Chapter Twenty-Four:
One Fare - Free Gate - No Beer
Convenient to but just far enough away from crowded and dirty Manhattan to offer respite, Coney Island, on Brooklyn's Atlantic Ocean coast, had been the site of vacation hotels since the early 19th century.
Inspired by the Columbian Exposition, Chicago's World's Fair of 1893, which introduced the world to hot dogs and the Ferris Wheel, short motion pictures, and attractions illuminated by thousands upon thousands of tiny electric lights, developer George Tilyou constructed a replica Ferris Wheel near his Coney Island restaurant. It became the nucleus of Tilyou's Steeplechase Park, the first and longest running of three major seaside amusement parks on the west end of Coney Island. For the better part of a century, for the working masses of the city, who neither owned nor could afford to escape to country retreats, these parks, where most everything cost a nickel, could be reached via public transportation, also a nickel. They featured bath houses, beer gardens and freak shows, and always seemed to exist just a touch beyond the fringe of respectability. They were for Tilyou, and his imitators and competitors popular, and, more to the point, profitable.
Through its first century of American settlement the lakeshore of Euclid Township, Ohio had remained pastoral. Despite the existence of the Lake Shore Railroad a mile south and the raucous village of Collinwood it gave birth to, by 1890 the industrial corridor between Euclid and St. Clair Avenues had yet to develop to any large degree, and Euclid's lake front remained a quiet retreat of vineyards and country homes. In his journal marking the departure in the fall of 1796 of the Connecticut Land Company's first expedition to the Western Reserve, surveyor Seth Pease noted "...we pass along by the Township of Euclid, the banks of which are not high, the beach for the most part good..." Nearly 80 years later, Ursuline nuns located a convent and girls' school on the west bank of the mouth of Euclid Creek, and from their property for a mile to the west there still stretched "a broad beach 75 to 100 feet wide, backed by a bluff."
In 1894, investors Albert Thompson, John Flynn, John Irwin, Jerome Burrows and Hylas Gladwish bought 64 acres of land between Euclid Township's beach and Lakeshore Boulevard for $145,000. Their intention was to found a resort, with an electric fountain, bath and boat houses, a casino, toboggan slides, a dance pavilion, and an eating house, all among landscaped walkways of flowerbeds and trees. Their company also owned two lake steamers which would carry passengers from Downtown Cleveland directly to a pier they would construct out into Lake Erie. According to their prospectus, they sought to "... make Euclid Beach to Cleveland what Coney Island is to New York."
The park opened for guests on June 22, 1895. Its two steamers, affectionately called Tubs, made round trips to and from Downtown several times a day. In the park patrons would be entertained by visiting the beach, dancing in the pavilion, bands, vaudeville acts, a tame version of a freak show featuring a sleeping boy and, redundantly, a sleeping woman, and, once, the slaughtering of an ox during the company outing of The Retail Butchers, among the first Cleveland area businesses to hold their annual retreat at Euclid Beach Park. Like Coney Island, Euclid Beach had an imitation Ferris Wheel and what was known as a Switchback Railway, the forerunner of the modern rollercoaster. Among its prominent attractions was the so-called German Garden on the west end of the park, its German character flowing from and with the cheap and plentiful beer on offer there. A bicycle track was soon added to cater to the fin de siècle bicycle craze, and a knock-off of Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show arrived, this one officiated by one Pawnee Bill. Dramatic re-enactments of the current events in Cuba and the Philippines took place during the Spanish American War, and elaborate and expensive fireworks displays became a fixture at Euclid Beach Fourth of Julys.
It all seemed to be going quite well, but in a quieter corner of the park, though doing good business, one family was appalled.
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Dudley Sherman Humphrey liked popcorn. His family had come to Cleveland in 1891, settling in Glenville, just west of Collinwood, seeking better fortunes with their potato farm in Wakeman out in the Fire Lands deeply in debt. In the city, Dudley Humphrey would often buy popcorn from vendors on the street, but it never tasted as good as the corn the family popped at home. Humphrey concluded that the significant flaw in the vendors' process was seasoning the corn after if had been popped. On the farm they put lard and salt and corn together in the popper and stirred the ingredients with a large spoon. This way the flavor would become infused with the corn as it popped. Dudley's brother Harlow invented a cover that allowed the corn to be stirred in the kettle without opening it, and Dudley modified the invention further with a drum that could be turned with a crank. It worked, and the corn tasted great, and the Humphreys had success selling the item to Cleveland's popcorn vendors, until they saturated the market and there was no one left to sell to.
A large carnival opened in Cleveland in 1893, coinciding with the same Columbian Exposition in Chicago that was at that moment inspiring George Tilyou of Coney Island. Dudley Humphrey and family mounted their popper to a horse-drawn cart and set up next to the carnival on Doan Street, a few years later renamed East 105th. They did such good business that with their profits they bought out competing snack carts that very same summer. Humphrey popcorn carts were soon all over Cleveland's east side and by 1895, the year Euclid Beach Park opened, they had established a permanent shop on Cleveland's Public Square.
Right in the middle of the Humphreys' turf, and a perfect place for popcorn vendors, Thompson, Flynn et al. that year opened Euclid Beach. The Humphreys acquired a concession in the park in its second season in 1896. They did decent business there, but frankly they didn't like the place. The Humphreys were a quiet, conservative family put off by the drunkenness and the freak shows, the gambling and con artists, the lewd men and women who inhabited the park. They were doing well with their numerous other businesses, and by 1899 had decided to abandon Euclid Beach.
