Following the Civil War, increasing mechanization was making life easier for the growing middle class, and more and more people found themselves with something few had known before... leisure time. More people wanted to spend this leisure time by getting away from the bustle, noise and smoke of the burgeoning city. Coney Island's beginning goes back to 1870 when a church group rented out for a picnic an apple orchard owned by James H. Parker. The group chartered a steamboat to take them on the 10-mile river jaunt to the 19 1/2-acre beautiful orchard on the banks of the Ohio River, Word spread of this serene picnic spot, and Parker quickly discovered that he could make more money renting out the grove to groups than he could selling apples. Parker's Grove became so popular that he soon added a shelter, dance hall and merry-go-round to entertain his guests, and steamboats began making regular summer excursions to the popular orchard.

In early 1886 – Grover Cleveland was the U.S. President then – Parker sold the grove to a steamboat company led by Captain William F. McIntyre for $17,500. McIntyre bought the grove to help his steamboat business. He added rides and refreshment stands and renamed it "Ohio."

Grove, the Coney Island of the West." In its second year of operation, it would be called just Coney Island, named after the most famous amusement park in the world, Coney Island of New York. However, the Ohio park wanted a wholesome family facility rather than a park like the one with a rough reputation in New York. Cincinnati's Coney Island management had a new, rugged creed: "All bad characters will be made to keep straight or be excluded from the grounds." It would become known as "the most beautiful, all-day summer resort in America."

They Dug A Hole And Filled It With Water

This new Coney Island opened June 21, 1886 and grew rapidly over the years. In 1893. the park dug a hole out of 11 acres of cornfield and filled it with water, creating a huge beautiful lake called Lake Como – Coney's centerpiece, still there today. Whereas in the 1800s, visitors plied the beautiful lake in rowboats and canoes, today visitors enjoy this quiet, relaxing area in pedal boats. On an island in Lake Como, management added a popular "Shoot The Chutes" ride (a boat ride down an incline into the lake) and the "Circle Swing" (a swinging gondola ride high above the water). The park also added a Ferris wheel, two popular roller coasters ("The Scenic Railway" and the "Dip-The-Dips") and many other rides. Yet another roller coaster, "The Skyrocket," with its new fangled "under-the-track" wheel system was added in 1921. For the next 85 years, Cincinnati's Coney Island would grow and prosper, becoming one of the most popular amusement parks in the country; in fact, during the golden age of such attractions, Cincinnati's Coney Island became known as "America's Finest Amusement Park."

Steamboating to Coney

In the early 1900s, in these formative days before Interstate highways, getting to Coney Island was half the fun. Because roads were poor and not everyone had cars, the preferred way to get to the park was aboard one of the charismatic paddlewheelers that plied the Ohio River. In fact, at one point some 19 sidewheelers made regular excursions from downtown's Cincinnati's public landing to Coney Island's Ohio River wharf. Over the years, the boats became famous landmarks on the Ohio River, their whistles and calliopes in the springtime heralding the opening of Coney Island. Some of the better known boats were the Guiding Star, the Island Princess, the Morning Star, the East St. Louis and the G.W. Hill. Coney Island was easily becoming the area's entertainment of choice, with laugh-filled days and star-lit summer nights.

The most famous steamboat making the trip to Coney Island was the Island Queen. One source reported, "She was a floating palace. She was painted white and green. She carried 4,000 passengers. She had 7,000 electric lights and a ballroom with a 20,000 square foot hardwood dance floor... She was an all-steel lady, a glittering sidewheeler that burned oil but had a steam calliope." Unfortunately, while on a trip to Pittsburgh in 1947, a welder's spark ignited 30,000 gallons of fuel oil and the resulting explosion rocked the Monongahela waterfront, breaking windows two blocks away. The Island Queen blew up at the dock and burned to death, killing nineteen people.

Ownership Changes

World War I hurt Coney Island's attendance because of wartime restrictions, and the park was sold to J.H. Hubbard, a rich Pittsburgh steel businessman. A year later, in 1924, he sold it to a group of Cincinnati businessmen led by George Schott. For the next four decades, under the leadership of the Schott family (George Schott, 1927-35; Ed Schott, 1936-61; brother-in-law Ralph Wachs, 1962-71), Coney Island grew and expanded to 120 acres and added many rides and attractions, a new entranceway, shady picnic shelters and a grand landscaped mall.

