There was a park that in Eastern Pennsylvania that, in its heyday, attracted over 1 million visitors in a summer.
Read that again.
One million people for a summer park in the Anthracite land, Pennsylvania.
Located in the Tumbling Run Valley in Manheim, Blythe, and Walker Townships, it is a part of history ..
But the story is not just cotton candy and crowds. There were floods. Deaths. Suicides. And murders. It was a little resort that could. And eventually could not.
TUMBLING FLOOD
Originally in the 1800s, Tumbling Run was constructed in order to supply water to the Schuylkill Canal.
Silver Creek Water Company, a subsidiary of the Philadelphia and Reading Coal and Iron Company (P&R C&I) and successor to the Schuylkill Navigation Company, owned the recreational area. The area included two large water storage dams used to supply the canal system.
There was annual flooding, however real trouble would soon break..
The lower dam broke during the a large flood in 1850, washing away homes at Mount Carbon and destroying roads and railroad tracks south to Schuylkill Haven..
This is how the Wayne County HERALD reported the disaster in their news rag in on 9/11, 1850:
$1 mil in property damage in 1850. Pause for a moment on that number.
At press time, that is about $38 mil in damages in modern dollars.
TUMBLING TOURISTS
Tumbling Run obtained its chief fame in the amusement and recreational areas despite the fact that only the upper or second dam was used for this purpose. Once the water was dammed, local residents began using the site for swimming. The popular swimming hole soon become a site for other recreational activities.
For 30 years, from 1890 through 1920, people would travel to to the area in Schuylkill County known simply at the time as ‘The Run.’
‘The Run’ was centered in the area of the upper dam, and the resort boasted a large Victorian hotel. Tumbling Run also had a theater, a dance pavilion, an amusement hall, a roller coaster, a skating rink, a bowling alley and a carousel. It ain’t no park without a roller coaster.
A baseball park hosted teams from the Atlantic League behind the hotel. Boathouses lined the northern and eastern shores of the upper dam and a steamboat offered nickel rides around the lake. Trolley cars transported visitors to and from the area on a schedule of 10-minute intervals. By 1908, more than upwards of a million people visited the park during that three-month summer season.
It was the real deal.. True
The resort really began to really get on the map–the old fashioned map– in 1891. It was that year when trolleys began running from the county seat of Pottsville to the park.
Mahantango Street’s rich and famous had their own lifestyles at Tumbling Run, owning around 100 boat houses along the lake. Some used them for only the summer with others moving in for the entire year. With ice skating in the winter as well.
Sticks, stones, and suicides
But there were other darker moments in the Run’s history. Not just the great flood prior to the park’s glory days, but other nefarious events and tragic circumstances became a park of its history.
Dateline January 1850.. a death by hanging–this just about the same time that the dam broke and flooded. Jacob Jones was found hanging by his handkerchief on a tree..
That was the first of a series of tragic instances involving accidential drownings and deaths.
The PA Oddities blog did a great job at documenting those who succumbed to a sudden end at The Run:
William Hazzard (1835), John Steinback (1839), John Lehnen (1875), Harry Treibley (1880), Matthew Ryan (1888), William Montgomery (1892), Jacob Weis (1894), Walter Gross (1895), Angelo Varallo (1895), Wendel Graf (1895), Tobias Potsdamer (1895), Louis Miller (1896), Robert Weston (1896), Frank Gordon (1898), William Laudenbacher (1899), Walter Galbraith (1899), Harry Moyer (1903), Harry Eisenhuth (1906), John Penn (1909), Clarence Schuster (1909), Homer Houser (1912), Frank Meister (1918) and Michael Trabosh (1933). In 1875, Frank McClain died at the Knickerbocker Icehouse on Tumbling Run Dam after a block of ice fell on his head.
The site also documented those murdered at Tumbling Run:
Some were murdered (Molino Molinero, 1927), while suicides also account for a handful of deaths: Edmund Green drowned himself here in 1901, as did Mrs. Harry Phillips (1905), Charles Spangler (1929), John Weller (1930), Woodward McCloskey (1932), Dora Blew (1942), and Charles Gehrig (1950).
Tumbling Run even boasts a paranormal story: Rose Sheeley and the ghost of Tumbling Run.
PRESIDENT GRANT TUMBLES?
That’s the word on the street. As matter of fact, it has been reported and rumored that Presidents Ulysses S. Grant and Theodore Roosevelt visited the area in the mid-19th and early 20th centuries. All to enjoy the Tumbling Run waters..
We tried to find some first hand sources of either President visiting Tumbling Run, but we simply can only find after-the-fact reports.
So believe the reports, they were there.
Maybe they were.
Abe Lincoln stayed at the Asa Packer Mansion in Mauch Chunk, now Jim Thorpe.
So Grant and rough rider Teddy at Tumbling Run? Believable.
Interesting to wonder how many rich and famous of Pottsville saw a shirtless Roosevelt slaying in the waters during summer va-cay.
THE RUN RUNS DRY
From 1891 through 1914, Tumbling Run was one of the most popular parks for summer leisure.. 1 million people a summer in ints heyday, with that 1908 number of people.. that was the big one.
Thanks to that trolley.. It worked.
From the flood of 1850 to the drought decades later.
In 1912, a drought began to take hold. P&R C&I banned swimming in the summer!!
That was a signal that something was wrong and the resort, in the end, suffered greatly.
P&R C&I’s decision to stop the summer past time was because they wanted clean water in case it was necessary for domestic use.
The company began to reseed the land that was logged years prior.
In 1913, boat houses were ordered to be vacated.
It was over.
In 1917, the trolleys stopped.
Buildings were town down.
And in 1919, it was really over when a carousel was removed and sent to Willow Lake in Schuylkill Haven.
All of that with a whimper, not a bang.
No big goodbye. No big going out of business sale. Just a silent walk into oblivion.
But once upon a time in Schuylkill County, there was a park with trolleys and people, swimming and shows.. Presidents and cotton candy, and a roller coaster too. All in history. All in the past.
Just one of those parks that is gone for good. And memories of it are too.. All that exists now are tales of those who told tales of how great it once was.
