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Volume 1, No. 11. June 29, 2001

A 75th 4th
The man who founded Knoebels Grove Amusement Park 75 years ago next week did one thing wrong, according to his grandson. "I wish he picked a different date," Dick Knoebel said of Henry Knoebel opening his new park on July 4, 1926. That being a traditionally soft day for the amusement park in Elysburg, Pennsylvania, the 75th Anniversary Celebration is not likely to draw appropriately large crowds.

However, this whole 75th birthday is really a season-long event. "There's a 75th anniversary atmosphere going on," Marketing Director Joe Muscato said of the buzz hovering through the park and among the patrons. Feeding that atmosphere are commemorative clothing, ornaments and sets of coins in the gift shops, plus a just-published book recounting Knoebels' history. The park also erected 17 black granite historical markers around the property, pointing out such attractions as the original 1926 swimming pool, the 1913 grand carousel, the stone-stacked lighthouse Knoebels built in the mid-1930s, and the 1933 Stony Gables summer cottage, now a fudge shop, where Dick contends he was conceived.

Knoebels is also opening a museum of itself at the back of its Mining Museum. Displays in the museum, scheduled to open with a July 4 anniversary dedication, include sections of an Eli ferris wheel, a Flying Cage, the facade of the first cottage, the juke box from the 1950s dance floor, and a timeline that starts at 500 million BC when Knoebels' location was geologically formed.

The anniversary celebration itself will include a parade of a 75-piece marching band and the whole Knoebels family riding in the park's Gasoline Alley antique cars and a 1925 truck that Buddy Knoebels found. "He couldn't find a 1926 truck," Muscato said, "but the joke was that Knoebels wouldn't have had anything new, anyway."

Part of the celebration's purpose is not only to honor past and present generations of the Knoebels family, but to introduce generation number four: Trevor, Rick and Brian Knoebel, Stacey Knoebel McDonald, and Lauren Muscato. Amid persistent rumors that Knoebels has or is about to sell out to a corporate chain, this part of the program will stress that the family plans to keep the amusement park at least until the 100th anniversary.

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