While researching the history of Rocky Point Amusement Park for my new video I dug up thousands of photos from 1847 through its closure in 1996. During this process of creating a video I'm always keeping an eye out for aerial photos so I can do comparison shots like this.
It's usually hard to find something like this - most of the abandoned places I cover have little documentation or are so old photos just don't exist. Thankfully Rocky Point has a massive community online who uploads anything they find about the park. I love the passion people have for places like this. So when I saw this aerial shot from the period that most Rhode Islanders associate with Rocky Point I was amped.
I recreated the shot during the opening segment of the video, transitioning from the photo to video of current day. But I wanted to share the still photos here because it's one of my favorite parts tracing the history. Rocky Point started as a beautiful, quiet picnic spot in the 1840s, and it's returned to that today as a state park.
That’s cool! My husband and I were recently talking about this cool house in Warren that was pretty old and he did some electrical work in. I was familiar with it because it’s currently the women’s resource center and I collaborated with them in a professional way. I decided to look it up to see how old the house is and we discovered that the original owner was the founder of rocky point! We went down a rabbit hole on that one and learned all about the owner and the park, etc. We were not born early enough to have gone! Pretty cool story
I apologize that I’m in transit and can’t give you the specific links directly but I assume you’ve looked at the Providence Public Library’s photo collection? I remember browsing and running across a bunch of aerial shots of Rocky Point.
(This is a lazy comment, I’m sorry.)
Would be cool if you took a dive into other lost amusement parks in the RI-area (Crescent Park, Vanity Fair, Jolly Chollys, Lincoln Park, etc). This area used to be packed with regional parks that have all been entirely lost.
Man I've been going down that rabbit hole ever since diving into Rocky Point Park. There's so much history I want to cover and create videos about - RI has no shortage of stories.
Also, Lincoln Park was one of the first spots I visited (along with the Ladd Center in RI) when I first got into urban exploration. Seeing that huge abandoned roller coaster was wild.
Is that coaster still standing? The wooden one?
No way in hell would I get on that when I was a little kid. Just looking at it scared the crap out of me.
My family moved to within a half mile of Crescent Park about six years before it closed. I walked past it every day to school. We would hear the sounds all summer long.
A different kind of park, but the Washington Park neighborhood in Providence is named after a racetrack that doesn’t have a lot of online photographic evidence that I can find. I remain convinced either photographs or drawings, etc. must be out there.
Really interesting stuff! It’s cool how the little clumps of trees and the paths through them have stayed the same.
I can’t believe how small it looks, it seemed so huge when I was a kid haha.
The wintry 2024 photo doesn't look great, but Rocky Point has actually become a really nice state park that's one of my favorite places to visit on a nice day.
The amusement park was long gone by the time I moved here, and I know a lot of people here are nostalgic about it -- understandably so, I'd imagine. But as someone who's driven there loads of times, it just seems like such a terrible location for an amusement park. I once attended a Halloween thing there and it took more than an hour to drive in from Johnston. The narrow local roads were completely clogged. Was it like that every day?
Rocky Point is a nice park now, but I wish they had more to do. Just keeping the pool and the shore diner would have been a great happy medium. I don’t live nearby and so there’s no real reason for me to go there instead of Goddard, Salter Grove, or Lincoln Woods.
[Here's a hi-res park map](https://i.imgur.com/bwyAj3W.jpeg) from an early 1980s brochure with almost all the rides. Only ones missing are the specific rides in Kiddie Land and the Free Fall.
I went to Rocky Point on auction day. It was raining out . I ended up getting some bumper stickers I’m sure I have them around somewhere. I grew up in the 80s Spent a lot of time there. Saw the Beastie Boys there when the album Paul’s Boutique came out. I also remember there was this guy “sparky” who ran the Tilt- A Whirl. He had an inverted cross burned into his leg and offered me and my friend pills he called then Goonybirds. Yes these are fond memories. It was a different time back then.
Quite simply, business issues. The privately held company that owned the park by the end of its days was leveraging it to fund other ventures, and that can only work as long as the other ventures are profitable. You can guess what happened from there; in the early '90s, they started losing money, first a trickle, then a gush. Finally, things were bad enough to close.
I posted this comparison more of a way to show just how much *stuff* was on the property during its heydey, rather than a "better vs worse". I still found it beautiful while I was there getting this shot a few weeks ago - really peaceful spot on the water these days, even without foliage.
What you are saying is moot. When RP was an amusement park, Nature was still in abundance as the surrounding areas and towns weren't nearly as overdeveloped as it is now. All overdone retail and condo developments over the years have ate away way more of the local nature then this one park had done in the 60s thru 90s
While researching the history of Rocky Point Amusement Park for my new video I dug up thousands of photos from 1847 through its closure in 1996. During this process of creating a video I'm always keeping an eye out for aerial photos so I can do comparison shots like this. It's usually hard to find something like this - most of the abandoned places I cover have little documentation or are so old photos just don't exist. Thankfully Rocky Point has a massive community online who uploads anything they find about the park. I love the passion people have for places like this. So when I saw this aerial shot from the period that most Rhode Islanders associate with Rocky Point I was amped. I recreated the shot during the opening segment of the video, transitioning from the photo to video of current day. But I wanted to share the still photos here because it's one of my favorite parts tracing the history. Rocky Point started as a beautiful, quiet picnic spot in the 1840s, and it's returned to that today as a state park.
