LeSourdsville Lake Amusement Park, rebranded as Americana Amusement Park in 1978, was an amusement park located in Monroe, Ohio. Founded by Edgar Streifthau, the park originally opened in 1922 as a family picnic destination with swimming amenities. Throughout the 1940s, LeSourdsville Lake transformed into an amusement park with the addition of rides, attractions, and an arcade.[1] It was abandoned in 2002 when the park fell on hard times forcing its gates to closed.
Coverage[]
The Americana Amusement Park is featured in Sin City Meltdown, where a story is being told in the abandoned amusement park in America's heartland. Glen Prater Jr., along with former owner Vicki Berni and then-current owner Jerry Couch, visit the park and tell the story on the park history and its demise.
History[]
The Americana Amusement Park when it was opened.
Located in LeSourdesville Lave, Ohio, when it was open, it was a thrill-seekers paradise, drawing daily crowds of up to 10,000 people. Vicki Berni stated that the park was beautiful, had a lot of vibrant colors, full of life and excitement. She continues that today, its like a ghost town and was sad to see it in its state. The park fell on hard times and the gates were closed in 2002, 80 years after it first opened.
Exploration[]
A few short years of abandonment have created a monster where every wood rots, motor, bearings, and metal components corrode, and gaping cracks permeate the park. Glen Prater Jr. stated that the annual freeze-thaw cycle occurs in the Ohio Valley makes it very hard on things like water tends to seep in cracks, freeze overnight, and as the water expands, it applies loads that enlarge the cracks.
Paint starts to fade on a park ride.
The amusement park gave clues what will happen to the colorful spectacles of Las Vegas and Atlantic City when people are gone, and like all amusement parks, it once distinguished by its bright colors, however the protective paint steadily degrades beneath the sun's ultraviolet assault. Glen Prater Jr. shows that the entrance may look like it's painted in pastel colors, at one point it is much more vibrant. Less than a decade have let the sun's ultraviolet radiation dims the paint on an atomic level. It was made by sunlight which makes oxygen that was already in the paint combining with the color pigments made the paint to fade as a result. Glen Prater Jr. stated the loss of pigment and volatiles within the pain is reaching a point where the paint loses its elasticity, causing it to expand contract with the material creating cracks, where the structural damage occurs. Without humans to repaint the park, it's first layer of defense is gone. At its current rate of destruction, Americana will soon be unrecognizable. Glen Prater Jr. stated there's no fixed lifetime for the rides in an amusement park and in theory can last forever if inspected and repaired as damage occurs.
The Screechin' Eagle as seen in CGI.
However, the inspection is long overdue and the rides are beyond repair especially the Screechin' Eagle. Built with 63,000 board feet of wood, it is the main attraction with cars raced, plunged and swerved at top speeds of 55 miles an hour on the 180 degree turns. Once considered one of the best wooden rollercoasters in the United States is plunging towards complete collapse. But the rotting wood is not the immediate enemy, its the coaster's support beams. Made of chemically treated wood, it'll resist rotting for several more years, longer than the mechanism that binds together. A series of guywires provides tension to the tallest section of the track. Glen Prater Jr. shows the wire rope and it is seen that the strands are coming apart and actually breaking. He continues that there are a few of the ropes are poised for failure like the weakest link, the fasteners or something as mundane as the nails that hold the boards together over a single season. He continues that when the nails comes out, it will permit the vertical members to undergo buckling collapse and all it need is one push to start the domino effect. With enough nails and guywires loosened, a stiff wind set off a collapse in the coaster's upper reaches.
Exploration Conclusion[]
In time, every structure in the park will become a heap of rubble, assuming that no one purchases the site and cleans it up or demolishes it themselves. Jerry Couch explains within 10 years, the park would start deteriorating so bad that the buildings start to fall down, rust in the steel and maintenance on the equipment would be deteriorating, and concrete would be overgrown and being pushed up by plants by overgrowth. He concludes that in the matter of 20 years, the park would be unrecognizable.
Trivia[]
- As of 2018, most of the rides were sold, demolished, or left to be vandalized with very little of the park remains. Jerry Couch, the owner of the park, have retired in 2015, closing the entire RV campground.[2] These events happned more than six to nine years after the episode aired in '09. Also as of 2018, the area is finally being redeveloped, with properties intending to use the site including a vocational school, a bicycle trail, and a public park, Monroe Bicentennial Commons.
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