoic Iowa manner quietly amassed a 36-year career of 73 train wrecks, including three at the state fair in 1896, 1922 and 1932.
He was one of the first to wreck trains after seeing an exhibition in Columbus, Ohio, earlier in 1896. Reisdorff said he was businesslike in his staging but made it clear: "There was the right way, the wrong way and his way."
Although a staged crash in Texas a week after the Iowa’s 1896 exhibition caused deaths and injuries, Connolly claimed to never cause as much as a scratch to spectators from trains colliding at up to 30 miles per hour.
"But during his last collision at the state fair, there were at least two spectators who received slight injuries from flying debris," Reisdorff said. "One of them was a lady at the fair on her honeymoon."
Connolly traveled the country to stage wrecks and some newspaper reporters thought it fairly dull – a minute of anticipation followed by a few seconds of buckling trains.
Connolly upped the spectacle. He added dynamite on the tracks to create noise and wooden rail cars soaked in gas to start on fire. The anticipation of danger, symbolized in those days by horrifyingly real train wrecks that caused death, was half the entertainment. Engineers operating the trains jumped from the locomotives before the crash.
Just what possessed folks to see such entertainment?
For the first time, Americans in the Industrial Revolution had time for leisure and thrill-seeking, Emily Godbey of Iowa State University told Reisdorff. It also was fueled by Luddism, a yearning to see the destruction of modern mechanisms.
The events grew in popularity through the first decade of the 20th century with 162,000 attending in New York City.
The 1932 state fair crash netted between $12,000 and $15,000 and was credited with both saving the fair from loss during the Depression and padding the pockets of Connolly, who made big money for the day – $4,000.
Film newsreel teams captured the event and it was shown worldwide.
The era of staged train wrecks ended two years after Connolly’s last state fair event. He died in 1948 at age 89.
"The art of staged train wrecks has today morphed into speed-car races and monster trucks and that kind of thrill seeking," Reisdorff said.
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The Mission The history of the outdoor amusement business industry is rich and colorful. Movies, books and music have been written. A large number of television documentaries have been produced. This blog will attempt to bring some of the more obscure and difficult to find materials will be online for both a trip down memory lane and somewhat educational for the younger members of our industry, in the hopes they will not repeat the same mistakes and take glory in the industry they have chosen.
Please use the search area, below to find information posted on this site and to be taken to it.
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