The woodland making up Forest Park forms the basin of the Pine Run and the North Branch of the Neshaminy Creek. It was an area that attracted passers-by even before Eckhart’s lifetime. Legend maintains that the dense forest often served as the camping grounds for Chief Tamenend and his tribe of Lenni-Lenape Indians. From this point the Indians could scout out in many directions for hunting and fishing. At that time many Indian trails ran through the grove. One path, now U.S. Route 202, and known then as Society Road, led from the east, and another, later known as Ferry Road, ran from the northeast along the North Branch of the Neshaminy and joined the other path at the junction of the two creeks. Chief Tamenend traveled many times over these trails.

The legend states that on Chief Tamenend’s last journey his warriors carried his aged and infirm body until they reached their old camping grounds-Forest Park. Too weak to continue, the chief was left at the camp in the charge of a young squaw to await the warriers’ return. The following day, Mr. and Mrs. Shewell, traveling over the trail, found Chief Tamanend’s dead body, very badly burned. They assisted the young squaw in the burial, leaving no marker of the body’s exact location, but it is believed that Chief Tamanend was buried in or near Chalfont. Within the grounds of the park, a tree with an Indian marker still points the way up the North Neshaminy. And along the banks of Indian Creek, on several of the now nearly 300-year old oak and maple trees, are markers dating back over 150 years.

History-making events soon followed the Indian legend as the site of Eckhart’s Grove took shape. The earliest land records show the site as part of a larger William Penn land grant, encompassing 465 acres or 151 perches, which was sold to James Hamilton in the early 1700’s. This comprised the great “lot” of Chalfont including the area that includes Forest Park. The property was further divided into parcels owned variously by the Butler and James families, and from roughly 1765 through 1835, the property subsequently changed hands several times. Beginning in 1835, George Eckhart, a wealthy German farmer and miller, owned the land and also the nearby old Butler Mill, which was built about 1720. At his death in 1848, Eckhart left the property to his son Charles, including the farm of which Forest Park was a part.

As early as the 1830’s the wooded area had been long known informally as Eckhart’s Grove and was a popular picnic grounds for old fashioned open-air dance parties and private social gatherings of the early Welsh Baptist settlers of the village. When Ferry Road once ran down the western edge of the park, it became a natural gathering place in the woods between the creeks. When a bridge over the Neshaminy Creek was built for Ferry Road late in the nineteenth century, the section of Ferry Road traversing the park was soon abandoned.

Its beginnings as a place of amusement may be traced back to April 2, 1885 when Isaac F. Funk (1850-1911), a Mennonite farmer from New Britain Township purchased the former 80-acre Charles Eckhart farm along Ferry Road, east of town, with the intent of establishing a picnic grove enterprise with amusements. Funk had big plans for his property, and constructed a dam on the Pine Run Creek for boating and fishing. He also erected a dining pavilion, a dancing pavilion and box swings for use by his patrons.

On June 27, 1885 Funk’s Park (also known variously as Forrest Park and Funk’s Forest Park) officially opened for the public, with addresses given by Doylestown lawyers John D James, Esq., and J.F. Hendricks, Esq., with music furnished by the Chalfont Cornet Band under the direction of Professor Bruner. A large crowd was in attendance. Funk, who invested much of his profits into local real estate, two years later acquired the adjacent 61-acre William Biddle farm (also known as the Oakford farm) along the eastern edge of the park for future expansion.

Almost immediately Funk promoted his park to area churches, schools, family reunions and civic groups. Known as a railroad park, because of its close proximity to the Doylestown branch of the Reading Company, Forest Park played host during the summer months to special Philadelphia and Reading passenger excursions. Trains as long as six to ten cars each, would drop off passengers along the lay-off siding at the park boardwalk that led into the park. The park competed for picnic business with Mineral Springs Park (later Willow Grove Park), Menlo Park (Perkasie), Neshaminy Falls Park, Dorney Park (Allentown), City Park (Bethlehem), West Point Park, Burlington Island Park (Bristol), Valley Forge and Island Park (Easton).