The 1920s began a golden age for Coney Island that would last for 45 years. Many popular attractions were added, such as the Tumblebug, the Twister (the world's first totally enclosed roller coaster), two Tunnels of Love, the Dodgems, a beautiful carousel (1927), the famous Wildcat roller coaster (which stood for 39 years), Bluebeard's Palace haunted house, an airplane ride, and many others. The Wildcat roller coaster opened in 1926 on the east end of the Coney mall, and would remain the park's star thrill ride attraction until the 1960s.

A Landmark Year in 1925

The banner year for Coney Island was 1925. The largest and most famous of the new attractions opened that year and has remained open ever since. Sunlite Pool was 200' by 401' and was then, and still is, the largest recirculating swimming pool in the world, holding 3 1/2 million gallons of water. The water, pure enough to pass U.S. government drinking water standards, originally was treated in a large filtration plant located in the locker building. Sunlite Pool hosted the U.S. Olympic swimming trials in 1932 with one of the competitors being Johnny Weissmuller, a future Tarzan in the movies. Until 1940, a white sandy beach on the pool's west side was a popular sunning spot. Sunlite Pool has been in continuous operations since its opening, despite the fact that the remainder of the amusement park around it was abandoned in the early 1970s.

The 1925 season also saw the opening of a new dance pavilion whose very name would mean romance for generations of Cincinnatians – Moonlite Gardens. Moonlite Gardens was originally built as an open air pavilion with a rubberized dance floor. But by 1928, the facility was enclosed and a wood dance floor was installed and new entrance built. Crowds demanded another expansion in 1947 when a two-story entrance structure was added, designed in the French Colonial style with winding staircases and wrought-iron railings .

During the 30s and 40s of the Big Band era, Moonlite Gardens, with its enclosed bandstand and huge open-air dance floor, was host to some of the most famous entertainers in the country. It was said that anybody who was anybody in the entertainment field played Moonlite at one time or another, from Glenn Miller, Guy Lombardo, Benny Goodman and Jimmy Dorsey, to Artie Shaw, Stan Kenton, Count Basie, Al Hirt and many more. Cincinnatian Doris Day got her start there. "Moonlite Gardens was a magical venue in every sense," says Nolting. So much so that, scheduled for the wrecker's ball with the rest of the amusement park in 1971, the public outcry was such that the facility was thankfully spared, and today remains one of Coney's popular attractions, throughout the summer hosting "Hot Wax" nights of hop, bop and rock.

Mother Nature Steps In

Business remained static in the early 30s, the effects of America's Depression era, but in mid-January 1937 Mother Nature interceded in Coney Island's fortunes. It rained and rained, and the Ohio River rose and rose and rose. The granddaddy of all floods was the 1937 inundation, and the 80-foot crest of this flood virtually destroyed Coney Island, nearly closing her forever. But the public wouldn't have it and, amazingly, the park was totally rebuilt and opened for business in May of that same year, including completion of a new roller coaster, "The Clipper." This roller coaster would be rebuilt and reconfigured in 1947 into the "Shooting Star," which would become Coney Island's all-time landmark thrill ride. And Coney continued to grow, becoming more popular than ever, even during World War II, when wives and girlfriends would gather around Sunlite Pool -- sometimes nearly 8,000 strong -- to exchange stories from the battlefields and to relieve the stress of wartime America. Following the Armistice, Post-War America was ready to play and party, and in the midwest Coney Island was the place to do it. The park was continually jammed, and added rides and attractions nearly as fast as they could be built.

Of course, amusement parks are often measured by the rides they have, and, over the years, Coney Island boasted some of the best-loved rides anywhere, including, in the mid-1920s, the world's first totally enclosed roller coaster, The Twister. Still today, people who visited Coney Island in the 50s and 60s talk about their ride favorites, whether it be the Wildcat and Shooting Star roller coasters, the dodgems, the Whip, the Tumblebug, the Sky Ride or the Lost River tunnel of love.

