Cyclone

One of the perks of being a pilot is that I decided to take a little detour when I was flying over Denver just so I could photograph Lakeside from the air.  This shot shows the entire park, Lake Rhoda, and the one-fifth-mile oval Lakeside Speedway that operated from 1938 to the 1988.  (Yes, the structure around the racetrack was still sitting dormant twenty years after the last race, and it remains there a decade later!)   Interstate 70 is on the lower right side of this shot.

The Tower of Jewels was the park's main entrance when it was built in 1908.  It was covered with tens of thousands of electric lights, an uncommon feature in the early 1900s.  When it opened, the tower housed a 18,000-candle-power searchlight which was previously used at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.  The 150-foot-tall tower is very visible in this picture and it still has a few thousand lights on it these days.

The large building on the upper right is the Lakeside Mall.  It opened in 1956 on the land originally set aside for the Lakeside housing development.  Residences were never built, so the amusement park sold 62 acres of land to developers who built the large shopping center.  The mall closed around the time this picture was taken in 2007.  A WalMart opened on this land in 2012.

©2018 Joel A. Rogers.