Bakken in Denmark has run since 1583
Amusement parks gather rides, games, and shows; theme parks add a narrative veneer. They grew from European fairs, pleasure gardens, and picnic grounds, with world's fairs adding tech spectacle. Bakken near Copenhagen, opened in 1583, ranks among the oldest still running, beside Vienna's Wurstelprater and Copenhagen's Tivoli.
Medieval fairs such as London's Bartholomew Fair were one root; by the 18th and 19th centuries crowds went to them for acrobats, jugglers, conjurors, freak shows and menageries. Steam changed everything in the 1860s and 1870s. Thomas Bradshaw built a steam carousel at the Aylsham Fair, and Frederick Savage of King's Lynn exported fairground machinery worldwide; his galloping horses still bob on carousels. Workers with spare wages became the new customers.
Pleasure gardens were the other root. London's Vauxhall Gardens, founded in 1661, later charged admission for tightrope walkers, balloon ascents, concerts and fireworks, and its paths were known for romantic meetings; built for the elite, it soon drew every class. Vienna's Prater, a royal hunting ground opened to the public in 1766, gained coffee-houses and then the Wurstelprater. The Great Exhibition of 1851 at the Crystal Palace and Chicago's 1893 World's Columbian Exposition added enclosed spectacle, and Chicago's midway of rides, shooting galleries, penny arcades and games of chance became a fixture everywhere.
Transport made resorts. A horse-drawn streetcar reached Coney Island from 1829, and two million people visited in 1876. Blackpool boomed after a rail branch arrived in 1846, wired its promenade for lights in 1879, and by the 1890s could hold 250,000 holidaymakers. American streetcar companies built trolley parks at the ends of their lines, and Atlantic City put rides on piers from 1891.
Sea Lion Park at Coney Island, opened in 1895, was the first permanent enclosed park run by one company, charging both gate admission and ride fares. Steeplechase Park followed in 1897, Luna Park in 1903 and Dreamland in 1904. Blackpool Pleasure Beach opened in 1896, and in 1904 Hiram Maxim, whose steam aircraft had failed, installed his Captive Flying Machine, carriages circling a central tower. Wooden parks burned: Dreamland in 1911, Luna Park in 1944. The first kiddie park opened in San Antonio in 1925 and was still running in 2022.
Source: Amusement park
