A photograph taken about 1995 of Paul L. Stutzman, relaxing at the old bingo stand at the Dell Lake Park, Fountain, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania.
A brief history of the park, including some fond recollections by Stutzman, was featured in the Pottsville Republican, 5 August 1995:
Hegins Valley flocked to Dell Lake
Vaudeville shows, bingo games attracted crowds to park until 1957
By Kathleen Roberts, Staff Writer
America was at war. Gas was rationed and people couldn’t stray far from home.
For people in the Hegins Valley, that meant boredom.
There was nothing to do for fun, said Paul L. Stutzman, 75, of Fountain.
So Stutzman, a former coal miner and chicken farmer, decided to open an amusement park.
His Dell Lake Park debuted in 1942 on 22 acres off Route 25 on a forested plot in Fountain behind what is now Camp-A-While.
It featured 11 9-cent rides, including a Ferris wheel and carousel, a 125-seat restaurant and 3 1/2 acre lake.
Its 50 picnic tables got crowded during ethnic festivals, such as Italian and Pennsylvania Dutch.
Between 800 to 900 people packed benches in front of the outdoor bandshell where vaudeville acts like the Sons of the Pioneers, the Harmonica Rascals, the Sons of the Plains and 101 Ranch Boys appeared.
These same acts were also appearing at the former Hippodrome in Pottsville, back then, Stutzman said.
His bingo game was also a crowd-pleaser. For a nickel, players could win up to $3 in prize money.
The game ran from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. – some people sat and played all day, not even moving to get something to eat, Stutzman recalled.
Players would have their spouses get their 10-cent of 15-cent hamburgers for them, while they kept playing, hoping to win a prize.
On a busy weekend, 1,500 to 2,000 people packed the park. the parking lot could only hold 300 cars, so on those full days, cars lined Dell Road.
Some people stayed at the park for entire weeks or summers in nine cottages around the lake, paying $10 or $15 a week.
But little by little, government regulations and high insurance costs brought the park to a close.
Stutzman shut down his bingo game when it became illegal for anyone but non-profit groups to use bingo to make money.
He had his Ferris wheel dismantled because it cost him too much in insurance – $550 per year.
Health inspectors told him he would have to replace outhouses with modern bathrooms at a cost of thousands of dollars.
At the same time, coal mines throughout the county were having a slow time. Miners and their families just couldn’t afford to go to the park anymore, he said.
By summer, some families were struggling to pay bills from Christmas, Stutzman said.
Dell Lake Park closed in 1957.
Revisiting the site of the park last week, Stutzman could still vividly picture those brief five years when the non-silent park was filled with music and laughter.
The former park still has many of the original structures there, such as the restaurant, concession stand, bandshell, and carousel building. However, most have collapsed due to heavy storms and many have been vandalized.
What was a summer playground is now overgrown with weeds.
Almost four decades after he shut down his park, Stutzman says he still misses it.
“You meet so many people. There’s no two people alike, there’s always a variation somewhere,” he said.
But Stutzman realizes that the park had run its course.
“It had its cycle. It’s just like, you buy a car, you have it for three years and then your neighbor gets another one and you get another one,” he explained.
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Article and photo from Newspapers.com.
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