During the 1890’s many Philadelphians would escape the summer heat of the big city by boarding at summer resorts, hotels and farms in Chalfont and the surrounding vicinity. Situated under the shady, tall oaks at the confluence of two creeks, Funk’s Park was a natural destination point for hundreds of people during the week. It was not uncommon to witness marching bands dismount from the Chalfont station and perform a rousing musical number down the village streets while en route to Funk’s Park. A Chalfont tradition for many years at the turn of the century was attending the fourth of July fireworks pagaent at Forest Park, with hundreds of Chinese lanterns lit at dusk, and hay rides onboard Charles M. Pearson’s “sunflower wagon.”

In an effort to attract patrons, Funk began to expand his entertainment offerings during the closing years of the century by installing steam-operated amusements. About 1887 a “Flying Circus” ride was in operation at the park, which was a crude early open-air merry-go-round. Funk later purchased a second-hand German carousel with band organ from a Washington, D.C. park, and in December 1890 he erected a permanent building for the carousel in the western section of the park near the North Branch of the Neshaminy Creek. It was often said that Funk once kept 10 milk cans in his barn in which he placed the pennies collected on the merry-go-round-all taken in on one Saturday! On July 15, 1893, a figure-eight toboggan slide, or early side-friction roller coaster, opened adjacent to the carousel, and remained in operation until the late 1930’s. A few area residents still living in the 1970’s could recall walking through the park and noticed steam escaping from the vents that ran through the park. The one large generator in the park was undoubtedly overworked.

When Chalfont Borough was incorporated in 1901, Funk’s Park was reclassified for the mercantile tax as a confections vendor. That same year, the road between Route 152 and Ferry Road was renamed Park Avenue to commemorate the amusement park. About this time the Chalfont United Methodist Church maintained a small baptismal pool in the Pine Run Creek. A banked bicycle track for racing also soon appeared, and a field for playing baseball was one of the first to appear in New Britain Township. Dancing to orchestral accompaniment and lively cakewalk competitions were frequent entertainment offerings. Visitors could pose for souvenir snapshots captured by photographer Craven, and several concessions opened along the midway offering ice cream, soft drinks, cigars, cigarettes, candies, postcards and other novelties. In 1899 a grandstand was erected for fans of baseball games; later this building served as the Penny Arcade, replete with coin-operated games of chance and amusements. The original 30’ x 100’ bowling alley later served as a combination Park Auditorium and picnic pavillion. A new bowling alley was built in the early 1920’s adjacent to the arcade. The late Alvin Moyer, Sr., worked summers at the park as a boy and as payment for setting up ten pins in the bowling alley he received 50 cents a day and a plate of ice cream.

Due to a booming picnic business and to better accommodate the immense crowds of picnickers which thronged to the park daily by rail, in July 1910 the Philadelphia & Reading extended the lay-off siding at the park entrance an additional 1,100 feet across the Doylestown-Norristown Road (now Route 202) to accommodate standing room for two ten car trains over the previous eight-car capacity. But the park’s good fortunes were soon met with a setback. Its proprietor, Issac Funk, was struck by a severe case of pneumonia and died on February 12, 1911. Funk was interred in the New Britain Baptist Church graveyard, where he and his wife had been members since 1897. His widow Levina and son Sylvester continued to run the park well into the 1920’s.

In March 1927 the Funk estate sold the 105-acre park to Emmanuel Kolb, an affluent Philadelphia industrialist and a relative of the Funk family. Kolb spent almost a half million dollars in improvements, and added a restaurant and a large concrete swimming pool to lure Philadelphia patrons tired of city heat. Completed in June 1928 by John S. Bailey and Brother of Doylestown, it measured 75 x 150 feet, with a capacity of 450,000 gallons of water, drawn principally from the Neshaminy Creek and equipped with modern filtration methods for water purification. With over 500 bath houses, slides, diving boards, diving towers, ladders and a sand beach, it cost $100,000 to build and was one of the largest concrete pools in the country at that time. He also built a new paved entrance at the east end of the property, to allow parking for hundreds of patrons who chose to enter from Route 202 and Bristol Road, avoiding the highway railroad crossing and the awkward Park Avenue entrance on the north side of the park. A new rest station for nursing infants was built along the ball field; it later became the park office. Concessions and games of chance included a milk bottle game and fish pond catch. Sixty new boats were placed on the Pine Run, new playgrounds, comfort stations and spacious rest rooms rounded out the latest improvements. Prior to Kolb’s ownership, the park was without electricity and still relied on steam power!