Stormy Clouds On The Horizon

In the 1960s, when old and worn facilities and public apathy forced amusement parks across the country into closings because of declining business, Coney Island remained more popular than ever... and yet the end was drawing near. The famous animator Walt Disney visited Coney Island to study the park before building his dream project, a new age "themed" amusement park in California called Disneyland. But if these were exciting and heady times for Coney Island, a foreboding cloud was forming on the horizon – after more than 80 years of operations, Coney Island was, ironically, becoming a victim of its very own success. There was no more room to grow, and the river kept flooding. And the eventual opening of Disneyland in California was taking amusement parks to a different, polished, high-tech "theme park" level. So, in 1968, Coney Island was sold to Cincinnati's Taft Broadcasting Company, who planned to move many of the park's rides and attractions 20 miles north of the Ohio River's waters to Kings Mills, Ohio. The new theme park would be called Kings Island.

In the spring of 1971, Coney Island was opening for its 85th and final season. It was a tremendous year with 2.3 million visitors, many of them coming to Coney to view for the last time an entertainment institution that had meant so much to so many for so long. Thus, the final day of Coney Island, as millions of Midwesterners knew and loved it, was on September 6, 1971. The crowd was gigantic, wall to wall, as if the people turning up in huge numbers somehow thought their presence was going to save the old park from the wrecker's ball. But, inevitably, at the end of that fateful day, as it was reported, "the crowds went home, the workmen went about turning out the lights, and an era came to an end." Some rides were relocated to Kings Island, some sold, some demolished.

Kings Island did indeed open in 1972, and it looked as if the beloved Coney Island on the Ohio River would vanish forever, becoming no more than a childhood memory in the minds of millions of Midwesterners. But Coney Island, as it had so many times in the past, endured yet again by reinventing itself. With a paraphrasing nod to Mark Twain, reports of Coney Island's demise were greatly exaggerated. Though the rides and much of the park had been sorrowfully dismantled around it, Sunlite Pool never did close, staying open each summer. In 1973, the picnic grove re-opened for groups to enjoy, and people came back. In 1974, a beautiful tennis complex was built, which for years would host the Western Open professional tennis tournament until it moved to the Golf Center at Kings Island and renamed the ATP Championship. To the delight of nearly everyone, Moonlite Pavilion -- once home to the Dodgems, Cuddle-Up and The Whip -- opened in 1976 for live entertainment. Today it continues as a popular venue for weddings, private parties, business meetings and Coney's Big Band dances.

But a significant move came in 1984 when the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra built the ever-popular Riverbend Music Center where the Wildcat and Shooting Star once stood, on donated Coney property, bringing renewed attention to the area with its lengthy lineup of the world's most popular entertainers -- Sinatra, Mathis, Buffet and more. Says Nolting, "We realized attention would be refocused on Coney Island, and we immediately went to work to start bringing Coney back again as one of the area's premier family attractions."

Piece By Piece Coney Was Reborn

In 1985, Moonlite Gardens' main building, with its beautiful southern-style white brick and wrought iron, was renovated and reopened for entertainment. Moonlite Square, with its immaculate landscaping and cobblestones, acts as the building's plaza entranceway, and features a variety of specialty food facilities and has puppet and magic shows on weekends.

Piece by piece, step at a time, over a decade, Coney continued rebuilding, in 10 years spending some $10 million, adding an entire new physical infrastructure, a host of classic family and children's rides, and refurbishing Sunlite Pool and Moonlite Gardens.

Cincinnati businessman Ron Walker purchased Coney Island in 1991 and, today, under the ownership of the Walker family, Coney Island once again is thriving, and Lake Como, Sunlite Pool, Moonlite Gardens and the picnic shelters are constant reminders of the great park of the past. Coney has grown again over the years and now has, along with ever-popular Sunlite Pool, 18 classic amusement rides plus pedal boats, live stage shows, miniature golf, entertainment at Moonlite Gardens, a tremendous sports and recreation complex, great family special events and concerts at the Riverbend Music Center.

Happily, perhaps improbably, as it has for the past 112 years, Coney Island keeps on going. It's a century-long successful formula – keep it entertaining, keep in clean and fun for families, and keep it affordable. There's no rush-rush at Coney Island, no standing in long, hot lines. Coney Island is a state of mind – a feeling of relaxing and sharing with friends and family on a long summer's day, a place where grandparents can share memories with grandchildren.

And so, with each generation Coney Island has redefined itself; with each generation old memories are rekindled; with each generation new memories are made.