The last day of Labor Day weekend found us visiting Lakeside Amusement Park in the Denver area. Lakeside is the last of the amusement parks in Colorado in its original location. It is also the last of the parks to have had the name White City, a common name of parks of the time, deriving from the World’s Columbian Exhibition of 1893. Opening in 1908, it was founded by a group headed by Denver brewer Adolph Zang. It is located in its own city of Lakeside due to the anti-alcohol attitudes of Denver and the desires of the German descendent owners who wanted to serve beer.
The park fell on hard times during the depression and was bought by an employee, Ben Krasner. He renamed the body of water “Lake Rhoda” after his daughter Rhoda who is the current general manager of Lakeside. In the 1930s Lakeside underwent major renovations in the Art Deco style. The Merry Go Round (carousel) dates from the park’s opening in 1908 and the Cyclone is a wooden roller coaster built in 1940.
We really liked Lakeside. It was always the poor relation to Elitch Gardens back in the day. But when Elitch moved to LoDo and became Six Flags, Lakeside became the only game in town. It is old (and a bit tired) without trying to be old, no attempt at retro here. The grounds are clean and well kept. Many defunct rides have been left in place and others converted to new uses. An unadvertised Labor Day Weekend discount of 10 cent tickets (normally 50 cents) made the rides essentially free as most rides were 2 to 5 tickets each. This is a park not to be missed.