Unfortunately many amusement parks did not weather the Great Depression and closed by the hundreds during the 1930’s. Although Forest Park survived the 1930’s its owners were heavily in debt. After much deliberation by Gilbert Foote, President, and Kolb who served as Treasurer, they decided to sell the park in May 1937 to David Coons and Albert Sanders, real estate agents from Jenkintown, Pa. Coons and Sanders had plans to develop the site into housing developments but were swayed in their decision by concessioner Richard Lusse to develop the site into a first-class picnic grove for industrial picnics held by large Philadelphia corporations.

Richard F. Lusse (1898-1992), a first generation Swiss-American whose family had produced in their southwest Philadelphia plant, bumping cars, or Lusse Auto Skooters as they were called, carousel machinery and water rides worldwide for the amusement park industry, bought a one-third-share ownership in the park the following year, and reversed its fortunes. His wife, Elsie, had operated the bumping car concession in the park’s former dance hall pavilion since 1933, using cars left over from the 1926 Philadelphia Sesquicentennial. However, despite this new addition, the large crowds that the owners anticipated still were not lured in after the Sunday School picnic season ended.

Elsie Lusse pleaded with her husband to find a way to resolve the park’s debts. He soon found the answer. On Sunday, August 15, 1937, Uncle Ezra, a famous radio personality, and his entire radio cast appeared at Forest Park. As early as 7 a.m. cars started arriving and a record number of 10,000 cars entered the park that day and were charged 15 cents admission. A bandshell and stage were built expressly for the event and an afternoon and evening show was staged for the crowd. Almost overnight the park was in the black, all of its debts were cleared, and Lusse and his wife gradually bought out his partners, taking full control of the park’s ownership in 1942. Interestingly, Lusse became one of the few amusement park ride manufacturers in America to own his own park.

During World War II, Forest Park was in its glory years and Lusse increased attendance through various promotional events. Hollywood stars such as Jimmy Durante, Mae West, Ed McMahon, Marlene Dietrich, Van Johnson, and boxer Joe Louis made appearances. When World War II erupted, Lusse developed an elaborate industrial picnic program with Philadelphia area corporations. Lusse hired Joe Redding, a former executive of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum Bailey Circus, to book picnics of the largest corporations. They created an industrial picnic program which involved a package deal-each employee received a lunch, a light dinner, transportation from Philadelphia on the Reading Company, and use of the park’s facilities. Redding, who was a wild game hunter, would describe his hair-raising stories of animal poaching in Africa to potential clients, according to Lusse, and won their business with a signed picnic contract every time!

The park’s first big contract was with the Franklin Sugar Refinery and its 3,200 employees. One significant problem that arose stemmed back to Lusse’s purchase of the park some years prior. He was warned at that time by Dr. Rufe of Chalfont that if African-Americans were to swim in the pool, Forest Park would be avoided by the locals. Since Franklin Sugar’s workforce was almost 80% black, the park made a deal that the pool would be closed for repairs on the day of the picnic.

With swelling numbers of employees due to defense contracts, many of the companies used trains to transport their picnickers. The Budd Manufacturing Company needed twelve trains of fifteen cars each to transfer its 45,000 workers to the park. To avoid any problems caused by the serving of alcohol, Mr. Edward G. Budd paid for the closing of all local taverns on the day of the outing. Other large corporations, including Merck, Sharpe & Dohme; Heintz Manufacturing Corporation; Ford Motor Company; Philco Corporation; and the Campbell Soup Company, used the park as well. Forest Park’s slogan became the place “Where Most Picnics Go.”

In the 1940’s, the Philadelphia Mummers’ string bands were the major attractions. Usually at the end of the summer season, the bands performed a finale, and in 1947 President Harry S. Truman kicked off that closing ceremony. Still other interesting events promoted interest in the park, including a woman who was buried alive for ten days; the Miss Forest Park Swimsuit competition; and the Chalfont “Boy of the Year” contest, which sent the winners on a California, Florida or Cuba vacation. After World War II concluded, Lusse paid tribute at the park with a Victory on Parade celebration. A Swiss Day was held at the park on August 1, 1950 and featured a visit from the Swiss Ambassador to the United States.

