Dorchester Illustration no. 2410 Oakland Garden Amusement Park
The illustration shows a horse-drawn car of the Highland Railway traveling to Oakland Garden, an outdoor amusement park located on Columbia Road near Blue Hill Avenue. Its property took up what is what is now the land on either side of Hewins Street and Wolcott Street and in between, stretching from Columbia Road to Erie Street. The map detail is from the 1884 Bromley atlas.
The Oakland Garden Amusement Park was established in the early 1880s, showing up on the 1884 atlas. Although Franklin Park opened in 1883, not all the land for the park had been acquired by that time, and the park was not completed for several years. Therefore the success of Oakland Garden Amusement Park must have resulted partly from its proximity to Franklin Park, offering additional attractions for visitors there.
The park appears again in the 1889 atlas, but by 1894, the land had been subdivided for residential development.
” Evening performances included mini-theatricals, operettas and concerts, while circuses and sideshows amused local children during the day. So popular were the attractions of Oakland Garden that horse-drawn cars were chartered from the Highland Railway.”
“Thus ‘if you wish to spend a pleasant evening,’ all you had to do was purchase a ticket. Large numbers of visitors not only took the cars but walked from miles around.”
Source: Anthony Mitchell Sammarco. Dorchester in the Images of America series. (1995).