POPCULTURE · HISTORICAL MARKER
Crystal City
Pop Culture
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Amusement parks grew popular in the early 1900s, offering midways with games, sideshows, exhibits, rides, and indoor spaces for dancing, performances, and eating. Tulsa's first amusement park, Orcutt Park, opened on the southeast side of the city in 1907, and Electric Park opened in Red Fork in 1921 near Sapulpa Road and West 43rd Street along the Interurban line, with rides, concessions, and a swimming pool with a man-made beach. In 1929, William Falkenberg established Crystal City next to Electric Park, and as he expanded it with new rides and entertainment, it eventually absorbed Electric Park to create a thirty-acre attraction. At its peak, Crystal City offered twenty-two rides, including a Ferris wheel, Tilt-a-Whirl, Loop-a-Plane, Dodgem cars, and Zingo, one of the largest wooden roller coasters in the state, along with a bath house, what was then the largest swimming pool in Oklahoma, a miniature golf course, a miniature train and station, and the Casa Loma dance hall. During its heyday in the 1940s, as many as 15,000 people a day visited on holidays and special occasions. After World War II its popularity declined, and owner John C. Mullins closed Crystal City in 1948. Off-season fires further damaged the park, and after the bath house and Casa Loma burned in 1956, it closed permanently. Some rides were moved to Lakeview Amusement Park, Bell's Amusement Park later honored its predecessor by naming its roller coaster Zingo, and the site was purchased and cleared for construction of the Crystal City Shopping Center.
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