History
From 1892 until 1958, it was home to a popular amusement park of the same name. From 1904 to 1919, it was called "Steeplechase Island". The amusement park was accessible primarily by ferry service and a wooden swing bridge built in 1927 to carry automobiles and pedestrians. Remaining structures from the amusement park are the carousel, dodge-'em car enclosure, and beer garden (the latter was substantially altered for use as a summer theater in the 1960s).
After a portion of the bridge burned in 1996, Pleasure Beach was cut off and became accessible only by a lengthy trek along the shoreline, or by small private boats from the mainland. This has severely limited access and allowed nature to be undisturbed. As late as December 2008, Bridgeport considered a ferry service to relink the beach with the city, but this was rejected due to parking considerations and the need for a Coast Guard registered captain.
The Town of Stratford owned 45 cottages on the Long Beach portion of the peninsula. For a decade, the town considered ending the leases of the seasonal homes, in part because of difficulties in protecting them. The town ended renewal of leases, and in May 2007, the remaining occupants agreed to give up their claims and moved their possessions away by barge. The cottages have since been demolished.
Read more about this topic: Pleasure Beach
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)
“The whole history of civilisation is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)