Cedar Point: Beachside Amusement to World-Class Park
             When Cedar Point is mentioned in conversation, usually images of high-speed record-breaking roller coasters come to mind. What the average person may not realize is that over a hundred years of history has helped Cedar Point become the roller coaster capital of the world.
             Cedar Point started as a modest white sand beach on Lake Erie in 1870. That year an entrepreneur, Louis Zistel, built a beer garden, a children's entertainment area, and most notably, a bathhouse on the beach. Throughout the next twenty-seven years, other entrepreneurs came along, building bathhouses on the picturesque Lake Erie, and further increasing Cedar Point's popularity. As Cedar Point's popularity grew, other neighboring communities wanted to gain profit from their position on Lake Erie.
             In response to the growing competition, Cedar Point owners made a series of investments to increase the parks popularity. The 1888 season brought the construction of the Grand Pavilion, a large wooden building where people could dine and even bowl. The following year yielded the construction of the Ladies Pavilion, which, as the name implies, was built with ladies' amusement in mind, in addition to games for children. Most importantly, in 1892 the Switchback Railway opened; Cedar Point's first roller coaster. The coaster stood 25 feet tall and reached amazing speeds of 10 MPH.
             The year 1897 brought Cedar Point into a new era, as George Arthur Boeckling, originally a railway businessman, purchased the park for a quarter of a million dollars. As head of the Cedar Point Pleasure Resort & Company, Boeckling began making improvements to the park soon after the purchase, further increasing Cedar Point's popularity by renovating the bathhouses on the peninsula and redecorating the Grand Pavilion in 1898. There were so many enhancements to the park that a reporter for the local newspaper ...