Washington County once envisioned a state park in Mon Valley
Like all buildings in Eldora Park, the dance pavilion's roofline was strung with lights at a time when most Mon Valley houses did not have electricity.
A Charleroi Interurban car traverses a high bridge in North Charleroi overlooking the Monongahela River and Wheeling-Pittsburgh Steel’s Monessen Works.
James Wickerham was among the attractions during the early days of Eldora Park, when visitors could purchase souvenir photographic portraits of themselves.
DONORA – Washington County had a grand vision in 1959 to create a sprawling state forest in the Mon Valley across a dying steel mill’s park in Donora and a nearby closed trolley park that once featured socialist gatherings.
The reuse plan for the Eldora and Palmer parks died, though, after the county’s redevelopment authority ran into questions about how to deal with acquiring for a state park the mineral rights below the land along the western ridges of the Monongahela River valley, said Richard Rockwell, who grew up in Carroll Township and is considered an expert on Eldora Park history.
“The project is a necessity because of the difficulty in acquiring new industry to locate in an area where the executives and workmen do not have adequate recreation,” Charleroi attorney Melvin B. Bassi stated in an article published Feb. 14, 1959, in the Charleroi Mail.
Bassi also was chairman of the Washington County Redevelopment Authority at a time when U.S. Steel shuttered its Donora works and Eldora Park’s roller coaster and other attractions had disappeared form the landscape. The authority was faced with redeveloping the first major steel mill to close in the United States and thought the creation of a 1,400-acre recreational forest by merging the parks with adjacent land would make the Mon Valley a more desirable place to live.
Eldora Park was a wonder to behold after it opened off Route 837 in Carroll Township under 1901 plans of a partnership of local businessmen, including Charleroi banker John K. Tener, who would later be elected governor of Pennsylvania. It boasted a roller coaster, photography studio, dance hall, restaurant, waterfall and merry-go-round. Reached only by the Charleroi Interurban trolley line, all of the parks buildings were strung with light bulbs at a time when most area houses did not have electricity.
“This would have been a fantastic place to see,” Rockwell said June 3 while leading a program on the park at the Donora Historical Society.
Palmer Park was built by the steel industry to offer recreation to its employees and their families. Meanwhile, Eldora attracted labor events, including union support rallies features such speakers as Mother Jones, a feisty organizer of mine workers, and picnics held by a tri-county socialist organization.
In the park’s early days it featured landings by hot air balloons, which were difficult then to operate. In one approach from Monessen, a daredevil named C.H. Overmeyer had to parachute to safety just before his balloon crashed into the Monongahela River, said Rockwell, of Bloomfield, N.J.
The park’s decline began in 1927 when its owners enclosed the dance hall to allow it to be used for roller skating during the winter. Lawrence Welk was one of the last big names to appear there in 1939 before it became dormant during World War II and eventually leased to Girl Scouts.
Few reminders of the park can be found there today. Among them are the brick walkway from the trolley stop to the grounds and a few wooden lamp posts, said Rockwell, who showed a few never-before-seen photos of the park, including a portrait of a photographer who once snapped souvenir photos of visitors there.
And Westmoreland and Washington counties went on to, instead, develop the Cedar Creek and Mingo Creek County parks, respectively, into premier rural recreational attractions in the Mid-Mon Valley.