Laugh Your Troubles Away at Riverview

The clack-clack-clacking of the chain drive silenced as we crested the hill, ominously portending the imminent two-and-a-half G forces on our bodies as we hurled down the 85 foot high downhill and then swooped into the banked bottom curve at sixty-plus miles per hour, air pulsing past faces busy emitting screams and screeches of terror and fervor. I am slammed against the left side of the car and immediately catapulted upwards and to the right as we top a small hill and twist the other direction, followed instantly by an opposite curve and resultant slide across the car and screwed into the seat as the next hill is scaled.



Sure, the sliding and bounding only involve a few inches thanks to the restraining bar, but it sure seems like more, and Riverview’s most famous and most popular roller coaster, the Bobs, again lives up to its reputation and hype. The photo above shows train number one rounding the front curve nearest the midway and train two, behind and to the right, climbing the main hill.

Riverview Park, for six decades located at Western and Belmont Avenues on Chicago’s north side, was our local Disneyland, carnival, circus, fast food stand, and hangout all wrapped into one, and it was only a mile-and-a-half from my house. Opened in 1904, it had been around a lot longer than I had, and ever since I could recall it had been part of my experience. Aunt Elsie and Uncle Johnny's first apartment building was on Oakley just two blocks from Riverview, and from their third floor back porch we kids would endlessly watch the Pair-O-Chutes...



... and try to predict when the next collapsed pyramidal chute on its slow upward ride would trip the release and begin its cataclysmic 200-foot free-fall and then predict when air would fill its cloth, billow with air, and slow its tumultuous descent. And we youngsters would talk endlessly about how we were going to ride the Pair-O-Chutes when we got old enough.

Riverview was a pay as you go proposition: no expensive entry fee and just 15 cents or a quarter (later 40 cents) to ride whatever attractions you wished. Each ride had a small ticket booth near the entrance, and when a ride did not have a long waiting line, the operators offered you the opportunity to “ride again” for even less money as your ride ended. Thus we often rode the Bobs or Fireball or Flying Turns or Chute-the-Chutes numerous times consecutively. As this photo shows, the operators stopped the cars with handbrakes -- no fancy computerized electronics in those days!



Admission to Riverview Park was a mere ten or fifteen cents and that was all you would have to spend to walk the two-and-a-half mile midway concourse and sometimes that was all we did. Just being there was a special treat. Riverview’s season ran from mid-May to mid-September, and during my four years at neighboring Lane Tech High School, I often just wandered through the park after school, still carrying my books, before walking the ten blocks home.

Free season entrance passes good for four people were mailed to selected households, and I felt like a VIP flashing my family’s pass to get three friends and myself in free after school. Special indeed! Years later I learned that over three million of these "special free" passes were sent out each year! Once I make the grievous error of handing my family’s pass through the wrought iron fence to a buddy outside so more guys could get in free. I was caught and the pass was confiscated by security and I had to explain its absence to my family around the supper table that night. Fortunately, they mailed it back to my family a week or so later and we were able to use it the rest of the season.

The Palace of Wonders, also known as the Freak House, sported more unusual people than even the Ringling Brothers Circus could boast. A barker stood out front on a raised platform and talked non-stop, using jokes and jibes to attract an audience and then teasing them regarding the wonders within -- trying to entice passing guests to spend their cash to see such oddities as the amazing Fat Lady, Pop-Eye, Tattooed Lady, the Smallest Man, the Tallest Man, Rubber Man, Sword Swallower, Two-Faced Boy, Man with no Legs, or the various midgets. Once the barker cajoled John up onto his platform and challenged him, saying, “I bet I can look down your throat and tell you how many holes you have in your socks.”



“No way,” John refuted.


“I’ll show you," the barker mocked. "Open wide." He spent a few moments ostensibly peering deep inside John's throat, and then knowingly said, “Young man, you have one hole in each sock.



“Wrong,” John said triumphantly, “there ain’t any holes in ‘em!”



“Then how’d you get your feet in?” the barker laughed, joined by the audience that had gathered five-deep before his stage.

 John blushed at having been fooled, but he had the last laugh on us because he was presented free entrance to the attraction that day and lorded it over us for weeks.



Aladdin’s Castle, everyone’s favorite, provided an entry maze with dozens of identical screen doors, only a few of which could be swung open, then on to a room of mirrors which distorted your size and shape, then rooms with slanted floors making walking difficult, next a section of dark hallway with rotating discs on the floor which spun when stepped on, and my favorite, a huge rolling barrel you had to walk (or crawl) through. These was also an outside stairway seen just below Aladdin’s beard in this photo...


...with air hoses in the steps controlled by an operator up in the glass tower over the cashier’s booth (far right) who released a jet stream of air when a woman with a dress or skirt passed over it, sending the fabric up over waist and embarrassing her but entertaining the audience of onlookers standing along the fence. Then came more dark passages, a bumpy ride down a series of padded rollers, and finally a metal seat which collapsed when you sat on it and sent you cascading down the Magic Carpet, an undulating cloth passing over more rollers. 

Even after you knew all of Aladdin's secrets, negotiating his magical castle still provided thrills and fun.