In many respects the 1940s were the glory years for Forest Park. The picnic business was booming. Through his many contacts in the amusement park industry, Lusse introduced many new rides to the park during his tenure, including a large 60’ Dentzel carousel housed in a spacious new building constructed in 1937, a Mangels Whip, a Traver Octopus, a Traver Frolic (relocated from Pontchartrain Beach in New Orleans), Lusse Auto Skooters, a Rocket Airship ride, a home-built minature train ride (using cars from the Mountain Alps Scenic Railway at Willow Grove Park), a Traver Rollo Plane, a Rocket ride, and an Eli Ferris Wheel. The midway showcased numerous novelty booths, a Trading Post, a Shooting Gallery, a Skee Ball Alley, a Chief Tamenend Exhibit, bird cage, light lunch pavilions, refreshment stands, spotted flower beds, ten pavilions and numerous picnic groves with cement benches and tables made impervious to flooding, with a total seating capacity for 10,000. A special area with children’s rides was designated as the Kiddie Koral. Pony rides and athletic events near the baseball diamond were popular affairs. A bird-dog-and-monkey show was presented at the Bandshell stage by George Roberts every Sunday afternoon. Harry Swartley served as General Manager from 1945 until 1953.

Most kids in Chalfont worked summers at Forest Park and for many it was an important part of their lives growing up. A Forest Park swimming team entered into competition with other local teams, and even beat rival Fanny Chapman during one memorable season! A favorite pastime of Chalfont residents was counting the seemingly endless parade of buses that would drive up Main Street and turn into Park Avenue en route to the Park. As a teenager in the early 1950’s, Rose Marie Hug worked summers in the park where she sold soft drinks, cleaned the bathrooms and sold tickets at the Swan boat landing. For a 12-hour shift without breaks, she was paid $3 per day and cashed her checks at Eckie’s Store on Bristol Road.

In 1944, the park began to have problems with its water resources. The State claimed that the water did not meet minimum purity standards; Lusse argued that his water was the same as that used by the Borough of Chalfont. Since the park needed additional water, Lusse drilled his own well on his New Britain Township property. Chalfont Borough wished to take possession of the water and moved the Chalfont-New Britain boundary line so that the well would be within the border. Lusse abruptly resigned in 1947 as president of borough council and fought the case in court. Ten years later, the park was reimbursed for the drilling. Forest Park received the right to whatever water it needed, but the Borough retained ownership of the well.

The Forest Park illuminations were among the most fascinating attractions at the park. The nighttime illuminations, which were located at seventeen locations throughout the park, represented various storybook and fairytale characters: Humpty Dumpty, Jack and Jill, Mary Mary Quite Contrary, Uncle Sam, Little Red Riding Hood and many others. Electric lighting controlled the illuminations’ moveable parts and, therefore, demanded artistic workmanship in the construction of the lighted characters. In addition to Pleasure Beach at Blackpool, England, Forest Park was the only park in the world to feature these visual wonders. Unfortunately the illuminations were ruined in 1947 when a barn in which they were stored on the park grounds caught fire.

But perhaps the most popular amusement from this period was the swan ride on the Pine Run Creek. The price for a swan ride was five cents for children and ten cents for adults. Twenty-three of these rides were built and assembled during the winter months in the park auditorium and stables from the 1930’s through the 1950’s by Lusse’s Swan Ride Associates for amusement parks around the world. It won popular acclaim at the 1939 National Association of Amusement Parks & Pleasure Beaches convention for the most novel device. And it could be found at many of the finer parks around the country, including Palisades Park in Palisades, NJ; Willow Grove Park; and at the New York World’s Fair, as throughout Europe and Canada as well.

