"PONCE DE LEON SPRINGS"
(c) 2013
by Bob Foreman
As run in PONCE PRESS
The spring was discovered shortly after the Civil War and touted by Atlanta realtor Henry L. Wilson for its curative properties, according to the Atlanta Constitution of August 3, 1902. “I gave it the name,” says Wilson, a reference to the Fountain of Youth said to be discovered in Florida in 1513. Wilson heralded it as “the greatest water in the world for rheumatism, dyspepsia, and for almost all other ailments.” The water, claimed Harper’s Magazine in 1895, had a “sulfurous, nasty taste” proving “to some degree the medicinal properties ascribed to them.” The spring water was bottled for home delivery and sold like water.
In 1875 a horse drawn street car line was built to the springs from downtown, and a bucolic park was created. Atlanta Society and her children were given a great gift with the opening of the Ponce de Leon Amusement Park on that site in 1903.
Opening day patrons were greeted by a vast roller-skating rink and dance pavilion; a 168-passenger Merry-go-round; and the 1200-seat Casino, a vaudeville theatre, completely equipped. Main attractions included the 50’ high circle swing, a Ferris wheel, a resident band, miniature railroad, two restaurants, popcorn and candy stands, penny arcade, and a pony track, where the favored pony could play the national anthem on chimes, presumably when not being ridden. For the dads, there was a shooting gallery.
Enticing attractions at the Ponce de Leon Amusement Park (opened in 1903 on the site of Ponce City Market) had obscure and titillating titles including Laughing Gallery, Cave of the Winds, Japanese ping-pong parlor, Gypsy Village, the knife and cane boards, and the baby racks. Across the Avenue was a 1600-foot diameter lake which could be navigated by fifteen rowboats and a thirty-passenger launch, overlooked by a double decked recreation pier.
New features were added each season, among them the Toboggan Slide, a forty-foot high, 59-second, 3/4 mile car ride, with “patent oscillating trucks beneath the four-passenger cars, so that if any two wheels should break, it would not interfere in the slightest with car’s journey.”
In 1907, the lake was transformed into a 20,000-seat ball park, home to the Atlanta Crackers who won the opening game, against the Shreveport Pirates, 2 to 1.
The Park fell into decline after the World War and the advent of the automobile, and reality encroached when Ford built a Model T assembly plant (still standing) on the next door property in 1920. Atlantans now motored to their amusements, in Highlands or Sea Island.
Crackers owner R.J. Spiller sold the amusement land, and on August 2, 1926 “30,000 Atlantans thronged the mammoth new” Sears and Roebuck which was primarily a distribution center for catalog sales, explaining its immediate proximity to the railroad. Ponce de Leon’s spring met an inglorious end, capped and “diverted to a sewer” in 1925, later tapped to provide non-potable water for the Sears plant. The building was occupied by Sears for fifty years.
The ballpark lasted until 1965, replaced by the downtown Atlanta stadium, the Crackers by the Milwaukee Braves.