The Vault

CHICAGO (CBS) ― It's hard to imagine when you look over your shoulder as you drive across the overpass at Western, Belmont and Clybourn avenues.

For anyone 40 or under, it's always looked pretty much the same. On the north end, there is a sprawling strip mall with a Jewel, Dominick's, Walgreens and Toys 'R' Us. To the south is the Belmont District and Area police station. To the west is the DeVry University campus, a solitary apartment building, and a wooded area along the banks of the Chicago River's North Branch.

But older Chicagoans have much different memories of that piece of land. From 1904 to 1967, it was the site of Riverview Park – the world's largest amusement park, which attracted more than 200 million people in its 63 years.

The 150-acre piece of land where Riverview stood is now thought of as part of the Roscoe Village neighborhood. But in the late 19th century, it was a wooded area on the outskirts of the city called German Sharpshooter Park, a shooting range and picnic ground owned by the Schmidt family.

The family patriarch, Wilhelm Schmidt, added a handful of rides to the park, and his son, George, expanded it using Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen as his model. Riverview Park opened in 1904.

In the 63 years Riverview was open, more than 200 million people came to heed the slogan barked by television pitchman Dick "Two-Ton" Baker – "laugh your troubles away."

When people talk about Riverview, they remember coming to the park as children, or maybe on dates. They talk about the Bobs roller coaster, which opened in 1926, and featured an 85-foot vertical drop.

""It could put your stomach in your throat quicker than you could say, 'Ernie Banks,'" CBS 2 correspondent Bob Wallace reported in the early 1980s.

The Bobs was one of nine roller coasters; the others featured names such as the Fireball, the Comet, and the Silver Streak. A ride on the soaring Pair-O-Chutes tower meant a free-fall of 200 feet. The Shoot-the-Chutes was a drop ending in a thrilling splash.

In Aladdin's Castle, the danger was getting lost in the maze, or climbing past Aladdin's beard, where air hoses sent the women's skirt sky high.

And some of the attractions seem unimaginable by today's standards. A freak show featuring a tattooed lady, a double-jointed man, and most famously, Popeye. Patrons also placed bets on a race with live monkeys. But at the time, those were standard fare for an amusement park.

Employees found the park as thrilling and electric as patrons.

"Everybody that worked there always took on a name like wherever you worked, if you worked in a hot dog stand, you were probably Hot Dog Willie, and Penny Arcade Joe, and different people like that; they all took on a different name wherever they worked, that's the kind of name they got," roller coaster brakeman Richard Nelson told CBS 2. "I enjoyed it, in fact, I met my wife there. She was a cashier in one of the penny arcades, so she was Penny Arcade Shirley and I was Blue Streak Dick."

Fear came from the rides, not from crime.

"It was a different era; it was a lot more innocent," said Shoot-the-Chutes boatman Jerry Casper. "Keep your hands inside the boat, don't grab the side of the boat, hold onto the handles."

But things didn't stay that idyllic. The park grew seedier as it grew older, and in the 1960s, safety concerns began to mount as fights broke out.

Racial tensions also mounted at Riverview, particularly because of a game called the "African Dip" in which an African-American man taunted passersby who threw balls at a target to send him into a tank of water below. The NAACP pressured the park's owners to eliminate the game in the late 1950s, but tension between white and African-American patrons of the park continued to build through the 1960s.

Riverview hung on through the Summer of Love in 1967, and at the end of that season, signs were painted advertising an anticipated 1968 season. But on Oct. 3, 1967, the owners announced that the park would not reopen, and by February 1968, all the rides had been leveled.

One amusement park venue, the Riverview Roller Rink, remained open until 1971, when it was destroyed by fire. The Riverview carousel is still in operation at the Six Flags Over Georgia Amusement Park, and several reports say another ride, the Rotor, found a second life for several years as the Cajun Cliffhanger at Six Flags Great America.

And several visitors have noticed the foundations of a few of the rides are still visible in the wooded area near the river bank, now used for BMX and mountain biking.

Some 42 years after Riverview closed, there are few amusement parks like it that remain. That point was hit home on May 20, 2009, when the owners of Kiddieland, a Riverview contemporary in Melrose Park, announced that their 80-year-old amusement park would also be closing.

For more about Riverview, click here for information from historian Chuck Wlodarczyk.

(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

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