During the 1953 season, Frontiertown opened at the end of the minature railroad ride when it was extended across Pine Run Creek. It featured buildings such as an old bottle shop made of bottles, a barber shop, a dance hall, a fully-operating general store, the Silver Dollar Bar (replete with a year-round liquor license and a wagon wheel covered with actual silver dollars!), and a western-style restaurant. Later Lusse added a facsimile of Fort Dearborn and hired Chief One Star, a Cherokee Indian who lived on nearby Haycock Mountain, and Chief Halftown, a local television personality, to appear at the fort. Chief One Star’s activities gradually increased until he was entertaining groups of school children on a daily basis. The chief led the children through Frontiertown and the park on hunts for arrowheads, which were often found. He taught them how to identify trees and recognize various animal footprints. He also contributed many Indian artifacts for display at Frontiertown. And with twelve male and female Indian suits, Chief One Star and his tribe even staged mock holdups on the minature railway.

Despite Lusse’s best civic efforts and his attempts to promote the park, business began to decline after World War II. With hopes of retirement, Lusse decided to lease the park to concessioners Edward Booz and William Evans during the 1953 and 1954 seasons, but the arrangement soon ended in a bitter lawsuit. Both men later bought nearby West Point Park in Montgomery County, vowing to put Forest Park out of business. To make matters worse, Lusse’s wife Elsie passed away in 1955, leaving an important void in the park’s day-to-day management. And some of the park’s old infrastructure was showing its age, particular after years of occasional flooding from the nearby creeks and years of repeated heavy use by hundreds of thousands of patrons.

On August 18-19, 1955, Forest Park and the entire Delaware Valley area experienced one of the worst floods on record when Hurricane Diane struck a severe blow to the park. The waters of the Pine Run and Neshaminy Creek overflowed and extensively damaged the park. The Pine Run rose to eight feet above the surface of the swimming pool. A dramatic rescue operation of stranded railroad passengers took place on the adjacent Reading Company trestle south of the park. Because of the Hurricane’s high winds and heavy rain, the train could not move off the trestle, which loomed only inches above the water line. Though the park row boats had been swept away from the landing and scattered around the park, several were rounded up and used to take passengers off the railroad trestle and onto higher ground. The boats aided in saving many lives.

Despite serious damage inflicted by the flood, the park remained open and business continued. But as the crowds began to level off in the late 1950’s due to a ten per cent school board tax levied on large companies that held picnics in the park. Most of the corporations did not want to pay the extra fee, so they began to go elsewhere for company picnics. It stood to reason that a Philadelphia company, for instance, should not have to pay a tax to a school district for which it had little concern. When consumption of alcohol was permitted in the park, local residents would refuse to visit.

Perhaps the greatest single event that caused the park to go into decline occurred on Memorial Day, May 31, 1958, when a race riot erupted in the park. Over 20,000 people were in attendance that day along with several string bands; an unauthorized 9-car excursion train with 372 members from the Delta Phi Tau Sorority from Philadelphia entered the grounds. One of the ring leaders of the group later served as a U.S. District Court judge and is now retired. Early in the evening a fight started in the park’s dining hall and within a few minutes had escalated into a full-scale riot. The 30-minute free-for-all sent twenty participants to the hospital and left the excursion train badly damaged. Other park visitors fled for safety by hiding in the surrounding woods, while hundreds of people rushed from the scene via foot or by automobile on area roads. Local and state police were called to the scene to restore order. Rioters were rounded up by the police and were placed on a Reading train at Chalfont Station. For obvious reasons, Sunday patronage dropped off precipitously and Lusse soon decided to close the park for the rest of 1958 season and all of 1959, pending an FBI investigation into the episode. Racial tensions broke out nationwide in the late 1950’s and Forest Park fell victim to the changing times.

Deciding to retire from the amusement business, Lusse cut his losses and sold the park, through Loretta Davis of Philadelphia, to Lawrence, Ida, Louis and Moe Kane of Revere, Massachusetts in November 1959. The Kane family operated a number of amusement ride concessions at Revere Beach, a seaside pleasure resort near Boston, and in Nantasket, MA. They brought with them to Chalfont a Boomerang ride and a used Ferris Wheel which had blown down in a hurricane in Cape May, NJ. To answer racial complaints with regard to use of the park swimming pool by blacks, a crude swimming hole was dug adjacent to the Pine Run Creek, called “Lake Suzanne,” and was furnished with a sandy beach. Even Marvin Rainwater, a celebrity cowboy, played for park audiences at the bandshell stage. While St. Jude’s Catholic Church was under construction, services were held on an interim basis in Forest Park in the Lenape Hall pavilion. But gone were the large company picnics and Mummers concerts that made the park an exciting place in the summertime. The huge crowds of people who had frequented the park were now a thing of the past, and racial concerns still plagued the park management.

