Idora Park

About this property

Idora Park (1899–1984) was an amusement park in Youngstown, Ohio, United States, also known as "Youngstown's Million Dollar Playground." Built by the Youngstown Park and Falls Street Railway Company, the park's expansion coincided with the growth of the South Side of Youngstown, Ohio, in the Fosterville neighborhood. Prior to its closure in the wake of a devastating fire, Idora Park was one of the nation's few remaining urban amusement parks. The park opened as Terminal Park on May 30, 1899, which was Decoration Day (now known as Memorial Day). At that time in America, it was common for amusement parks called trolley parks to sprout at the end of trolley lines to generate weekend revenue. Without an admission fee, anyone who could afford the trolley fare could enter the park. This trolley park's first season presented its guests a bandstand, theater, dance pavilion, a roller coaster, a circle swing, and concession stands. It was later renamed Idora Park. When a bridge spanning the Mahoning River opened on Youngstown's Market Street on May 23, 1899, the entire South Side was unrolled for development. The trolley line linking the downtown to Idora Park ran south on Market, west on Warren, south on Hillman Street, Sherwood west to Glenwood Avenue, then cruised through Parkview Avenue (west) into the Idora terminal. One of the park's many attractions was a wooden roller coaster with a length of 3,000 feet (910 m) and the height of 85 feet high, called the Wild Cat, which opened in 1930. The state-of-the-art, three-minute ride was hailed by roller coaster connoisseurs across the country. The Wild Cat was designed by Herbert Paul Schmeck, who held 100 patents for roller coaster innovations. In 1984, the Wild Cat was still ranked among the top ten roller coasters in the world. Another notable feature at the park was the Jack Rabbit, a wooden roller coaster constructed in 1910 by TM Harden. Standing 70 feet (21 meters) tall and spanning 2,200 feet (670 meters) in length, it provided a ride lasting two minutes and thirty seconds. During the 1930s, the coaster underwent expansions and structural adjustments.In a bid to attract more visitors for the 1984 season, the park's owners decided to reverse the direction of the Jack Rabbit's trains and rebranded it as the Back Wabbit. The Kiddieland area was originally a giant concrete swimming pool. When the park was built, it included the pool and a large bath house. A large hole was drilled into the pool to connect to an underground saltwater spring, creating the only saltwater pool in the country. To address the park's space concerns, the pool was replaced with a children's rides section during the 1950s. The bath house became a shelter and storage area.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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