Luna Park

Luna Park was an amusement park that opened in Arlington in 1906.

Luna Park was an amusement park that opened in Arlington (then known as Alexandria County) in 1906. It was situated along Four Mile Run at South Glebe Road and South Eads St., where the county’s water pollution plant is now. Brochures described it as “A Fairyland of Amusement Overlooking the Beautiful Potomac” and “an architectural fashion plate.” It offered many attractions, including rides, a “shoot the chutes,” a ballroom, a bandstand, a Temple of Mystery, a moving picture theater, and even slot machines! The exact date the park closed is unknown, but a fire damaged the park some years later, and the owner dismantled it around 1915.

In the early 1900s, there was a 34-acre "trolley park," Luna Park, on that property. The trolley park got its name from the fact that it was located along an electric-powered inter-urban trolley line that provided accessible, affordable transportation from Washington and Alexandria along the route of the old Georgetown-Alexandria canal. The original canal structures are gone, but the Washington Metrorail system now follows the canal's route. The location where the canal crossed over Four Mile Run was the site of an explosive train wreck in 1885 where the canal, train tracks, and wagon road (now US 1) intersected at the Four Mile Run crossing. Trolley parks were the precursor to amusement parks and were fostered by the streetcar companies to use transportation on weekends. The Washington Times recorded that the normal fee for the round-trip on the line was twenty-five cents, but the railway offered a special rate of fifteen cents to entice park patrons from both the Washington and Alexandria terminals. Luna Park had a figure-eight roller coaster, circus arena, ballroom, chute-the-shoots slide, restaurants, and picnic facilities for 3,000 people. Other short-lived parks were named Luna Park in North America (Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Scranton, and Mexico City), all developed by Frederick Ingersoll, mostly with shaky finances. The Alexandria Gazette of August 16, 1906, carried the following article: Several elephants to be exhibited at Luna Park next week are expected to arrive via the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. They will be led through the city on their way to the resort. Luna Park, which has been a success since its opening, has grown in popularity and continues to be visited by thousands.

Later, the Alexandria Gazette reported that On the morning of August 21st, the four elephants, a male named Tommy, and three females, Queenie, Annie, and Jennie, escaped. Annie was quickly caught. The others headed toward Alexandria, where they smashed a barn, decimated a cornfield, and trampled a graveyard. By nightfall, Tommie had been caught, and owner P. W. Barlow was offering a $500 reward for the capture of Queenie and Jennie. He persuaded Maj. Gordon W. Lillie to dispatch some of his men after the pair. Lillie was in town with "Pawnee Bill's Wild West and Great Far East Exhibition." When he put on his red cowboy shirt, he became Pawnee Bill. Still later, the Alexandria Gazette reported that on Sunday, August 26th, a horse-mounted procession set off from Alexandria toward Baileys Crossroads, where there had been an elephant sighting. They found Jennie in a thicket, and a "Wild West" performer named "Mexican Joe" lassoed her. Queenie remained the last holdout at large ... She was captured the next night by Barlow and his men in a pine grove 20 miles south of Alexandria, having been chased all day by country folk wielding pitchforks, sticks, baseball bats, and stones. More thrilling details of this adventure are chronicled in a 12-page article, "Great N orthem Virginia Elephant Hunt or The Pachyderm Panic of 1906," The Northern Virginia Review, 2012.2 On April 15, 1915, near a trail that Charley and I often take to climb the Ridge to Fort Scott Park, sparks from a fire in the nearby woods caused the signature roller coaster to bum. The park closed and was dismantled that year. Some remains were said to be still visible up to 1988, but all that is now within the high chain link fences of the sewage treatment plant. However, after Charley and I climb the steep wooded trail to Fort Scott Park, we look down and imagine what stood there over 100 years ago as portrayed in a 1907 map of the site.

Location

Metadata