Palace Playland: The Last Beachfront Park

The lights, the music, the smell of fried dough and cotton candy, this is Palace Playland, and it is a genuine survivor. It bills itself as New England's only beachfront amusement park, and the claim is close to the truth. Once, the American coast was dotted with parks like this, wooden midways built right at the edge of the sand.

Almost all of them are gone, lost to fire, storm, and changing tastes. Palace Playland has held on since nineteen oh two, when it opened with a modest collection of attractions. From that modest start it grew into a compact park of roughly four acres packed with rides, games, and an arcade once billed as the largest in New England.

For decades its crown jewel was a hand carved carousel built by the famous Philadelphia Toboggan Company in nineteen ten. That antique grew so valuable that it was retired in the nineteen nineties and moved away to Ohio. Today the park spins on with a tall Ferris wheel over the water, roller coasters, and nearly thirty attractions.

Standing here at the shoreline, riding a coaster with the Atlantic filling the horizon, you are enjoying something that has nearly disappeared everywhere else on the coast.