Springs Park, the nearly century-old amusement park that is quietly decaying in a riverside forest in South Carolina.

2 min read

2 years ago Nathan

Somewhere off the beaten path, about 10 miles out of town, lay the remains of Springs Recreation Park, a rare sort of park built in the early 1900s by Springs Mills primarily for the enjoyment of their mill workers and their families. Very little “official” information exists about this park, except that it opened somewhere around 1925.
Upon opening to the public it was a happening place for the residents of Lancaster, South Carolina.
However, “recreation park” seems to be too modest a term to use for our Springs Park.
In fact, by all accounts, it was more like an actual amusement park, complete with a skating rink, carousel, mini Ferris wheel, and bowling alley.
All alongside a concrete Olympic-style swimming pool, half surrounded by an ancient Greek-style amphitheater, which purportedly was made to house 5,000 spectators, complete with a triple-decker diving platform. It was, by all accounts, the best pool in the whole state and, at 5 meters deep, it may also have been the deepest!

The park closed in the summer of 1989 for unknown reasons.
Unfortunately, today what remains of Springs Park is just a weird site to stumble upon while trekking through the plush forest that lines the Fishing Creek Reservoir on the Catawba River, and you may notice sheets of rusted metal or concrete slabs jutting out from beneath grass and shrubs.
Even though it’s long past its heyday, Springs Park is still an iconic site to see.
The original 9-meters diving platform sits crumpled in the pool’s deep end, but the massive, concrete viewing stadium is still standing strong and likely will stay that way for the foreseeable future, together with the rusted foundation of the park’s skating rink that juts out from the ground, as well as portions of the old mini golf course.
It was at the heart of many family outings and those memories remain deeply embedded in the hearts of those who regularly enjoyed this wonderful park.
And, although gradually the site has become reclaimed by nature since its closing in the late 80s, but one can still imagine what each of the ruins served to be.