Description:
Not many residents of today’s Oklahoma City remember Belle Isle Park, but the park, one of the city’s earliest recreational facilities, remains a cherished part of its collective memory and has left an indelible mark on its geography.
The history of Belle Isle Park is inextricably linked with the Oklahoma Railway Company (ORC), which operated the city’s street and interurban rail systems. Electric street cars sprang up in cities all over the industrializing United States at the turn of the Twentieth Century and Oklahoma City was no exception. The street car system here began in 1903 and by 1908 it had become necessary to build a coal-fired power plant to serve the growing energy needs of the fledgling enterprise.
Oklahoma Railway Company soon faced a problem shared by similar systems around the country: what to do about excess electricity. The street cars were designed to transport the working and middle classes from their homes to their jobs or to retail shops and back home and ridership dropped off heavily after 6:00 PM or so. However, the power plant could not be simply turned off at night and turned on again in the morning; it had to operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It costs money to run a plant this way and the ORC soon faced a financial crisis. Something had to be done and quickly. Anton Classen, the founder of the ORC, was a well-educated, well-traveled, civic-minded developer and he set about building a “trolley-park” for Oklahoma City. The street cars would operate until late in the evening and would transport people to a recreational park on the site of the ORC power plant. A lake had already been developed to cool the plant and it would become the centerpiece for Classen’s grand park. Many other systems around the country had already begun to do this and Classen saw it as a win-win situation. He would be able to generate increased revenue, as the only way for people to get to the park would be to ride on his street cars, and the city would have a wonderful destination for relaxation and diversion.
Visitors to the park had a wide variety of recreational opportunities. They could swim and dive in the lake. They could rent paddleboats and canoes and paddle around the lake. They could fish. They could enjoy strolls in the woods or picnic in the shade. And in the evening they could dine outside at the boardwalk café and dance the night away on the smooth dance floor. Not long after opening, the park also featured amusement rides which were very popular.
We can’t be absolutely positive why Classen named the park Belle Isle Park, but we can make some pretty strong assumptions. First of all, there was a very small island in the middle of the lake which could be reached by a footbridge or by canoe. But as far as we know, that wasn’t the Belle Isle. There is an island in the middle of the Detroit River in Detroit, Michigan named Belle Isle (French for “beautiful island”) which has been an important part of that city’s recreation since 1883 when the great landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead designed a beautiful park which provided opportunities for Michiganders to relax in much the same way as Oklahomans would 25 years later at our Belle Isle. We also know that Classen was raised in Michigan and went to the University of Michigan not far from Detroit, so it is quite possible that he was inspired by the beauty of the original park in Detroit to build a similar park here.
As might be imagined, the park was a huge success and riders flocked to street car stops each weekend to visit Belle Isle. When the park opened in 1908, it was located at the end of the street car line, far beyond the city’s developed area at what is now Northwest Expressway and Pennsylvania. After Delmar Garden closed in 1909, Belle Isle was the premiere entertainment facility in the city and would remain so until 1928 when the ORC no longer needed its Belle Isle power plant and sold the plant and the surrounding park to Oklahoma Gas and Electric Company (OG&E).
OG&E built a new, larger power plant on the site in 1930. It was an attractive (as smoke-belching coal-fired plants go) art deco building and featured state-of-the-art electric generators for its time. This new plant became known as the Belle Isle Power Plant and would generate electricity for Oklahoma City into the 1960s and as a standby plant until 1980. OG&E demolished the original ORC plant in 1960. Belle Isle Park remained in limited use however, as OG&E, realizing the importance of the area, allowed citizens to picnic and fish on the property throughout the 1930s and 1940s.
The second power plant stood as a desolate hulk for nearly twenty years and became attractive to two generations of Oklahoma City teenagers as the place to go for thrill seekers and urban explorers. Rumors swirled around high school campuses of ghosts of teenagers drowned in the basement of the plant (the water table did flood the basement and part of the first floor) haunting those adventurous enough to go inside. Also, after the third floor had long collapsed, people reported seeing the ghost of a young girl moving past the windows of that floor. Rumors also circulated that Satanists used the deserted power plant. All that is lost now, though, as the plant fell victim to a demolition team in January, 1999.
Speaking of ghosts and hauntings, Belle Isle Lake played an important role in Hollywood’s history. Legend has it that actor Lon Chaney, known as “The Man of a Thousand Faces”, lived in a small home near Belle Isle lake with his wife Cleva. On a cold morning in February, 1906, Cleva gave birth to a lifeless baby boy. As the doctor and midwife faltered, Chaney grabbed the baby, ran outside and dunked it in the icy waters of Belle Isle Lake. The baby, Lon Chaney, Jr., came to life with a scream and would grow up to play the famous movie monster, “The Wolf Man” as well as Dracula, the Mummy, Frankenstein’s monster and many others in a career which included 150 films.
Very few of us today fished or swam or tripped the light fantastic at Belle Isle Park, but we still hold a romantic fascination for the area that once brought such great joy to our ancestors. One can still find references to the area such as the Belle Isle Library and the neighborhood surrounding it known as Belle Isle subdivision. The retail development now operating atop the filled-in lake is known as Belle Isle Station and one can enjoy a meal at the nearby Belle Isle Brewery. And trolley parks? There are still some of the original ones operating. The oldest operating trolley park is Sea Breeze Park in Rochester, NY. It opened in 1879 and has provided enjoyment for many generations of people in Rochester.
FURTHER READING
- DeFrange, Ann. “Belle Isle Faces Lights Out Power Plant Once Height of Technology.” Daily Oklahoman 17 January 1999, 1.
- Henderson, Sam. “Secrets from Lon Chaney's Oklahoma Odyssey” Daily Oklahoman 14 November 1982.
- Money, Jack. “Current transit woes belie Oklahoma City's history as trailblazer.” Daily Oklahoman 10 December 2001, 1-A.
- About trolley parks: National Amusement Park Historical Association
- About Lon Chaney, Jr.: The Official Chaney Web Site