Our Pick
Posted on @rawstates
Pacific Ocean Park out-draws Disneyland, then rots into Dogtown
1958
Ocean Park, Santa Monica, California
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CBS and the Los Angeles Turf Club opened this 28 acre nautical amusement park on the Ocean Park pier in July 1958, and in its first week it pulled bigger crowds than Disneyland. Santa Monica then started clearing the blocks behind it for urban renewal and closed the streets that fed the gate, and attendance fell by more than half in two years. Creditors and the city took the property and the park shut in October 1967. The rotting pier and the emptied neighbourhood around it became the Dogtown that Venice and Santa Monica skaters claimed in the 1970s.
That was 1 of the hidden places.
Location: historic site
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