Chippewa Lake, Ohio

In eighteen seventy-eight, a man named Edward Andrews opened a picnic ground and beach on this Medina County lake. He added a steamboat and the park's first roller coaster, one riders had to push back up the hill by hand after each run. What began as Andrews' Pleasure Grounds grew into Chippewa Lake Park, a regional amusement institution that drew crowds for a full century.

Mac Beach bought the park in eighteen ninety-eight, banned liquor, and his son Parker steered it through the Roaring Twenties boom. By the early nineteen sixties the park had a ballroom, three roller coasters, a Ferris wheel, and live music seven nights a week.

Then came Cedar Point. Unable to compete with the massive regional parks drawing customers away, Chippewa Lake closed in nineteen seventy-eight, exactly one hundred years after it opened. The rides and buildings were left standing, slowly surrendering to time.