THE LAGOON RESORT: A THRILLING URBAN ESCAPE (CONTINUED)
The model for amusement parks had been created by the World’s Columbian Exposition and the Midway was established as a necessity for park success but entrepreneurs needed the incentive and capital to create the parks. Bamberger was one of the fortunate few who had money to invest and the incentive to create an amusement park. In 1890 he bought a trolley line from John Beck and renamed it the Salt Lake and Ogden Railway Company. It originally ran from Salt Lake City to Bountiful but due to the richness of the farm industry in Ogden he decided to extend it to Ogden.
A small, steam-powered engine that was made to look like the passenger cars pulled the trolley. Margaret Hess, a native of Farmington who grew up during the formative years of The Lagoon said "for half a century, businessmen and women, picnickers, students and other commuters relied on the Bamberger cars (often called "The Old Dummy") for transportation to Salt Lake or Ogden…The train traveled 36 miles from Salt Lake to Ogden and used the slogan "Every hour on the hour." Farmington and all of Davis County benefited from this handy transportation. It was part of our lives."
In 1910 it was electrified and renamed the Bamberger Electric. Bamberger built Eden Park in 1894 and invested in the Hot Springs Resort near the county line to promote the use of the line during off-times. Eden Park was much like Lake Park except inland and without an admission ticket. The three-acre park along Barton Creek offered shaded picnic tables, a dance pavilion, bowery, ball field, and refreshments. Both Eden Park and Hot Springs brought a lot of business to the trolley and motivated Bamberger to try building an amusement park modeled after the World’s Columbian Exposition in the middle of the line to promote traffic from both Ogden and Salt Lake. He decided to call his venture The Lagoon Amusement Park and he would locate it not far from the dead Lake Park in Farmington.
Margaret Hess remembers the first stages of making The Lagoon. "He purchased swampy pastureland from farmers in our town and turned it into a place of beauty and fun. Many of us watched the grading and excavating at The Lagoon to form the two large ponds. He planted fish in them and had many boats for boat riding on the ponds. In the wintertime the ponds were frozen over and used for skating." Bamberger increased the "lagoon" every year until it was almost 9 acres, and he brought in boats from Lake Park. The Lagoon was supplied by a natural spring. Ten teams of horses hauled in some of the buildings from Lake Park and erected them on the current site of The Lagoon. Margaret Hess’ husband, Milton, was a carpenter for The Lagoon when it first started and worked for the park for more than fifty years. She said of the move
"The cupola of the old dance pavilion was torn off by Milton M. Hess (my husband) and others, and
is now used for a tea garden in the park. We watched the moving of all buildings from Lake Park to
Lagoon and watched them placed and then rebuilt. The first merry-go-round was where the old
bowery is now. It was drawn by a horse, and my brother-in-law, James Mellus, ran it. The old
bowery is now the east bowery used for picnics."
The Lagoon opened on Sunday, 12 July 1896. Memorial Day marked the first day of the season from that day on.
Row boating, swimming, and of course, dancing were the attractions that brought the crowds via the Bamberger Railway to enjoy The Lagoon. Tickets to ride the trolley to The Lagoon cost sixty cents. The Lagoon, under the management of Bamberger’s brother, Lewis (who also went to Chicago with Simon), quickly replaced all the dwindling lakeside resorts as the new "pleasure garden." On the first Pioneer Day of its opening, July 24, 1896, two thousand locals attended the park. The next year on Independence Day more than 7,000 people were in attendance at The Lagoon.
Lewis Bamberger leased booths to concessionaires for special entertainment, food, and later rides. He had built a fun house, merry-go-round, balloon ascensions, reenactments of the sinking of the Battleship Maine, high divers, a shooting gallery, waterchutes, and a miniature steam engine railroad ride. He essentially created a Midway much like the one found at the Columbian Fair. Margaret Hess described an event on the Midway: "One Sunday for a special entertainment, a man and his crew came in with a huge lioness called Sady Pianka. The man would open its huge mouth and lay his head inside, and we would all be frightened as we stood in the large crowd watching the show." A menagerie was built incorporating elk, bear, deer, and birds.
