Chicago and Cook County Cemeteries

Cemeteries and Amusement parks share a common geographic trait, that both were on the “end of the line” of street cars, “L” lines or interurbans. The owners of transportation companies realized that amusement parks could be a boon to weekend revenues.

Cemeteries on the other hand, often were at the end of the line, because as early as 1865, Chicago banned burials within the city limits, banishing cemeteries well out of the then city. Before motorized hearses, funerals to these outlying cemeteries depended on funeral trains and street cars for transportation.       Hearses pulled by horses did not fare well on long trips and muddy rutted roads.

Continue reading “THE END OF THE LINE (no pun intended)”

Most are now buried in Chicago area cemeteries, among our own families, and everyday Chicagoans. They are  unusual and memorable people who once walked the midway, riverwalk and bowery of Riverview Amusement Park on Chicago’s North side. Sadly they now exist only in our memories.

Just like real ghosts, they came in and out of our lives almost at will.  Even when they were alive, they could only appear to us after the second Friday of May,   only to disappear in October. Some, but not all, would then would reappear the following May to amuse and entertain us once again. Others not so lucky. So while they walked among us, their only job between July 2, 1904 until the fall of 1967 was to help millions of us Chicagoans enjoy summer days and nights. Continue reading “Ghosts of Riverview Park”