Lost and Found
Written by PA Heritage Staff in the Lost and Found category and the Summer 1995 issue Topics in this article: Allegheny County, Dauphin County, England, John Miller, Kennywood Park, National Historic Landmark, West MifflinLost
Opened in July 1929, the Hershey Park Pool – actually a combination of four swimming pools, including one for toddlers – held nearly one and a quarter million gallons of filtered spring water and measured thirty-five thousand square feet! Virtually an engineering feat, the main pool (photographed in the early 1930s) was built in two sections. The handsome bathhouse, with tile roof and decorative turrets, housed two huge changing rooms outfitted with a total of nearly five thousand lockers. In 1947 alone, more than one hundred thousand bathers paid admission to use the facility, located in Dauphin County. The swimming pool closed in 1966, after which it was filled in and the bathhouse was demolished. The site is now a meadow.
Found
The Racer was designed in 1927 by noted roller coaster genius John A. Miller for Kennywood Park in West Mifflin, Allegheny County. One of the most elegant racing coasters ever built in America, and costing more than seventy-five thousand dollars, the Racer was constructed as “a snappy ride that wasn’t too much for mothers and children.” Miller’s design features a single, continuous track with a reverse curve so that a train beginning on one side of the loading platform will finish on the other. Only one similar coaster in the world survives – the Racer in England’s Blackpool Pleasure Beach. Kennywood Park, designated a National Historic Landmark in 1987, restored the original facade of its Racer in 1990.
