Pennsylvania Excursion: The Williams Grove Park

Searching online for the best of central PA’s flea markets, I came across a few descriptions of one that takes place every weekend on the grounds of an abandoned amusement park.  The Williams Grove Amusement Park near Mechanicsburg, PA, was fully operational until 2005, which is less impressive than if it had been a ghost-park from the 1950s or something, as I had romanticized it in my head, but many of the buildings and structures are clearly from the early twentieth century when the park was in its heyday, so this is a great place to visit for a spooky, time-is-at-a-standstill-and-yet-the-flea-market-must-go-on sort of feeling.

One of my favorite parts of the ghost-park was the abandoned wooden roller-coaster, the Cyclone, which dates from 1933.  I am not a fan of roller-coasters in real life, but this ghost-coaster made me long for the fun-filled coaster youth I never had or wanted.  Apparently, most of the rides were successfully auctioned off when the park went under in 2005, but nobody wanted the park itself, or the poor Cyclone, so there the coaster car remains, as if it is just waiting to climb the hill again!  Most of the other buildings and structures have had the rides removed from them, such as the large circular building which I imagine housed the carousel.  All in all, meandering around the ghost-park is a worthwhile way to spend a Sunday morning if you are in the mood for some contemplative nostalgia, or if you like to find bargains.  The flea market itself is not the best I have ever seen.  It seemed to be rather tool and implement-heavy—a place you might venture to as a cheap alternative to Home Depot.  Although there were some interesting antiques and curiosities to be seen, I didn’t find anything to take home with me.  My mother bought a three dollar watermelon, however, which she was very excited about.  Make sure to check out flea-market-on-a-bus if only to say that you did! 

Note: there IS one ride at this flea market/park-that-time-forgot that is operational as a flea market draw/Pennsylvania oddity, and it is a steam locomotive from 1917 that you can ride for $2.  It has a loud whistle and it produces a lot of steam and smoke and it travels about a mile away from the flea market, stops, and then goes right back.  It doesn’t loop around or anything but simply reverses, and I thought it was very amusing that it goes through one of the flea market parking lots where people are trying to drive in and out off of the main road and there are no signs or lights or anything to tell people that A TRAIN IS COMING.  They just blow that whistle like mad and hope for the best.  This results in a minimal amount of chaos for the motorists, but overall the steam locomotive is a nice way to spice up the flea market experience and get a more refined sense of trains and their history.  In the train depot annex building there is also a one room “museum” with about two dozen old train lanterns hanging from the ceiling and a few interesting pictures on the wall of the train and station.