Area residents were waking up 50 years ago to the realization that a Stark County entertainment jewel was lost.

“A Playland Dies,” a front-page headline in The Canton Repository had told readers on Sunday, June 16, 1974. “Superparks, Rising Prices Spell Doom For Meyers Lake.”

A familiar Repository writer of reports about the comings and goings in Stark County at that time, “Around Town” columnist Ralph K. Spencer Jr., was an appropriate reporter to pen the “obituary” of the iconic local entertainment destination.

The Monday After: Honoring Meyers Lake village, park

“Meyers Lake – a name to conjure whenever the talk gets around to amusement parks – is not open and it will not open anymore,” the man known to many as “Spence” started in his article. “That’s the story from (owner) George Sinclair, last in a line of three Sinclairs who have operated ‘the lake’ since 1926.

Spencer wrote that there was “an eerie feeling as you walk about the venerable park today.”

“The weeds are growing up, papers blow around, the flowers that used to abound aren’t there anymore, doors and windows are boarded up.

“It’s dead and it looks it.”

The Monday After: Remembering Monkey Island at Meyers Lake

Spencer asked Sinclair – for the sake of generations of summer park-goers – why the closing of Meyers Lake Amusement Park was necessary, in the owner’s mind inevitable.

The answer was the existence of superparks in Ohio – Kings Island, Cedar Point, Geauga Lake and Sea World were mentioned among them – that were pulling people and their corporate events away from smaller parks.

“Without the big company picnics and without weekend traffic, you’re dead,” Sinclair told the writer.

Inflation also increased the costs of operating the park, reported Spencer. And, “young adult hoodlumism” destroyed property and “deterred families with young children” from coming to the park.

“It would cost more than a half million to get this place ready to start up,” Sinclair said, estimating an amount equal to more than $3 million today. “It would take new rides and a complete redoing of the entire park. Then there would be no guarantee of success.”

Park history extends into the 1800s

Although Meyers Lake as the amusement park that most people remember it is a 20th century creation, the facility traces its roots back into the 1800s, said local historian Richard Haldi, a Meyers Lake resident who has given numerous talks about area that once was owned by the Meyer family.

“The park was opened as Lakeside Park by the Meyer family in 1883,” Haldi said, noting that it was the idea of Edward J. Meyer, the grandson of family patriarch Andrew Meyer, who owned 3,000 acres in Stark County including Meyers Lake.

The Monday After: Blaze photos from 1939 foster Meyers Lake memories

The younger Meyer never intended to build the diverse amusement park into which Meyers Lake eventually evolved. He owned a horse farm, and wanted to sell horses. But Edward Meyer began to be in competition with a cousin, Joseph Meyer. Both built a hotel on the lake, Joseph Meyer’s on the north side and Edward Meyer’s on the south side.

Edward Meyer also constructed a horse track for riding, added a bowling alley, erected a small roller coaster, and offered boat rides, said Haldi, all to “keep people at the farm, for one purpose … to buy horses.”

The victor in the competition, Meyer sold the park, lake and village of Meyers Lake to Northern Ohio Traction & Light Co. (later known as Ohio Edison) in 1902.

The amusement park’s development into its more modern form began when the Sinclair family bought it from the transportation company in 1926.

Stark Heritage: The Andrew Meyer Family

Entering the Sinclair era

“It was a family business,” said Raymond Fete who, with historian and author Jeffrey Brown, published books about the amusement park, including “Meyers Lake Revisited,” “Meyers Lake: A Second Look,” “Meyer’s Lake Remembered” and “Meyers Lake: The Last Dance.”

“It started with the first George Sinclair, then his son Carl Sinclair took over, and finally it was passed down to George Sinclair, the grandson.”

During the next 50 years, “the park became a prime location for local company picnics and provided memories for families throughout the region,” wrote Repository staff writer Tim Botos in a retrospective in 2017. “And the on-site Moonlight Ballroom attracted crowds by the hundreds and thousands. It was the place to be for marathon dances, senior proms or to enjoy appearances by the likes of Glenn Miller and Guy Lombardo.”

“The Big Band era of Meyers Lake was probably when the park was most successful,” said Fete. “These were the biggest entertainers in the business, who kept people coming.”

