Not many developers would build an amusement park next door to the successful LeSourdsville Lake amusement park, but Edgar Streifthau was a one-of-a-kind man in Butler County, Ohio. Streifthau, the original owner of LeSourdsville, was forced to sell his beloved park, but he still had the amusement-park bug, and in 1963 he built Fantasy Farm directly next to LeSourdsville. Fantasy Farm's audience was young children, and the concept was successful for decades. The two parks coexisted for 28 ...

LeSourdsville Lake, also known as Americana Amusement Park by a generation of visitors, was a popular recreational park for many decades despite being located within 15 miles of Kings Island, one of the premier theme parks in the country. Emphasis on providing quality food and personalized catering enabled the park to host hundreds of annual company picnics, high school proms, and family reunions. The park�s success was maintained by featuring such classic rides as the Electric Rainbow and...

**An explosive exposé of America’s lost prosperity by Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Charlie LeDuff“One cannot read Mr. LeDuff's amalgam of memoir and reportage and not be shaken by the cold eye he casts on hard truths . . . A little gonzo, a little gumshoe, some gawker, some good-Samaritan—it is hard to ignore reporting like Mr. LeDuff's.” —The Wall Street Journal“Pultizer-Prize-winning journalist LeDuff . . . writes with honesty and compassion about a city tha...

Once America's capitalist dream town, Detroit is our country's greatest urban failure, having fallen the longest and the farthest. But the city's worst crisis yet (and that's saying something) has managed to do the unthinkable: turn the end of days into a laboratory for the future. Urban planners, land speculators, neopastoral agriculturalists, and utopian environmentalists—all have been drawn to Detroit's baroquely decaying, nothing-left-to-lose frontier.With an eye for both the da...

This account of nineteenth-century Missouri vigilantes is "a first rate adventure story [and] an extremely valuable study of the roots of violence in America" (Gary Paulsen, Newbery Medal–winning author of Hatchet).In the 1880s, the Ozark hills around Taney County, Missouri, echoed with the sound of Winchester rifles. Men were lynched from tree limbs by masked night riders. Bundles of switches were tossed on the porches of "loose" men and...

The dramatic story of a Gilded Age murder that shocked people from Chicago to IrelandIt was the biggest funeral Chicago had seen since Lincoln’s. On May 26, 1889, four thousand mourners proceeded down Michigan Avenue, followed by a crowd forty thousand strong, in a howl of protest at what commentators called one of the ghastliest and most curious crimes in civilized history. The dead man, Dr. P. H. Cronin, was a respected Irish physician, but his brutal murder unco...

The sand dunes stretched higher than many skyscrapers, with the remnants of an abandoned lumber industry at their feet. The sandy, overgrown land was nothing that Michigan City residents cared to develop, let alone visit. The area was largely forgotten until Mayor Martin Krueger decided that his town would have a park and bathing beach. In a few short years, the deserted area was transformed into a family amusement center on Lake Michigan�s southern shores. These beginnings helped shape th...

The Great Sioux War of 1876–77 began at daybreak on March 17, 1876, when Colonel Joseph J. Reynolds and six cavalry companies struck a village of Northern Cheyennes—Sioux allies—thereby propelling the Northern Plains tribes into war. The ensuing last stand of the Sioux against Anglo-American settlement of their homeland spanned some eighteen months, playing out across more than twenty battle and skirmish sites and costing hundreds of lives on both sides and many millions of dollars. And it...

From the end of the Great War to the final years of the 1950s, Kansas Citians lived in a manner worthy of a place called Paris of the Plains. The title did more than nod to the perfumed ladies who shopped at Harzfeld's Parisian or the one-thousand-foot television antenna nicknamed the "Eye-full Tower." It spoke to the character of a town that worked for Boss Tom and danced for Count Basie but transcended both the Pendergast era and the Jazz Age. Author John Simonson introduces readers to a...

Forest Park Highlands was once St. Louis�s largest and best-known amusement park. In its earliest years, the Highlands boasted a fine theater and one of the largest public swimming pools in the United States. After the 1904 world�s fair closed, several attractions found a new home at the Highlands; the large pagoda�a re-creation of the temple of Nekko, Japan�served as the park�s bandstand for several years. Roller coasters are the lifeline of every good amusement park, and the Highlands al...

Santa Claus, Indiana, acquired its famous name in 1856 and has been celebrating the spirit of Christmas ever since. Postmaster James Martin began answering children�s letters to Santa and his elves in 1914, a tradition that continues to this day and makes Santa Claus a favored destination for those seeking the holiday spirit. The town�s unique name prompted Robert Ripley to feature it in his popular cartoon strip, and businessmen such as Carl Barrett and Milton Harris raced to erect Christ...

Minneapolis roared into the 1920s as a major metropolis, but it lacked the kind of outdoor amusement facilities common elsewhere across the country. In 1925, Fred W. Pearce introduced the Twin Cities to his "Picnic Wonderland." Crowds eagerly poured onto the shores of Lake Minnetonka by the trolley load. Luckily, Excelsior Park survived the Great Depression and World War II on the strength of its celebrity acts. Changes in the forms of transportation, combined with innovations in the outdo...