In truth, the departure of the Humphreys was a symptom. For all its revelry and wonder, by the turn of the 20th century Euclid Beach Park had already begun to decline. Soon after leaving their concession Dudley Humphrey was in Chicago exploring possibilities for expanding the family's popcorn business to a new and even larger city when he happened to pick up a Cleveland paper and read the news that Euclid Beach Park had failed. Its amusements were to be torn down and the land offered up for sale. Humphrey quickly convened a family meeting back in Cleveland and together they determined to forget about Chicago and to take over Euclid Beach Park. But their Euclid Beach would feature several important and major changes.
The Humphreys intended Euclid Beach to have a family atmosphere. First, they closed the beer garden, and replaced it with bowling alleys. Not only was drinking prohibited in their new park, but those who arrived drunk were subject to refusal or expulsion. They ran out the gamblers and also got rid of the freak show. Park employees could not smoke. The Humphreys imposed strictly-enforced dress codes for the dancing pavilion and beach bathing. No dancing or bowling were allowed on Sundays. Security guards enforced polite behavior. Next, they eliminated the entrance fee to the park itself. Visitors could enter the grounds without charge and pay for only the individual rides and concessions they chose. The Humphreys tore down the high fence which surrounded the property, which would allow anyone in the neighborhood to see that nothing unseemly was happening inside. There was also no longer a need for an exclusionary wall once the gate fee had been eliminated. Finally, in exchange for retiring the competing steamship service, the Humphreys got the local streetcar companies to charge a single fare without transfers for passengers bound for Euclid Beach. The family summed up their park's new philosophy in a motto which emblazoned their promotional materials for years: "One Fare - Free Gate - No Beer."
A soft piece in the Nottingham Citizen newspaper advertised "Beautiful Euclid Beach Park" and promised: "NO FREAKS, FAKES, OR FRESH PEOPLE: ONLY WELL MEANING PEOPLE INVITED." The Humphreys' peers in the amusement park industry thought they were crazy. Among the principal draws of an amusement park at the time was the possibility of shedding one's inhibitions. For the price of admission one might, for a brief while, harmlessly transgress the strict bounds of respectability. In 1900, when bathing suits were made of wool and covered everything from neck to wrists to ankles, people went to these seaside resorts to lose themselves a little. If they got a little drunk and could maybe kiss someone there they couldn't have in other circumstances, that's why they went. So no one looked for the Humphreys' high-minded experiment to last very long.
However, it worked. The park thrived. The Humphreys prospered, moving from their initial lease of the park to purchasing it outright, to building a comfortable family home adjacent to it on the east line of the property. Euclid Beach gained a reputation as a safe venue for family outings and innocent dates. The east end of the park became a camping ground where visitors could rent cabins or tents at daily or weekly rates and sleep rustically in the summer weather beside Lake Erie. When Dudley Humphrey died in 1933 the family continued Euclid Beach. It operated summer after summer for 75 years on the lakeshore in Collinwood, adding and eliminating attractions to change as much as possible—and as the Humphreys felt desirable—with the times. Its more famous rides included rollercoasters The Thriller and The Racing Coaster, a flume ride called Over The Falls, and The Rocket Ships, which spun riders in tethered chrome cars. A gap-toothed animatronic figure called Laughing Sal greeted, and unnerved, visitors, and the "good wholesome fun" atmosphere of Euclid Beach made it a favorite for company outings and even political rallies.
But if there is any throughline in the history of Euclid Township it is the rapidity of change. After World War II the big bands which filled the dance pavilion became passé. Collinwood's factories closed, and Cleveland and the rest of the country left cities for suburbs. Then Collinwood and neighboring Glenville, Hough and East Cleveland became scenes of racial unrest in the 1960s. Less affluent Black families moved in, and more affluent White families left. And out in those suburbs there was television. By 1966 ticket sales at Euclid Beach Park fell to their lowest level since the Great Depression. The park closed at the end of the 1969 season, and did not open again.
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There exists today a minor nostalgia industry connected with Euclid Beach Park. Its various draws and memories have been documented and preserved in souvenir booklets and local television news pieces. Motorized cars made from the Euclid Beach Park Rocket Ship ride can still be seen about Cleveland in the summers at fairs and on holiday weekends. The park's carousel can be ridden at the Western Reserve Historical Society. The Humphrey Company endures, and still sells popcorn as well as candy and other treats from their current location in Warrensville Heights.
In the 1970s and after, Euclid Beach Park's land was developed into high-rise lakefront apartments. But its old entrance arch was spared, and declared an historic landmark in 1973. It remains today standing on Lakeshore Boulevard in Collinwood above East 159th Street.
On the opposite side of Lakeshore, behind a supermarket and a neighborhood rec center, is the City of Cleveland's Humphrey Park. There are tennis courts and four big baseball diamonds there and while the kids play their mothers and friends are watching, and some of them are eating popcorn.
The information in Chapter Twenty-Four is drawn from the following sources:
"Beautiful Euclid Beach Park, The Finest Pleasure Resort in America." The Nottingham Citizen, August 21, 1903.
"Euclid Beach, Ohio's Most Beautiful Park." Advertisement, The Citizen [sic], June 30, 1905.
Amusement Park Books, Inc. Euclid Beach Park is Closed for the Season. Dillon/Liederbach, Inc., 1977.
Amusement Park Books, Inc. Euclid Beach Park – A Second Look. AP Books, Inc., 1979.
LeDuc, Blake. Euclid Beach Park Yearbook. Duke Graphics, 1996.