Brown recalls sitting with Fete at a fundraising event and encountering three women who had cherished memories of Meyers Lake.

200 THINGS THAT PLAY IN STARK COUNTY: Meyers Lake amusement park

“They all had met their husbands at Meyers Lake,” he recalled. “They talked about the moon shining over the lake and the music for the dances. It was a very romantic place, a social place for young people to be together. I think half the marriages in Canton at the time could have started at Meyers Lake.”

As a family entertainment spot, the trendy park was not unique from hundreds of other small amusement parks that sprang up throughout the country. But, it was special to residents of Stark County.

“Almost every decently-sized town had an amusement park that was special to their communities,” said Fete. “They’re all gone.”

Some, however, still can smell the flowers with memories in their minds.

“They planted thousands of petunias and I’ve talked to people who said you could smell them long before you actually got to the park,” said Brown. “I didn’t grow up here so I didn’t know anything about Meyers Lake until I came in 1973. I was and still am impressed by how loved the park was by people who grew up in the area.

“It’s sad. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if something could have been done to save at least part of it?”

A lost opportunity

Canton city and Meyers Lake village officials, as well as George Sinclair, tried to save some semblance of the park.

“George Sinclair was heavily in debt,” explained Haldi, who noted that Sinclair offered to sell the park to Canton.

The city’s mayor, Stanley Cmich, “was intrigued,” Botos wrote in his 2017 look-back article.

“He and city planners came up with a plan. With funding help from the state and federal governments, the city would annex the land and buy the whole park,” Botos wrote. “Plans called for restoring a pavilion for band concerts; building a wildlife preserve; moving Mother Goose Land to the site; retaining the merry-go-round as the sole amusement ride; opening a petting zoo; creating biking and jogging trails; restoring the swimming beach; renting rowboats and paddleboats; and laying out picnic areas.”

It was going to be a “Bicentennial Park,” said Haldi, referring to the nation’s 200th anniversary in 1976, and “almost everybody was for it.” A signed deal was worked out by the beginning of 1975. Cost of the property was $1.3 million.

City Council turned the deal down.

“They said, ‘We don’t need another park,'” Haldi recalled. “It’s shameful. The price of $1.3 million was a great deal for 145 acres of land and 145 acres of water.”

Sinclair, still in need of the funds from a sale, sold the property off to building groups.

“It’s great for those of us who live here,” said Haldi, who has a home in Meyers Lake. “But, the community lost out big time.”

Memories from days at Meyers Lake

Spencer’s article said that even as he announced through the newspaper the closing of Meyers Lake Amusement Park, “Sinclair’s eyes sparkle as he recalls some of the ‘good old days’ at the park.”

There are others who still remember their youthful days of meeting friends, riding rides, playing arcade games, and listening to music among the flowers of Moonlight Gardens and dancing to the bands playing at Moonlight Ballroom.

Danial T. Dunn of Canton still was in mourning almost a year after Meyers Lake Amusement Park closed.

“Walking through Meyers Lake Amusement Park, one can’t help but feel a great personal loss,” he wrote in a letter to the editor published in the Repository on March 15, 1975. “To feel this loss is to experience the silence and emptiness, and relate to the past, visualizing such things as the meticulous flower arrangement around the water fountain, the reminiscent sounds, the excitement felt as a child, and the general attractiveness of the entire park.

Photos by then photo chief Cliff Haga that accompanied Spencer’s 1974 article about the closing of Meyers Lake Amusement Park show attractions that already had been abandoned and had fallen into disrepair.

No patrons strolled on walkways. Cars on “The Bug” ride remained empty. No water was in the circular path of the boat ride in “kiddieland,” and debris was strewn about. The Ferris wheel was stationary and silent, with weeds growing up at its base. No cars sat in front of the starting point of the roller coaster and no riders lined near the entrance.

“Plywood, Weeds Bar Roller Coaster Entry,” a caption read.

The Stark County’s “Playland” indeed was dead.

Reach Gary at gary.brown.rep@gmail.com. On “X” (Formerly Twitter): @gbrownREP.

This article originally appeared on The Repository: 50 years ago this week, Meyers Lake Amusement Park closed for good