Boblo Island Amusement Park
Bois Blanc is known regionally as the former home of the Boblo Island Amusement Park, which began operation in 1898 and closed on September 30, 1993. The Nightmare, Falling Star, Wild Mouse (ride), Sky Streak and Screamer were the signature rides.
For more than 85 years, the park was serviced by the SS Ste. Clair and the SS Columbia.
The Boblo Island Amusement Park was famous for those two steamers, which went between Detroit and the island. A lawsuit concerning the power of the state of Michigan to prohibit racial discrimination on the ferries, Bob-Lo Excursion Co. v. Michigan, 333 U.S. 28 (1948), reached the U.S. Supreme Court and resulted in a notable decision construing the Commerce Clause.
Read more about this topic: Bois Blanc Island (Ontario)
Famous quotes containing the words island, amusement and/or park:
“When the inhabitants of some sequestered island first descry the “big canoe” of the European rolling through the blue waters towards their shores, they rush down to the beach in crowds, and with open arms stand ready to embrace the strangers. Fatal embrace! They fold to their bosoms the vipers whose sting is destined to poison all their joys; and the instinctive feeling of love within their breasts is soon converted into the bitterest hate.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“If you say to me: “Master, it would seem that you weren’t too terribly wise to have written these bits of nonsense and pleasant mockeries,” I respond that you are hardly more so in finding amusement in reading them.”
—François Rabelais (1494–1553)
“Therefore awake! make haste, I say,
And let us, without staying,
All in our gowns of green so gay
Into the Park a-maying!”
—Unknown. Sister, Awake! (L. 9–12)