Colorado Welcomes a Cyclone’s Return as Denver’s Cherished Lakeside Park Reopens

Photo: Mark Rosenzweig. View full-sized image.

As a testament to one family’s desire to offer affordable family fun to residents of the Denver, Colorado, area, Lakeside Park has now endured for over 113 years (with only one year off because of the pandemic), becoming a beloved institution not only to Coloradans, but to amusement enthusiasts worldwide.

This family-run gem offers home-grown, ground-level, traditional park friendliness and rides, while also hosting a heaven for amusement aficionados and devotees of the park’s art deco design and neon glory. Its bejeweled 150-foot-tall tower at the entrance offers stylish and gorgeous visual allure for the many amusement treasures within.

Photo: Howard Gillooly. View full-sized image.

Plus, Lakeside features a “Landmark” and “Classic” wooden roller coaster, the thrilling Cyclone, so designated by the American Coaster Enthusiasts in order to honor and highlight rides of historic significance and a classically inspired operation. In addition, the park boasts a rare-these-days vintage and still-excellent Wild Mouse-style steel coaster — a marvel — in Lakeside’s case made by Miler Manufacturing and opened at the park in 1955. Featuring cars skittering over a tight winding track with sharp turns and spikey drops, it truly embodies an experience worthy of its name, Wild Chipmunk.

And Lakeside is home to two kiddie coasters, the Zamperla powered steelie Dragon and a Miler Manufacturing Kiddie Coaster for the child in us all.

Photo: Jill Ryan. View full-sized image.

Photo: Mark Rosenzweig. View full-sized image.

All these coasters are surrounded by a wealth of vintage fun flat rides, including some special and venerable “O-Plane” delights made by the famed Eyerly Aircraft Company amusement ride firm. Lakeside offers a Loop-O-Plane, Rock-O-Plane and Roll-O-Plane — all among the park’s arsenal of over 40 delightful attractions.

And among those 40 is a unique merry-go-round. Lakeside’s carousel dates to 1908 and is one of only a handful surviving in our time made by carousel pioneer Charles Wallace Parker. The ride also boasts some wooden horses made by famed carver Charles I.D. Loof, along with many other animals and some chariots too, arrayed in four rows on three go-round levels. This carousel represents a collaboration of carvings done by different woodcarvers, all so distinctive that they have been described as moving folk art.

Photo: Mark Rosenzweig. View full-sized image.

Plus, there’s a new attraction opening later this season. Lakeside should debut its first new ride in years, a large Zyklon model (made by Pinfari of Italy) compact, multilevel, figure-eight-style steel roller coaster thriller. The Zyklon will up the total of coasters at the park to five— adding some extra excitement to the ride mix and enticing coastering thrill seekers to return to Lakeside for some new fun, along with the old time-tested delights.

And those delights started more than 100 years ago. Way back in 1904, Robert Speer, newly elected mayor of Denver, was inspired by the success of the Chicago Columbian Exposition World’s Fair, which an estimated 27 million people visited in 1893, famed for its classic white neoclassical architecture (called the “Great White City”), notable for demonstrating that cities can be heavenly, clean and orderly. Speer made the City Beautiful movement a major push. Lakeside, originally named White City, was opened in 1908 as an amusement resort by the Denver Tramway company, making it a trolley park. The amusement park was soon sold to Denver brewer Adolph Zang. Shortly, Speer and Zang decided to lift Denver “from its dirty, bar-brawling roots” (according to into an article by Basha Cohen in Westword, a newspaper and website recounting the early history of Denver amusements) to a “dream city that Speer envisioned as ‘Paris on the Platte.’” Denver’s White City held true to its namesake with architecture similar to that of the Chicago Exposition and over 100,000 lights.

Photo: Mark Rosenzweig. View full-sized image.

As part of Zang’s master plan, and to avoid Denver’s blue laws prohibiting the sale of liquor on Sundays, the amusement park’s land was incorporated as the town of Lakeside in 1907, which would allow the place to serve liquor daily. To this day, the Lakeside park address is in the small city of Lakeside, Colorado, a town created specifically to host its amusement park.

When Lakeside opened in 1908, an estimated 50,000 people attended, many of them arriving by the Denver trolley. Now it is one of only 15 trolley parks still operating in the world and has survived to this day to become one of the oldest amusement parks in the United States, and the oldest still running in Colorado.

In 1935, Ben Krasner, head of concessions at the park, acquired ownership of Lakeside. Rather than the grand “White City,” Krasner envisioned Lakeside as a park for the people. During the Depression and continuing through World War II and into the 1960s, his vision reshaped the park’s image into a family-friendly place. Most visible were the dramatic changes he made to the look of the park. Working with architect Richard Crowther, Krasner redesigned Lakeside in the art deco and art moderne styles.

