Amusement Parks of the 1960s

August 6, 2026 by DickH Posted in Uncategorized Leave a Comment

Amusement Parks of the 1960s

By Leo Racicot

Canobie Lake Park in Salem, New Hampshire, was a favorite getaway for families seeking escape from city life, the daily grind, especially on weekends. Marie took us there many times over the years in her Rambler. It was a quick trip over the state line, filled with excitement as we knew it wouldn’t take long for us to get there and go on all the rides. Let’s see –there was The Swamp, a dark ride through a witch black tunnel, very scary to a kid, say, eight or nine. The park had an attractive carousel, though I liked the merry-go-round at Lakeview in Dracut more; it had a more pleasing vibe. I liked staring up at the panels above the animals, depictions of different scenes from The Bible: Daniel and the lion, Holofernes holding his own head in his hands. The House of Mirrors looked so tempting but I never found the courage to go in, afraid once I entered, I’d never come out or that park officials would find my mutilated body weeks later. I did laugh at the outside fun house mirrors that made the person in front of them taller, shorter, fatter. It didn’t take a mirror to make me look fatter; I was a stocky kid and am a stocky adult. Marie lied when she told me it was ‘baby fat’ and would ‘go away in time’. I’m still waiting…

I did like riding The Yankee Cannonball, liked the name of it; it sounded like a challenge, this wild, wooly, noisy roller coaster that seemed to make everybody scream in terror and in joy at the same time. Years later, on a school field trip with my students to Canobie, the kids dared me to ride it with them. Wanting to be a good sport, I took the bait and boy, riding The Cannonball in my thirties was a smidge different from riding it as an eleven-year old. For a moment there, I was sure I was going home to Jesus. After what seemed like three hours of up-and-down, up-and-down at breakneck speed, the beast finally stopped and I tumbled out. A kid, Jeremy McSorley, a born class clown, brought me a Dixie cup of water saying, “Drink this, Mr. R. You’re looking a little pale.”

I’ve told before how Canobie was the first time I had a celebrity sighting, the time comedian, Frankie Fontaine, came walking along, his wife and 11 kids in tow. That was a thrill as we’d see him on television every Saturday night on the Jackie Gleason Show, yet here he was coming toward me eating an ice cream cone.

Marie liked to alternate visits to Canobie with visits to Lakeview Amusement Park in Dracut. Aside from the delightful merry-go-round, Lakeview offered a charming mini-locomotive with mini-cars attached. It took riders through a leafy, forested area, so mysterious and leafy, it made you feel you were in the jungle, maybe on a safari adventure or that you were with a group of pioneers on their way to settle The Wild West. Lakeview shut down sometime in the1970s. I hear condominiums now stand where it once stood.

In summers, a regular destination was Benson’s Wild Animal Farm in nearby Hudson. Benson’s had on display what seemed like hundreds of different kinds of animals: there were lion acts, snakes you could pet, unicycling chimps, also peacocks just roaming around, free as you please. My memories of two attractions rise up as I write this: of a gorilla named Colossus who liked staring back at zoo visitors as much as they liked staring at him. At 3 in the afternoon every day, visitors or not, Colossus would retreat into his rear apartment to watch the soap opera, General Hospital. The other unforgettable attraction was Betsy the Elephant. Betsy liked to put on a show of taking a bath in a pond liked giving customers rides on her leathery, old back. Benson’s had a quirky, loose surreal appeal, almost like a fairy tale gone somehow wrong. Neither polished nor all that clean, it possessed a rustic, almost haphazard look as if it had somehow just appeared out-of-nowhere especially for you and would disappear once you were gone. A mirage or a genie in a bottle feel.

Pleasure Island in Wakefield was a popular destination for school field trips. It had a jungle, pirate theme and who among us who visited can forget the looming pirate ship anchored in the water? It fed this young boy’s imagination, reminded me of the Disney movies, Swiss Family Robinson & Blackbeard’s Ghost. I half-expected to see Blackbeard himself come bounding out onto the deck shouting “Ay, me buckos!”

Salisbury Beach and its colorful, always busy amusement park developed over the years a reputation of being Hampton Beach’s lowly sister. “Dirty” is the word you heard and still sometimes hear from those remembering it with nostalgia and longing. For although it wasn’t as pristine as Hampton — its sand was darker, grainier, the sand always containing cigarette butts and pieces of broken glass — careful where you step! — it shouted “Fun!” The moment the Rambler landed there. It was a wild, welcoming place with its not one but two wicked roller coasters: The WIldcat and The Sky Rocket. Its many arcades and shops had a Coney Island feel and one time I remember, all of us, overcome with the hungry horrors (even Marie with her trademark Shaker-like temperance), went from pizza joint to pizza joint, sampling a slice at each until our bellies were full. Embedded in my mind is the ride into Salisbury. On the left, perched among the reedy marshes was the large stucco sculpture of a pink whale. Tilly was her name. The minute I spied Tilly, the car would be filled with the salty sea air, a sure sign we were there. If I close my eyes, I can see Tilly now, smell the brine, see the beach roses sunning themselves along the road.

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