Crystal history

The lore of Crystal Beach Park is well documented.

“Our family was the only one that ever owned it,” Mueller said, and they kept photos and records about the park.

In 1906, George Blanchat, a Lorain businessman, purchased the land known as Shadduck’s Grove.

Sitting on Lake Erie just west of the Erie-Lorain county line, there was a beer garden, dance hall and carousel.

The next year, George and Josephine Blanchat opened Crystal Beach, named for the fine sand of the beach on the property.

Over the years, the park had thousands of visitors coming to the 22-acre complex — open Memorial Day to Labor Day — with its own cottages to rent.

For day trippers, there was no parking fee and guests could bring their own picnic lunches and dinners.

Crystal Beach sold tickets for each ride.

The park had Dodgem cars, a ferris wheel, pony rides, an arcade, miniature golf and a number of mechanical rides.

There were the spinning rocket ships, a miniature train and, after World War II, an amphibious duck car.

The park had lake access from the shoreline and athletic fields above the cove.

The merry go round featured a menagerie of carved wooden animals, not just horses, created by the Herschell Spillman Co. carousel maker.

The 2,300-foot long Crystal Thriller roller coaster was made with 200,000 board feet of Alabama pine, left unpainted so it was easy to inspect the structure.

“I rode it only once; I’m not a roller coaster person,” Ryan said with a laugh.

Along with photos and memorabilia, the family members lived as amusement park residents and operators.

The family called it the park of a thousand trees, before 1947.

That year, Feldkamp was 10 years old and housebound with chicken pox when the phone began ringing in the early morning hours.

Lightning struck and sparked a five-alarm blaze that destroyed several buildings at the park.

“The fire was as tall as the trees,” Feldkamp said. “It was like a huge wall across the back.

“The back of the park was just flames, just all the way up. It just was unbelievable.”

Nine years later, Feldkamp

had her senior prom at the dance hall there.

The Crystal Ballroom could hold more than 3,000 people and dancers came out in droves for touring bands that stopped to play.

Some of the acts included Sammy Kaye, Lawrence Welk, Tommy Dorsey and His Orchestra, the Four Freshman, drum great Gene Krupa and Doris Day, appearing there at age 16.