Along for the Ride: Lakeside Park Remains the Metro's Most Amusing

Ever since Matt Stone and Trey Parker purchased Casa Bonita, Coloradans have had it in their heads that the South Park creators could "save" other nostalgic attractions that are long past their glory days.

One place in particular pops up regularly as a suggestion for Stone and Parker: Lakeside Amusement Park in the pocket-sized municipality of Lakeside, just west of Denver. Rumors have swirled that the South Park millionaires even made an offer.

Not true, says Brenda Fishman, manager of the park and daughter of owner Rhoda Krasner. "Someone else just asked me that today," she tells Westword. "That was an April Fool's joke, right? We've never had any contact from them that I'm aware of."

Truth be told, the last thing Lakeside Amusement Park needs is a Casa Bonita-style makeover and reopening with hair-raising ticket prices, as happened at the pink eatertainment palace. It costs a mere five bucks to walk in the gates, and ride coupons (rides require between one and six) are just fifty cents. An all-access wristband is $25 for evenings Monday through Friday (the amusement park is closed on Tuesday) and $35 on weekends and holidays. And the menu prices, for items like popcorn and pretzels and Icees, stay in the low single digits.
Lakeside might look like a relic if you're driving by on Sheridan Boulevard or Interstate 70 — its golden, red-domed Tower of Jewels is chipped and peeling — but inside the park, particularly at sunset, the place is thick with families and thrill-seekers giggling and cycling through rides.

Much has been written about Lakeside's storied history, and Fishman has rarely seen an article without factual errors. "I don't keep a tally," she says. "But it's been all kinds of things, like who started the park and what year and where the trains came from and how long this coaster's been here."

It's agreed that entrepreneur Adolph Zang took cues from the City Beautiful movement when he built the park, which debuted as White City in 1908. The style of its buildings, and indeed the name, were inspired by the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, which showcased a Ferris wheel and white Beaux Arts and Neoclassical buildings around a central lagoon: the original White City, Lakeside-style. The miniature town had been incorporated the year before, in 1907, because Zang — also a brewer — wanted to avoid Denver's prohibition on selling liquor on Sundays.

Hundreds of similarly inspired parks across the country emerged in the wake of the 1893 expo, many called White City. This is the only original White City still in operation.
By the 1930s, White City was redubbed Lakeside Amusement Park, and its head of concessions, Ben Krasner, took ownership. Krasner — Brenda Fishman's grandfather and Rhoda Krasner's father — redesigned the park in Art Deco and Art Moderne styles. He added motorboats to what had been known as Lake Sylvan, and rechristened the body of water after his daughter: Lake Rhoda.

Krasner added many rides that still operate today, including the Satellite ("Be a Pilot!," its sign screams), Auto Skooters, the Wild Chipmunk and the spectacular, eighty-feet-high 1940 Cyclone wooden roller coaster that still stands. The Cyclone hasn't operated since 2022, however, when state regulators ordered it closed after a passenger was injured.

According to Fishman, the coaster runs perfectly but because of its age, it doesn't meet modern requirements for the "ride envelope," the amount of room around a passenger. "We have to get another inspector here to sign off on the ride to make the state happy," she says. But that's unlikely to happen in the 2025 season.

Ben Krasner died in 1965, and Rhoda took over as general manager of Lakeside. Brenda Fishman was born more than a decade later, and grew up working at the park alongside her mother and grandmother. "It wasn't really play for me, ever," she says. "I've worked here from a very young age. When I was little, my grandma was around a lot, and I spent a lot of time with her, and there was always something to do, there was always work. That's just how it was.  I never really thought about it one way or another."
Fishman worked at Lakeside while attending medical school at the University of Colorado; today, she is a non-practicing physician. While her mother avoids talking to the press, Fishman is willing...as long as the conversation focuses on the park and not her family. She's quick to note that her mother is still in charge of the place: "It's her show, hook, line and sinker. It's her business, it's her place. It's not mine."

According to Fishman, "it was never a conscious choice" to forego medicine for running the park with her mother. "It just happened," she adds. "There aren't enough hours in the day to do both."

Besides, her work at Lakeside is fulfilling. "In a life, you have to decide where you can have the most influence and affect the most lives positively," she says. "I don't know that [the two career paths are] completely different. I think that life and enjoyment and being able to form memories and have good times and bring together people of different ages and abilities, there's value in all of it."

Priceless memories have been formed at Lakeside over the past 117 years. Fishman has seen generations of families frequent the park, and generations of employees have worked there as well. "Over time, you get to know them," she says of the regulars. "There are lots and lots and lots of people who come through who've worked for me, who now have kids, and you get to know them."

Some regulars come in simply to stroll and have an ice cream cone or ride the train. "They're just enjoying being," she says. "And I think in today's world, there are so few places where that's still considered okay. You go in a restaurant and there's a TV blaring, you go to the doctor, there's a TV in the waiting room. People aren't used to just having to be with themselves, and enjoy looking at people, looking around, enjoying each other. You can still do that here."
That's because the family's original vision of an amusement park for the people remains. "That is to provide a safe, economical entertainment facility to the masses," Fishman says. "We have a very strong commitment that a kid can't have fun if they're hungry, that every kid should be able to have their own little drink or popcorn and not have to share with everybody. And anyone who is working a lower-end job, they can afford to come for a day out with their family. That's been the thought for a long, long time."

The affordability is built into the park's no-frills ideology. "I feel like the lack of time spent in line and lower prices — I don't want to call it a secret, but a fundamental good time at an amusement park without the frills — it's a philosophical thing," she notes. "I think a lot of people, for whatever reason, they're happy to go somewhere and spend a lot of money and wait in line for a few rides and they're there all day — somehow that's a good time?"
Fishman is justifiably proud of what her family's amusement park provides, though she admits she's not sure that anyone else would be willing to take on its mission. "Look at my life," she says. "You'd never want this."

Given that, would the family ever want to sell? "We're here," Fishman says after a pause. "I would be very surprised if an entity would be interested in running this as an amusement park. We've been approached by people who are interested in the land and the natural setting, but nobody who's ever interested to run it as a park. The majority of people with big enough bucks to purchase something, in my mind, have very narrow minds. Everyone wants it to be a shopping mall or a housing development or a self-storage place or a gas station. It's so mundane and so uninvented and so normal.

"There's no one that we've ever encountered that has any sort of imagination or interest in providing a public service."

Lakeside Amusement Park is at 4601 Sheridan Boulevard.