Historical photos of some of the State of Michigan’s old amusement parks from today’s Detroit Free Press

Article here: https://on.lsj.com/2PgpSGD

Sorry, the free press re-published the original story from the Lansing Journal (I didn’t realize that when I published it here).

These are really great - thanks. Having spent a fair amount of time in Detroit recently for a project, I'm interested in what used to be not to far from where the project's happening. Shame they're gone. It's amazing how many wooden rides existed all over the place back in the first half of the 20th century.

This caption was amusing, though:

"The Cyclone at Lake Lansing Amusement Park was a 65-foot figure-eight roller coaster. The quarter-mile long roller coaster made the distance in about 1½ minutes, with an estimated speed down the first dip at 75 miles per hour."

Pretty sure some elementary physics could disprove that.

Ugh. Nice photos, but I couldn't get past the first 15 or so since clicking through them caused weird things to happen, like scroll me 1/3 of the way down the page at random. Does anyone know how to design a decent web site anymore?

hambone, it is a shame these parks are gone. It's further salt in the wounds to realize that the Electric Park in Detroit would have sat across the street from the old Uniroyal factory which, having been abandoned for almost 40 years, is one of the country's most-polluted superfund sites. Things might have been different with a valuable asset sitting across the street (and that location across from Belle Isle on the river would've been amazing for an amusement park).

Thanks for the link. I grew up near where Oakwood Park stood and thought I had seen every picture of it until this. Good stuff.