As the calendar moves steadily towards summer, area residents are looking forward to a season when entertainment opportunities seem to be never-ending. From community celebrations like Oswego’s PrairieFest to Yorkville and Plano’s Hometown Days, to Montgomery’s MontgomeryFest to community swimming pools to family reunions and picnics, there’s always plenty to enjoy here at home.
Of course lots of local folks also enjoy traveling to some of the Midwest’s theme parks to enjoy roller coasters and all the other amusement rides that only show up locally when carnivals briefly visit.
At the turn of the 20th Century, though, Kendall County residents didn’t have to drive for hours or wait for the next carnival to arrive to enjoy amusement rides. Rather, all they had to do was come up with the five cent fare for the interurban trolley ride to extreme northeast Oswego Township, just south of Montgomery, where Riverview Park stood along the west bank of the Fox River. Today, the park grounds are an expanse of grass and mature trees, the former location of a massive manufacturing plant operated by AT&T Technologies. The plant was demolished in 1997, returning the land back to the grassy oak and hickory savanna it was more than a century ago.
The amusement park and the interurban trolley line from Aurora to Yorkville were built at the same time. Indeed, both trolley and park depended upon each other for financial survival.
In April 1897, Ill. State Sen. Henry Evans of Aurora incorporated the Aurora, Yorkville & Morris Railway Company with the goal of connecting Morris on the Illinois River with Aurora, the terminus of the Chicago Burlington & Quincy Railroads suburban service, and an important stop on the CB&Q’s main line.
Interurban trolleys powered by overhead electrical wires were the nation’s first mass transit system that served large metropolitan areas as well as rural areas. Starting in the last two decades of the 19th century, a web of interurban lines was built crisscrossing the nation, connecting villages and cities across the country, and along the way providing convenient passenger links to thousands of farm families. At one time, it was possible to ride, using transfers, from the Mississippi River to the East Coast wholly on interurban cars.
While Sen. Evans’ proposed line was to be just one strand in this interurban web, it was nonetheless an important one for the Fox Valley and Kendall County. In the days before paved roads, it was often impossible for residents to travel other than by rail during certain seasons of the year. That was especially true of rural residents.
The new trolley line aimed to help with that problem. The right-of-way for the line left Aurora on the west side of the river, and proceeded south to the end of River Street in Montgomery. From there the tracks passed under the CB&Q’s Fox River Branch line tracks just south of Montgomery, and then followed the river south paralleling today’s Ill. Route 31. At the intersection of today’s Ill. Route 31 and U.S. Route 34 in Oswego, the tracks turned east and crossed the Fox River on the Oswego bridge. At the top of today’s Washington Street hill, the tracks turned south again, running down the middle of Oswego’s Main Street to modern Ill. Route 71, which they followed to Van Emmon Road. The trolley line then curved toward Yorkville, paralleling Van Emmon Road the line’s southern terminus at Van Emmon and Bridge Street—today’s Ill. Route 47.
Some portions of the old track bed are still visible along Route 31 if you know where to look, and are quite obvious along Van Emmon Road.
Actual construction on the trolley line began during the summer of 1899, with construction of the affiliated amusement park beginning at the same time.
Many of the nation’s interurban lines used the lure of amusement parks located along their rights-of-way to persuade people to ride the trolley on low-ridership weekends and holidays. Since electrical service was necessary for the trolley cars, it was also available to power amusement rides and bright electric lights at the parks. Along with Kendall County’s Riverview Park, other interurban-connected parks in the area included, in 1904, Electric Park along the DuPage River in Plainfield and, later, Exposition Park on Aurora’s north side.
Hand-colored postcard view of the Riverview Park trolley station, taken from the top of the auditorium about 1904. (Little White School Museum collection)
By November of 1899, the trolley tracks had been extended from Aurora to the park site, and on Tuesday, Nov. 7, the first special trolley cars began operating. According to press reports, Montgomery was decorated with flags to greet the 500 people who showed up for the dedication ceremonies. The park, which Evans’ company named Riverview for its location on the banks of the Fox, cost $104,403.03 to build, plus $1,200 for auditorium seats.
In October 1900 the Kendall County Record‘s Oswego correspondent reported the first Aurora, Yorkville & Morris trolley car had reached Oswego, and by December the line was completed to Yorkville. The completion of the line to Kendall County’s seat of government not only opened up a variety of economic opportunities for everyone living along the line, but it also provided entertainment opportunities for thousands of rural families.