Photo: Mark Rosenzweig. View full-sized image.

Emphasizing family fun too, Krasner built new boat docks and modern motorcraft that whizzed around the lake. Two trains purchased from the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair — the Orient Express, the (578-mm) gauge miniature railway train featuring the steam train locomotives "Puffing Billy" and "Whistling Tom," along with the world's first miniature gauge diesel locomotive patterned after the California Zephyr — all circled the newly named Lake Rhoda (in honor of Ben Krasner’s daughter).

Above all, Krasner pursued thrills, with new rides at every turn; the Satellite (self-piloted rockets), Auto Scooters (bumper cars) and Wild Chipmunk (roller coaster) all are still fan favorites. But the most exciting new ride brought in by Krasner was Cyclone, a wooden roller coaster that opened in 1940 and is still in operation today.

Photo: Mark Rosenzweig. View full-sized image.

Photo: Mark Rosenzweig. View full-sized image.

Built by the T.M. Harton Company, Cyclone is one of only two existing examples still standing of the 11 coasters designed by Edward Vettel Sr. (and the only one left operating now). Upon his death in 1952, Vettel’s obituary referred to him as the "roller coaster king," while remarking that he had designed more than 80 "thrill rides" in amusement parks in the United States and abroad, including such now-legendary wooden coasters as the well-remembered Racing Whippets at West View Park in Pennsylvania and Zephyr at Pontchartrain Beach in New Orleans.

Cyclone is a 2,800-foot-long, 80-foot-high combination of a twister and out-and-back coaster experience. It starts with a wonderful tunnel before the chain lift, and after the lift dives into a series of dramatic swooping drops, then takes a turn toward Lake Rhoda while next offering some flat lateral G curves, and finally bunny hops its way into the station. Cyclone’s colorfully lit art deco station architecture and its theater marquee entrance, along with its stunning quintessential coaster trains, classic woodie barnstorming excitement and detailed hand railings in the station, remain a national treasure.

Photo: Jill Ryan. View full-sized image.

Photo: Mark Rosenzweig. View full-sized image.

When Ben Krasner died in 1965 at age 78, his daughter, Rhoda (for whom Lake Rhoda is named) took over management of the park. Rhoda has determinedly moved ahead, keeping Lakeside alive and well with a large arsenal of thrill rides, as she shared her father’s vision over these recent decades.

In 2021, Lakeside Amusement Park reopened in mid-summer (on July 22), following a period darkened by COVID-19 last year and then some difficulty fully staffing for operation this season. Brenda Fishman, the park’s head of operations (Rhoda Krasner’s daughter), stated that earlier this season while they were waiting to hire enough staff to reopen, they were “working and doing our best to improve and make everything as good and pretty and nice and safe as we can.” Fishman recently remarked to the Denver Post that once the park opens, “Wouldn’t it be great to see people inside, and smell the smells, the popping popcorn and all of that? We miss all the sounds of the laughter and the fun and the smell of cotton candy and the popcorn. That’s what makes the place come alive. … We only do this because we think it’s a value to the community and you know it’s fun when you come in and you see people having a good time.”

Photo: Howard Gillooly. View full-sized image.

Photo: Mark Rosenzweig. View full-sized image.

Happily, Lakeside is now very much alive again and a postpandemic value to the community, with loads of sights and smells anew, and everyone having a good time. Denver’s Channel 7 news recently caught sight of little Mylz Navarette taking his first ride at Lakeside, which was a tradition now passed along through four generations. "He’s experiencing what I used to experience, what my parents experienced and my daughter also," said Mylz’s grandfather, Frank Navarette.

Rhoda Krasner and her multigenerational family, from her father, Ben, through her head-of-operations daughter, Brenda, would love to see ACEers at Lakeside this summer to check out all their special coasters, especially the ACE Roller Coaster Landmark Cyclone.

The American Coaster Enthusiasts are holding the 2021 Preservation Conference at Lakeside Park, along with Glenwood Caverns (Glenwood Springs, Colorado) and Elitch Gardens (Denver, Colorado) from Friday, August 20, to Sunday, August 22, 2021.

— Randy Geisler

American Coaster Enthusiasts is a nonprofit, volunteer organization dedicated to the preservation, promotion, appreciation and safe enjoyment of roller coasters. With 6,000 members worldwide, ACE is the largest and longest-running enthusiast organization in the world. Members of ACE receive exclusive park benefits, newsletters, magazines and the opportunity to attend national, local and even international tours at parks. You can enjoy the benefits of members today! Join at join.aceonline.org.