After a slow start, Forest Park tried to make a valiant comeback under Kenneth Forrest, who served as the park’s general manager (1960-1963). But it lost money virtually every year. Ironically, the park showed some signs of profit at the end of the 1962 season but afterward the park’s patronage dropped off steeply. Many of the problems could be attributed to poor management: extravagant spending, ill effects of the school board tax, disagreements among the various partners over direction, and little or no advertising. The park’s physical plant was run down and many rides were mechanically unsound or were rendered inoperable due to a lack of routine maintenance. On several occasions, the Ferris wheel would invariably break down and the Chalfont Fire Company was called in to rescue stranded passengers. To further complicate matters, a fire destroyed Frontiertown in the spring of 1964, and Lake Suzanne was condemned by the state board of health. Clearly the park’s reputation as a safe family venue had been marred by the legacy of the race riot just a couple of years before, as local residents chose to stay away from the place.

With considerable debts owed, Forest Park finally closed for good at the end of 1964 season, never again to reopen. Many of the rides were old and decrepit and had little or no value to an outside buyer. In early 1965 some of the kiddie rides were sold to Gillian’s Wonderland Pier in Ocean City, NJ, including Forest Park’s stationary three-abreast menagerie Dentzel carousel. This magnificent 60’ wooden carousel, built in ca. 1900, had been relocated by Richard Lusse from an unknown Philadelphia-area amusement park and installed in Forest Park in 1937. It featured a lion, three giraffes, three goats, two chariots and ornate horses in various poses, a Lusse clown brass ring game and a Wurlitzer model 148 band organ. After relocation from the North End Hotel in Ocean Grove, NJ in the late 1960’s it was broken up by carousel afficiando Marianne Stevens in Roswell, New Mexico and many of the prized, hand-carved animals now reside in private collections throughout the United States.

The park was sold by the Kane family to Philadelphia lawyer and Hilltown Township resident Frank Nicholas in May 1966. Initially the property had been bought on speculation and earmarked for residential development of townhouses and private homes. Meanwhile the park was being reclaimed by Mother Nature as old buildings began to slowly deteriorate and eventually collapse. Ultimately a slow process of demolition took place, and abandoned rides were scrapped.

In 1971 the property was condemned for a flood control project by Bucks County, as part of the anticipated construction of Lake Galena in New Britain Township. In the 1980’s, during the “Point Pleasant Project,” the North Wales and North Penn Water Authorities acquired the real estate for the construction of a water treatment plant, which was begun in 1989. Christened as Forest Park Water, it was erected on what was formerly the park’s baseball diamond, and opened in 1994. After years of struggle to resist residential development, only a small portion of the park property was ever developed into townhouses. But fortunately much of the original property still remains unspoiled, largely on floodplain, including the towering 250- to 300-year old majestic white oaks and maples, many of which date from the era of William Penn, the Lenni-Lenape tribes and the earliest settlers in the area.

But the park’s history has not gone unforgotten. In an effort to preserve its history, the Friends of Forest Park was formed in 1984 by Chalfont resident John Malack. Preservation of the old oak trees, erection of a small museum and use of a portion of the grounds as a memorial picnic area are among the organization’s chief aims. An archeological dig performed in 1985 by the University of Pennsylvania unearthed many significant early Lenni-Lenape Indian artifacts, suggesting that the site is rich in Native American lore and culture.

But a visit to the historic area now reveals little of the once booming entertainment complex: a crumbling stone-arch bridge over the Pine Run, overgrown trees and bushes, and the tombstone-like concrete frames of hundreds of picnic tables and benches. Although the cries of happy children can no longer be heard over the thundering carousel band organ, Chalfont’s once glorious Forest Park now lies in peace but remains very much alive in the memories of many Chalfont residents, both past and present.

- 2000