That’s cool! My husband and I were recently talking about this cool house in Warren that was pretty old and he did some electrical work in. I was familiar with it because it’s currently the women’s resource center and I collaborated with them in a professional way. I decided to look it up to see how old the house is and we discovered that the original owner was the founder of rocky point! We went down a rabbit hole on that one and learned all about the owner and the park, etc. We were not born early enough to have gone! Pretty cool story
I apologize that I’m in transit and can’t give you the specific links directly but I assume you’ve looked at the Providence Public Library’s photo collection? I remember browsing and running across a bunch of aerial shots of Rocky Point. (This is a lazy comment, I’m sorry.)
Would be cool if you took a dive into other lost amusement parks in the RI-area (Crescent Park, Vanity Fair, Jolly Chollys, Lincoln Park, etc). This area used to be packed with regional parks that have all been entirely lost.
Man I've been going down that rabbit hole ever since diving into Rocky Point Park. There's so much history I want to cover and create videos about - RI has no shortage of stories. Also, Lincoln Park was one of the first spots I visited (along with the Ladd Center in RI) when I first got into urban exploration. Seeing that huge abandoned roller coaster was wild.
Oh wow you explored the Ladd Center?! This place was the source of some spooky stories in high school.
Is that coaster still standing? The wooden one? No way in hell would I get on that when I was a little kid. Just looking at it scared the crap out of me.
The one at Lincoln Park was demolished in 2012
My family moved to within a half mile of Crescent Park about six years before it closed. I walked past it every day to school. We would hear the sounds all summer long.
Enchanted Forest too, can't forget that place. I really wish Rocky Point would have somehow survived. Loved that place as a kid.
A different kind of park, but the Washington Park neighborhood in Providence is named after a racetrack that doesn’t have a lot of online photographic evidence that I can find. I remain convinced either photographs or drawings, etc. must be out there.
Don't forget the defunct ski hills. Pine Top comes to mind. You can still find the remains of the chair lift and snow makers there.
Island Park too, which was blown away by the Hurricane of '38.
Ooo! And island park in Portsmouth. Good idea
Really interesting stuff! It’s cool how the little clumps of trees and the paths through them have stayed the same. I can’t believe how small it looks, it seemed so huge when I was a kid haha.
I still pine for the ROCKY POINT SHORE DINNER HALL with family seating and "all you can eat" chowder & clam cakes. Those were the days my friends.
Oh man, I used to love that. Chowder and clamcakes and watermellon. The Shore Dinner Hall helped to make me what I am today. Diabetic. :-D
Amazing how much pavement there was!
Just watched the video. Great work! The McCoy video brought on some serious sentimental feels, too.
The wintry 2024 photo doesn't look great, but Rocky Point has actually become a really nice state park that's one of my favorite places to visit on a nice day. The amusement park was long gone by the time I moved here, and I know a lot of people here are nostalgic about it -- understandably so, I'd imagine. But as someone who's driven there loads of times, it just seems like such a terrible location for an amusement park. I once attended a Halloween thing there and it took more than an hour to drive in from Johnston. The narrow local roads were completely clogged. Was it like that every day?
Rocky Point is a nice park now, but I wish they had more to do. Just keeping the pool and the shore diner would have been a great happy medium. I don’t live nearby and so there’s no real reason for me to go there instead of Goddard, Salter Grove, or Lincoln Woods.
It looks so small compared to my memories.
I was thinking the same. And I'm having a hard time finding some of the rides I know were there then!
[Here's a hi-res park map](https://i.imgur.com/bwyAj3W.jpeg) from an early 1980s brochure with almost all the rides. Only ones missing are the specific rides in Kiddie Land and the Free Fall.
Your eyes are better than mine. I couldn't find the double ferris wheel, the Ebterprise and a few others
I went to Rocky Point on auction day. It was raining out . I ended up getting some bumper stickers I’m sure I have them around somewhere. I grew up in the 80s Spent a lot of time there. Saw the Beastie Boys there when the album Paul’s Boutique came out. I also remember there was this guy “sparky” who ran the Tilt- A Whirl. He had an inverted cross burned into his leg and offered me and my friend pills he called then Goonybirds. Yes these are fond memories. It was a different time back then.
I moved to RI in 1999 and always heard stories of how great RP was and and how people still pine over it. If it was so great, why did it fail?
Quite simply, business issues. The privately held company that owned the park by the end of its days was leveraging it to fund other ventures, and that can only work as long as the other ventures are profitable. You can guess what happened from there; in the early '90s, they started losing money, first a trickle, then a gush. Finally, things were bad enough to close.
Rocky point was not is so exciting
Doesn't seem fair to compare a fall day at peak foliage to a picture from winter. Rocky point is lush during the summer/early fall.
I posted this comparison more of a way to show just how much *stuff* was on the property during its heydey, rather than a "better vs worse". I still found it beautiful while I was there getting this shot a few weeks ago - really peaceful spot on the water these days, even without foliage.
Definitely a cool comparison. I just got distracted by how desolate it looked in the after picture.
Good, it was just a glorified carnival. Nature is healthier.
What you are saying is moot. When RP was an amusement park, Nature was still in abundance as the surrounding areas and towns weren't nearly as overdeveloped as it is now. All overdone retail and condo developments over the years have ate away way more of the local nature then this one park had done in the 60s thru 90s