Dynamite & Falling Goats: Westside Park’s Balloon Ascensions

By: Chris Flook

One of my favorite photographs in the historical society’s Mike Mavis Collection is this one:

Balloon launch at Westside Park in the early 1900s. Photo: Delaware County Historical Society, Mike Mavis Collection

It shows a group of Munsonians gathered around an inflating hot air balloon at Westside Park. Aside from the park’s name written on the back, there’s no other information. The straw hats and clothing worn by those in the photo suggest an early 20th-century date.

Hot air balloon ‘ascensions’ like this were common at Westside Park in the summers between 1894 and World War I. We have a good record of them because boosters heavily promoted balloon launches in Muncie’s press before an ascent. 

Westside Park, early 20th century. Photo: Delaware County Historical Society, Mike Mavis Collection

Some aeronauts also performed stunts or included other gimmicks, drawing in large crowds. Launch reports published after the fact suggest that hundreds, sometimes even thousands of Munsonians made it out to watch. Spectators also helped as informal riggers, serving mostly as counterweights when the balloon inflated. I suspect that’s what we see in this photo.

Muncie Morning Star, June 10, 1910.

After launching, most aeronauts ascended into the sky, dangling beneath their balloon from a tether. Some used a controlled descent, but most didn’t. Instead, at a certain altitude, aeronauts would cut their ties, open a parachute and float down to earth. Assistants tracked the balloon as it lost altitude, retrieving it somewhere west of Muncie. 

One such launch occurred on the afternoon of Friday, July 26, 1895. At precisely 3pm, Professor Fred Royale conducted a “grand balloon ascension and parachute drop” in Westside Park.

Muncie Daily Herald, July 25, 1896.

As the fateful hour drew near, the professor began filling his airship, assisted by volunteer riggers from the crowd. When inflated, Royale’s balloon stood 60-feet tall. 

After a rough release, the balloon rose gently into the west Muncie sky, pulling aeronaut Royale up with it. At 500 feet, he cut the line, opened his chute and descended gracefully down into Riverside. The balloon floated northwest and dropped somewhere along the Lake Erie and Western Railroad (Norfolk Southern) tracks.

Westside Park from the 1911 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map. Image courtesy of the Library of Congress

In 1895, as Royale’s balloon ascension captivated Munsonians, Westside Park was becoming one of Greater Muncie's ‘big three’ suburban weekend leisure areas along with Heekin and McCulloch parks. 

Starting in the 1890s, Heekin developed as an informal greenspace in Muncie’s southside Industry suburb. It became a city park in 1913. McCulloch began as Wood’s Park in 1892 on the city’s northeast side. It was located west of Muncie’s new Whitely suburb. In 1893, interurban magnate and publisher George McCulloch donated an adjacent 83 acres to the city. Councilors combined both tracts of land into ‘McCulloch Park’ in George’s honor.

1907 map of Muncie’s west side. The red-dashed line was Union Traction’s (Citizens Street Railway Company) Grasshopper Run route into the Westside Suburb. The park is shaded green. Image courtesy: Ball State University Libraries’ Bracken Archive.

Westside Park is historically unique as it was privately established in 1893 by the Citizen’s Street Electric Railway Company, Muncie’s metropolitan electric mass-transit operator. Citizen’s built the park as a leisure destination to attract visitors and subsequently, paying transit riders. During the 1890s and early 1900s, Westside Park is best understood as a kind of summertime afternoon resort for Munsonians. The new Westside suburb was developed just north of the park at the same time.

Up through World War 1, Munsonians flocked to Westside Park on summer weekends via streetcars. Citizen’s line into Westside and Normal City was known informally at the time as the ‘Grasshopper Run.’ The route ran west out of downtown on Jackson Street Pike. The trolley track split at Calvert, with one line heading north into Normal City. A second line continued down Celia Avenue into Westside, terminating in the park at a turnaround.

Westside Park straddled both sides of the White River, between Nichols and Tillotson avenues. Most of the original park was undeveloped rolling greenspace, broken occasionally by clumps of trees. The area flooded often during heavy spring rains. 

