Macon Magazine

Age of amusement parks came and went with streetcars

By Dan Maley

At one time there was a ring of amusement parks circling Macon, offering dancing, concerts, plays, swimming, beauty pageants, zoos, shooting galleries, roller-coaster rides, floating parades, picnics and more.

One of the parks survived into the 1970s, but their heyday coincided with the era of electric streetcars, which operated in Macon from 1889 to 1934. Some were developed by streetcar companies to give people a reason to ride to the end of the line. They were private operations and admission was often included with streetcar fare.

“One of the things that happened during this period was that as the South recovered from the Civil War economically, people had more disposable income and more time,” said local historian Julie Groce.

“Unless you were a member of the upper group who lived on College Street, you couldn’t go to a country club,” Groce said. “At a time of social stratification, these were places where people of all social classes could go for amusement.  Before the streetcar, unless you had a carriage and a horse, you weren’t going to any of these places.”

The jewel in the ring was Crumps Park, located in the area now bordered by Ingleside Avenue, Ridge Avenue and Vista Circle. It was developed by the Central City Street Railway Co., which ran its first steam-powered cars there from downtown in 1888. The line was converted to electricity the following year. The park originally was called Macon Suburban Park, but soon locals began referring to it by the name of the previous owner of the property, attorney Stephen Alexander Crump.

A newspaper reporter who attended the opening of Crumps Park described it as “beautifully illuminated with the Thomson-Houston electric lights and the effect was to make one think of a fairy land.”

In 1905 the park added its famous casino, where theatrical companies from New York performed plays in the summer months. John Heisman, the famous Georgia Tech football coach, was hired to manage the casino for the 1906 season. Crumps Park also had a swimming pool, a roller coaster and a small zoo with caged opossums and raccoons.

Groce lived near the Crumps Park site about 15 years ago, and she recalled hearing an anecdote from an elderly neighbor about his boyhood.

“He said when the actresses came for the season they would board at a house on Ridge Avenue, and his mother would never let him go near that house.”