Summer is winding down. So is the summer amusement season.
And so, in New Jersey, is a tradition that goes back nearly 150 years.
The last surviving "trolley park" in the state, Clementon Park and Splash World in Camden County, announced its permanent closure last week.
"It's certainly the end of an era," said amusement park historian Vince Gargiulo of Mahwah.
Destination: fun at NJ trolley parks
And just what is a trolley park?
You may not know the term. But you know the thing. Palisades Amusement Park, a fixture in Fort Lee and Cliffside Park until its closing in 1971, was the most famous example in the state.
But there were others: Olympic Park in Maplewood, Grandview Park near Paterson, Bertrand Island Amusement Park in Lake Hopatcong were just a few.
A "trolley park" is an amusement park. The traditional, classic kind. Until the advent of Disney and the "themed attraction," it's pretty much what everybody meant when they said, "Let's go to the amusement park."
But what do trolleys have to do with it? A lot.
A streetcar named amusement
What people don't understand, today, is the connection between amusement parks and public transport. It was the streetcar lines that brought amusement parks into being.
"They needed something to get people to ride the trolley," said Gargiulo, author of "Palisades Amusement Park: A Century of Fond Memories."
Before the advent of the automobile, trolleys were how people got around. Some 850 miles of trolley track criss-crossed New Jersey. Trolleys were how people got to work, did their shopping, ran their errands. Trolleys, by 1902, were a $247 million a year business.
But that business slowed to a crawl on Sundays, America's traditional day off. And by the early 1900s, there was a cloud on the horizon: the prospect of a five-day work week.
"We were on a six-day work week then," Gargiulo said. "And there was talk about the US going to a five-day work week, as they had in England. What really worried the trolley companies is that no one rode the trolley except to go to work. And they had to pay for the electricity that ran through their line, even when nobody was riding it."
Hard times, happy measures at Palisades Park, others
What to do? By the late 19th century, streetcar companies had hit on a solution. They would simply create — out of whole cloth — a reason to ride.
"They invented a destination, really," Gargiulo said.
The first "trolley parks" were picnic groves, generally at the end of the line (suburban traction companies would charge more, depending on distance). Mama, papa and the kids would pack up a basket, board the streetcar, and get off at a nice shady park where there might be swings and other simple amusements.
That's how Palisades Park, created by the Bergen County Traction Company (later PSE&G) in 1898, got its start. "Originally it was just picnic grounds," Gargiulo said.
Clementon Park, which opened in 1907, was serviced by the Camden-Clementon Trolley, though not built by them. But the builder, assemblyman Theodore B. Gibbs, was a board member of the Atlantic City Railroad. No doubt he understood the special needs of the traction magnates.
It wasn't long before some of these parks began to feature rides.
Fun is our business at the amusement park
Carousels, Ferris wheels, roller coasters had, by the late 19th century, been turning up in a few seaside resorts. Coney Island had them. So did Long Branch, NJ. But those had been novelties, afterthoughts. The main attraction was always the sea.
Trolley Parks, however, were invented destinations. They had no main attraction. And so the rides became it.
An amusement park — a place where you go simply to ride a merry-go-round or plunge down a toboggan slide — was a new kind of resort. And by the early 20th century, they were popping up everywhere.
The earliest attractions at Clementon had been things like rented rowboats. But they soon got their first ride — reportedly a chair swing or "aerial wave" — followed by a steam carousel and, in 1919, a roller coaster, The Jack Rabbit (in operation until 2002).
Palisades, meanwhile, was evolving rapidly. In 1908, the Bergen County Traction Company sold the resort to the first mayor of Cliffside Park, August Neuman. He, in turn, hired impresario Alvin Dexter to develop the attraction. "He brought in a roller coaster, and lots of rides that ran on steam," Gargiulo said. "That's when it really started as the kind of amusement park we know today."
Surviving into the modern age
The new trolley parks were a big success. In many cases, they outlived the trolleys that had brought them into existence.
Streetcars had begun to disappear from American life by the 1940s and '50s — killed by the automobile, and by business interests that had a stake in it. But the parks continued, for a time.
Maplewood's Olympic Park lasted until 1965, Palisades until 1971, Bertrand Island until 1983. But in the end, the competition from the new "theme parks," and the problems of traffic congestion, were too much.
The trolleys, it turned out, had been key to the whole enterprise. They'd gotten the crowds in and out of the parks without a hassle. Once everyone had their own cars, and those cars began to clog the roads and overflow the parking lots, things began to get ugly. At Palisades, by the 1960s, two huge parking lots were not enough.
"Eventually they had to lease a third parking lot, in Edgewater, and shuttle people up the cliff," Gargiulo said. "And even then, people would park on the side streets. They would block peoples driveways, and eat on people's lawns. A lot of people got fed up with the park."
All that remains, now, of Palisades Amusement Park is a plaque, at Winston Towers in Cliffside Park — commemorating where The Cyclone roller coaster and the Rock-O-Plane once delighted thrill-seekers. "Here we were happy, here we grew!" it reads.
Clementon limped along until 2019, when it was put up for auction, reopened in 2021 under the aegis of IB Parks and Entertainment.
Now it has — apparently — closed for good. With the end of its run, comes the end of an age.
"Time have changed so much, in the hundred or so years these parks have been there," Gargiulo said. "Transportation changed. People's craving for thrills changed."