Answer Woman: What happened to the vintage rides at Rec Park? When did they disappear?

ASHEVILLE - Today's burning question is about "Asheville's own little amusement park," a beloved collection of vintage rides at an Asheville park, frequented by locals, that disappeared in the early 2000s. Got a question for Answer Man or Answer Woman? Email Executive Editor Karen Chávez at KChavez@citizentimes.com and your question could appear in an upcoming column.

Question: Why was the Rec Park dismantled? I and my children enjoyed it and I am sad that my grandchildren can’t. It was the place with the bumper cars on Azalea Road, across the bridge. It was operated by the city but for some reason the county took over. Then it was closed. It was so much fun and the rides were vintage. It did have a little train but it broke down and was never repaired.

Answer: It has been 23 years, almost to the day, since the rides at Recreation Park closed down for the last time. The history of the rides, and the park, is long and storied. Rides came and went, changed hands, broke down, got fixed, changed hands again. As did the park, which has ping-ponged between the city and county for decades.

Many people who grew up in Asheville remember it. For those my age (in the nebulous land of your mid-to-late 20s), it might be a fuzzy memory, like a dream you had: the rides in miniature, a day out with parents and siblings, the somewhat otherworldly quality of an old fairground — what a June 1992 article boasted as "a poor man's Disney World."

When did it close?

Its final Labor Day weekend was in 2000. An article by Karen Chávez (now my executive editor, but then in her first year with the Asheville Citizen Times), warned that Monday, Sept. 4, 2000, was last call for the bumper cars, Tilt-A-Whirl and carousel at the (then) Buncombe County Recreation Park.

In 2005, Recreation Park would return to city ownership with the dissolution of the Asheville-Buncombe County Water Authority, said city Parks and Rec spokesperson Christo Bubenik. The city also owned the park prior to 1984, when it was turned over to Buncombe County.

The park is located at 72 Gashes Creek Road in East Asheville, set just below the hill that holds the Western North Carolina Nature Center, which opened in 1977. The 20-acre suburban park sits on the south bank of the Swannanoa River and Lake Craig, a currently dry lake created by the partial damming of the river.

"Say goodbye to an Asheville institution," was the headline of an Aug. 24, 2000, guest commentary by Robert Campbell in the Asheville Citizen Times.

He remembered going to the park as a kid — piling in the car for a swim, skate, ride on the merry-go-round and Ferris wheel and a hot dog or two. Tickets were 10 cents each. "That's the way it was."

Thirty years later, he was taking his own kids. "The tickets cost more than 10 cents then and there were some added attractions like a little train (now junked) that ran about the length a football field along the bank of the Swannanoa River."

Fast forward to the late 1990s, "and our grandchildren jumped at the chance to go to Rec Park." But after Labor Day, Campbell wrote, "the rides at Rec Park will have vanished." An Aug. 13 ad in the Citizen Times announced the intent of the amusement rides' owners, T&S Enterprises, to remove the rides, and invited the public to say farewell to a "long-standing tradition that has been a part of Asheville's history for over 70 years."

In a news story that same month, Linda Smith, owner of T&S, was quoted saying she had been trying to sell the rides for the past two years because she felt officials at Buncombe County Parks and Recreation didn't support her business. Then, the property housed 18 amusement rides, which Smith had been operating for nine years, leasing the land from the county for $19,200 per year.

For more than a decade, in the 1980s and '90s, the rides were owned and operated by C.P. "Red" Fisher, who first leased the property from the city and then had the same arrangement with the county. He bought the rides from Leland Johnson before that, which he said were "all about 1940s vintage."

How long were the rides around?

The same 1992 article referenced earlier (poor man's Disney World, remember?) said the city has been home to "its own little amusement park" since the 1920s, though it was officially established in 1945. The rides were not county operated, the reporter, Lisa Saylor, verified, but were run under private management by T&S Enterprises, which had formed the year before. There was a staff of about 35 full and part-timers running the amusement park.

The timeline here matches up with a 2019 Historic Survey Report, passed along by Bubenik, prepared for the North Carolina Department of Transportation that July. Several of the properties studied were listed on or eligible for the National Register of Historic Places (Asheville Municipal Golf Course, Beverly Hills Historic District, Swannanoa River Bridge, Homeland Park Historic District). Recreation Park was not.

"Functioning as a recreation area since 1921, the park contains only a few remnants of the extensive amusements once associated with the site," the report said.

Among the artifacts left behind, still there in 2019, was the shelter that housed the merry-go-round, a 12-sided, open shelter with braced wood posts supporting a conical roof. Now, it's gone, just another area of paved lot.

The structure was removed in the fall of 2021, Bubenik said. It was struck by a motor vehicle that left significant damage and a structural engineer recommended its removal following an inspection.

The park site itself originally served as a training camp for civilian women who worked for the Army during World War I. Established in 1921, the city initially called facility the Asheville Recreation Park and Camp Ground.

In April 1922, the city converted the former women’s training camp to a recreation park and campground for automobile tourists, sometimes referred to as the Tourist Camp, but more often called Recreation Park.

We're going to speed run here: Beginning in 1925, amenities were continually added, including a zoo. Through fires, World War II and time, attractions came and went. At the end of the war, the city spent $65,000 to renovate the park and reopen the zoo.

In 1954, the Kiwanis Club installed a miniature railroad, more extensive than the children’s train installed two years before.

In 1967, the city renovated the park according to the plans of William O. Moore, architect, and landscape architect Ridgley K. Robinson. As a result of the renovation, a new bumper car building, pirate ship fun house and penny arcade were constructed. By this time, the park also featured a small roller coaster and a tilt-a-whirl, said the report.

Throughout all of this, the pool was a major draw for the area and saw its own share of renovations, redesigns and periods of disrepair. Rather than integrate the pool, in 1956, the city closed it and filled it with dirt. Other steps were taken to avoid complying with federal civil rights laws that would have allowed Black residents access, including selling the parcel with the pool to the Asheville Junior Chamber of Commerce. A private entity, it reopened the facility in 1958 "by membership only."

When the current pool opened in 1970, Asheville Parks & Recreation programs and facilities were integrated.

'Like having a tiger by the tail'

Fisher was retired when he bought the rides sometime around the 1980s. In an interview for a July 1990 Citizen Times article, Fisher said he brought his grandbaby to the park, got talking with Johnson, who said he was ready to let the rides go, and thought he'd try his hand at it.

In 1990, Fisher, too, was looking for a buyer to continue the tradition. But even on the precipice of moving on from the park, it was difficult to imagine saying goodbye.

"It's kind of like having a tiger by the tail, though," he said. "Once you get a hold, it's hard to turn loose."

Sarah Honosky is the city government reporter for the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA TODAY Network. News Tips? Email shonosky@citizentimes.com or message on Twitter at @slhonosky. Please support local, daily journalism with a subscription to the Citizen Times

This article originally appeared on Asheville Citizen Times: Answer Woman What happened to the vintage rides at Asheville Rec Park