Fox River Park map, 1905
Although it closed each winter, Riverview Park was open for spring, summer, and fall activities each year. In 1900, more than 2,000 persons rode the trolley on the park’s opening day. And it didn’t diminish much in popularity as the summer wore on. The Record’s Oswego correspondent reported on July 18 that “Riverview Park has become very popular with our people. Small parties of both the old and the young frequently spend the afternoon there on fine days.”
By the early summer of 1900 the Aurora & Geneva Railway interurban line had been finished, completing the missing trolley link between Aurora and Elgin, drawing even more visitors south to Riverview Park from upriver towns.
The Record reported that during a game in August, 1906, “A disgraceful slugging match took place Sunday afternoon at Riverview Park, during the playing of the Elgin-Aurora baseball game when, it is alleged, the umpire was unmercifully beaten over the head with clubs and umbrellas.”
From the time it opened, the roller coaster was one of Fox River Park’s most popular attractions. (Little White School Museum collection)
Aurora’s pro baseball team played at the park for a couple years, reportedly with the legendary Casey Stengel on the squad.
Other more sedate entertainment on the park side included visiting the Penny Arcade and the park photographer, or picnicking on the wooded grounds.
On a good weekend during the height of the summer season, as many as 5,000 people a day visited Riverview Park.
Within a few years, the name of the park was changed to Fox River Park to avoid confusion with the new, and much larger, Riverview Park that had been built in 1904 on a 74-acre site at Belmont and Western in Chicago.
A bridge connected the small island just offshore in the Fox River with the rest of the park, providing a place for visitors to enjoy boating. (Little White School Museum collection)
Area residents made frequent use of the park, not only to take advantage of the permanent attractions, but also to attend the annual Chautaquas held there every summer that drew some of the era’s best-known speakers. In 1903, speakers included Wisconsin Gov. Robert “Fighting Bob” LaFollette, U.S. Rep. Champ Clark of Missouri, and labor leader Eugene V. Debs. Subsequent years’ Chautaquas featured such well-known personalities as African-American author and educator Booker T. Washington and fire and brimstone evangelist (and former baseball player) Billy Sunday.
Adventurous visitors could ride the shoot the chutes down a steep incline into the Fox River. (Little White School Museum collection)
Residents could rent space in tents on the park grounds and stay for however long that year’s event ran. Most Fox River Park Chautaquas had a ten-day or two-week run.
The concept became so popular that the area’s black residents decided to hold their own event, apparently a novel thing in those de facto segregated days. The July 5, 1911 Record announced that: “You are cordially invited to attend the first Chautauqua ever held by colored people in the north at Fox River Park Tuesday and Wednesday, July 11 and 12, 1911. Entertainment will include a grand concert of 200 voices of the A.M.E. [African Methodist Episcopal] churches of Chicago and baseball, Leland Giants of Chicago vs. Deppens of Atlanta, Ga., two of the greatest colored teams in America.”
This hand-colored 1903 postcard showing visitors boating at Riverview Park almost looks like it was a French impressionist painting. (Little White School Museum collection)
By the 1920s, however, the park’s facilities were getting rundown. The area’s new roads and the increasing use of automobiles meant that those visiting along the banks of the Fox were not only local folks riding to the park on trolley cars. As the Record reported on Sept. 15, 1920: “Sheriff Hextell arrested three men from Chicago Sunday for operating a chuck-a-luck game at Fox River Park. They had driven out from the city and were in the midst of their gambling when the sheriff nabbed them. They were fined $25 and costs each before Magistrate Skinner Monday and the sheriff has some of their diamonds as security for the fines, to be paid the last of the week. Through the efforts of Sheriff Hextell, the park has been remarkable free from gambling. This is only one of many instances when Hextell has brought in gamblers from the park.”
In fact, Henry Ford’s idea to use an assembly line to produce inexpensive automobiles (he invented neither the assembly line nor the automobile but perfected both) affordable by working families eventually killed the interurban trolley industry, along with their associated amusement parks as collateral damage. Autos for the first time gave common people the freedom to travel previously enjoyed only by the rich, and distant attractions proved more popular than small homegrown amusement parks.
As the quality of the park declined, so, apparently did its clientele. On July 6, 1921, a Record editorial complained: “It is time the people of Kendall county woke up to the realization of the moral character of Fox River Park. The sheriff has done his best with what he has to work with to keep order in the place. It is time for Kendall county officials to get some action and protect the morals of the county as well as the reputation of their legal representative, Sheriff Hextell.”
In the end, it turned out Ford’s Model T’s were more potent as moral guardians than the county sheriff, and due to the economics of the situation, both the interurban trolley line and Fox River Park were abandoned in 1925.
Today, the stately hardwood trees shading the old vacant AT&T plant grounds are all that remain of the park enjoyed by so many during those summers more than a century ago.
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