Westside Park’s roller skating rink, circa 1905. Photo courtesy: Ball State University Libraries’ Bracken Archives.

Between 1894 and 1917, the park featured a roller skating rink, open air theater, dance hall, vaudeville and concert stage, bath house, refreshment stand and merry-go-round. In 1910, boosters added a roller coaster named the Triple-8. 

In addition to balloon ascensions, park visitors could travel up and down the White River on a small steamboat. The Muncie Daily Herald reported in late June of 1894 that the “new pleasure boat ‘Delaware’ will leave Pier 35 every thirty minutes and go down the beautiful White River for quite a distance.”

Westside Park’s Triple-8 Roller Coaster, circa 1910. Photo: Delaware County Historical Society, Mike Mavis Collection.

The pier was located “near the street railway suspension bridge.” The bridge was built to bring patrons to Westside’s less reputable, unofficial section across the river. The park’s seedier southside featured a baseball field, small casino, and Sherman Crolley’s beer garden and saloon. The latter included a ramshackle arena for prizefights, cockfights and the occasional bullfight.

The balloon ascents at Westside Park happened  north of the river. In mid-July of 1894, the Muncie Daily Herald reported that another balloonist named George Delmont “ascended to a height of 300 feet.” Delmont cut free and released his parachute, but became tangled in the trees along the White River near Beech Grove Cemetery. The Herald wrote that “the professor was held suspended over the water in full view of hundreds of spectators.” The line snapped and Delmont fell into the river unharmed.

A year later in August of 1895, Ira N. Fisk launched a balloon from Westside park, rigged with an attachment that carried two goats and a cage of pigeons. At a certain altitude, a rigged sandbag would release the goats from the balloon and open a parachute, simultaneously freeing the birds from their cage. The animals were to dangle 123 feet below a giant, 65-foot hot air balloon on the way up.

Muncie Daily Herald, August 16, 1895.

In front of a crowd of 2,000 Munsonians at Westside Park on the afternoon of Friday, August 16, Fisk began inflating his balloon for the grand ascent. He made a mistake filling the sandbags, resulting in a poor launch. As soon as the balloon filled, the volunteer handlers couldn’t hold the rig and let go, launching the balloon fast into the atmosphere, pulling the poor birds and screaming goats up into the clouds with it.

When the balloon reached an altitude of several hundred feet, a mechanism released the birds. The Muncie Morning News reported that, because of the distance, the crowd saw the pigeons as “specks against the azure of the western sky.” Some were later recovered.

The goats weren’t so lucky. They remained tethered to the balloon as it descended. The parachute had failed to release. “The result,” the News wrote, “was that the goats and the balloon floated down to earth together.” The sight was “pretty and one that could not fail to please,” though probably not for the goats who died when the balloon crashed on James Umbarger’s farm, northwest of the park.

Muncie Morning News, July 25, 1910

The most outrageous balloon ascensions at Westside Park occurred in the summer of 1910. In that year, an aeronaut named Jimmie Bedwell routinely ascended with a stick of dynamite. Once aloft, Jimmie lit the explosive’s long fuse and detached from the balloon, parachuting back down to the park. After a moment, the dynamite detonated in the air. 

Jimmie Bedwell’s balloon ascension at Westside Park. Muncie Morning News, July 25, 1910

After one such over-the-top balloon ascension in mid-July, the Muncie Star reported that after Bedwell had reached a great height, the assembled crowd was “surprised at the terrific explosion of a dynamite bomb…the aeronaut then cut loose with the parachute and left the balloon, which had traveled high and far to the north.”

The last ‘balloon ascension’ at Westside Park on record occurred in July of 1917. The park was eventually abandoned in the 1920s. Westside’s northeast end reopened as a city-park in 1937 and expanded west toward Tillotson in the mid-20th century.

Find more goodies at the DCHS’ Heritage Collection.

Sources:

Muncie Daily Herald, 7-12-1894.

Muncie Morning News, 7-26-1895.

Muncie Morning News, 8-17-1895.

Muncie Morning Star, 7-13-1910.

Muncie Evening Press, 7-27-1909.

Muncie Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from 1911. Image courtesy: Library of Congress