Feb 5, 2006 10:36 pm US/Central
Chicagoan Rebuilds Riverview Amusement Park
by Vince Gerasole
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
When Riverview Amusement Park closed for the season in 1967, few suspected that it would never reopen.
But the owners of the park that had thrilled Chicagoans for more than half a century quietly sold it off and no one got to say goodbye.
CBS 2's Vince Gerasole takes us Inside Chicago to meet a man who found a way to go back to Riverview and visit it any time he wants.
Look closely and you're almost there again, racing through the entrance, past Aladdin's Castle, on your way to one of seven roller coasters at Riverview Park.
Ed Fruh loved Riverview so much, he decided to rebuild it. Not the whole thing, mind you, but most of it, in a much more manageable scale for just one caretaker.
"I didn't start doing it with the intent that I was going to create something great," Fruh said.
But great it is. From the Flying Turns to the Bobs
"My record on the Bobs was 13 times; that's all the money I had and then I had to get off," Fruh said.
From the Shoot-the-Chutes splash to the nearly 200-foot-tall parachute jump, Fruh created his H-O scale models without blueprints or drawings. Working from vivid memories and old photographs, their sizable realism is uncanny.
"I wanted to see if I could scratch build something that was still in my mind," Fruh said. "And by golly, it came out pretty good."
Fruh first attended the park as a youngster during the 1930s.
"The rides were 2 cents each, and you always had to make sure you had enough money to get the streetcar ride back home. It was a long walk," he said.
And in his teens, he went every chance he could.
"In your high school days, it was a great place to take a date," Fruh said. "You could be a big spender for a buck."
For 64 years on 64 acres at the corner of Belmont and Western, a different world awaited Chicagoans young and old. In all that time, through several wars and the Great Depression, the slogan remained the same: "Laugh your troubles away."
For Ed Fruh the memories are priceless
"I can't go back to Riverview, nobody can go back there, it's gone," he said. "I'd give a million dollars to be able to go back to Riverview one more time and enjoy those memories that are now gone."
(© MMVI, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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