As a youngster, I developed an early affinity for the roller coasters. There were seven at Riverview, but I was only allowed on the tamer ones until I grew older. The Greyhound was the longest coaster in the park and had a short tunnel, but was considered a ride for the less daring. The Wild Mouse was the only metal-framed coaster and its fast, bumpy, sudden turns made it a jarring ride. Large signs proclaimed that riders should remove their eyeglasses on the coasters so I did. I would put mine in a glasses case and place it between my legs, but once on the Wild Mouse I exited the ride and discovered they were missing. Fortunately, a helpful attendant walked the track’s path at ground level and found them for me. It turned out he did that often. From then on my glasses case was tucked firmly into one of my socks.

The Blue Streak, Silver Flash, and Comet were other coasters I eventually graduated to until I reached the ultimate – the Bobs (in the first photo above) and the Fireball...



...with its seemingly unending drop of 95 feet. Chicago ordinance limited maximum hill height, so Riverview dug ten feet into the earth when they replaced the Blue Streak with the Fireball to achieve the desired 95 foot drop. They claimed the coaster reached 100 mph but it “only” reached 65 mph!



Before my teen years, I reveled in riding the Scout or Chief, diesel locomotives which ran around the Showboat lagoon. Until 1948, the engines had been steam locomotives but I don’t remember those. Two other rides I especially enjoyed were ones I could drive myself – Dodgem (later called Bump-em which was more apropos), small cars you steered and crashed into other drivers, and the best of all, the Water Bug, large motorized tubes with steering wheels. Bumping was encouraged and water flew everywhere...



The Caterpillar was a tilt-a-whirl type ride with gentle dips and hills and with a canvas hood which extended over you halfway through the ride, making you blind. The Tunnel of Love (also called Mill on the Floss and Old Mill over the years) was a boat ride traveling lovely landscaped canals and then through very long, dark tunnels. Near the end, the boat traveled under the Whip, a long rectangular shaped tilt-a-whirl which dramatically whipped your car around the two ends, and to those underneath on the Tunnel of Love boat it sounded like loud thunder. I appreciated the Tunnel of Love and Caterpillar all the more when older and accompanied by my girlfriend, Leora.

 As I matured, rides like the Pair-O-Chutes, Rotor (a large drum which rotated fast enough to plaster your body to the wall at which point the floor dropped out), the Flying Turns (a bobsled-type car on a trackless course resembling a half barrel where the car rode up on the sides of the half-walls), and all seven of the roller coasters received my quarters.

The Shoot the Chutes also got my money...



It began with a boat ride through a tunnel as you worked your way to the elevator which raised your boat to the top, providing great views of the entire park as it ascended. At the top the elevator paused, tilted the boat forward, and sent it on its downward plunge on a film of water into the large four-and-a half foot deep lagoon at the bottom. There was no Disneyland underwater track guiding the boat in the lagoon. You were a free-floating boat, splashing violently into the lagoon, and then the operator had to quickly and efficiently use the rudder to coax the boat into a 180 degree turn using its own momentum in order to reach the unloading pier where another worker with a ten foot pole snagged a hook on the boat and brought it to berth.



Mardi Gras was held the last three weeks of each season and included a parade with floats, high school bands from Illinois and surrounding states, and sometimes elephants. Kids who came in costume got into Riverview free and onto some rides free and could march in the parade. One year Dad got a job driving one of the floats. The driver’s compartment was tiny and had just enough room for a small driver to operate the steering wheel, gas, clutch, and brake, and a tiny rectangular window to see where you were going. But there was a small shelf on one side and one night I rode with him as he drove, so indirectly I guess I was in the parade, too, and though it was fun to be in the parade that one time, it was better to stand along the route and watch as all the floats and bands proceeded past.



Weekly two cent days and five cent nights were popular when selected rides cost that amount, as were some of the special event days. I always participated in Alderman Charlie Weber’s neighborhood cleanup campaign where we kids would fill large manila bags with trash from the streets and alleys and as a reward, received an index card sized “Riverview Courtesy Ticket” with tear-off coupons for free rides on the Flash, Fireball, Comet, Tunnel of Love, Chutes, etc. Then we’d swap coupons with friends and go to the park and still end up spending some of our own money.



Riverview was pretty darn good at promoting itself and drumming up more business since most visitors spent money on food, arcade games, shooting galleries, the famous Skee Ball alleys, and additional rides after using up the free coupons. Riverview’s major advertising campaign for years featured Dick “Two Ton” Baker whose infectious laugh exemplified their slogan “Laugh your troubles away at Riverview.”



Then in 1967, the unspeakable occurred. After 64 seasons, Riverview was closing! What began in 1904 as the Schmidt family’s German Sharpshooter Park, a hunting preserve with targets on an island in the Chicago River, in 1906 evolved to a picnic area with a carousel replete with 70 hand-carved prancing horses because bored wives and children of the hunters complained they had nothing to do at the park. After Schmidt visited Europe and discovered amusement parks, he began adding more rides, eventually exceeding 33 rides and a multitude of other attractions and creating the Midwest’s premier amusement park. The park closed for the winter following the successful 1967 season which saw 1.7 million visitors, more than watched the Cubs and White Sox combined! But on October 3, 1967, the announcement was made that Riverview had been sold to land developers for just over six million dollars. The photos of the demolition and bulldozing of the rides the next spring still bring tears to many eyes, including mine...


Riverview is gone, but surely will never be forgotten.



Photos and info from Riverview: Gone But Not Forgotten (1904-1967) by Chuck Wlodarczyk; The Schori Press, Evanston, Illinois; 1977. Purchase a copy of this wonderful memento and enjoy all the other photos and stories Chuck has accumulated. (Book is available on amazon.com)