An Amusement Park Was Built And Left To Decay In The Middle Of Indiana's Forest
By Meghan Byers|Published April 26, 2022
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Meghan Byers
Author
A New Jersey native, Meghan is passionate about travel and enjoys finding off-the-beaten path destinations. You're most likely to find her at a coffee shop, or hitting the trails with her dogs. She graduated with a creative writing degree from Fairleigh Dickinson University and has been writing professionally for over a decade.
If you’ve ever wanted to step back into Indiana’s past, take a trip to Rose Island in Charlestown, located within Charlestown State Park. It’s not really an island – in actuality it’s a peninsula on the banks of the Ohio River, and it used to be home to a thriving amusement park and vacation resort in the 1920s and ’30s. Now, just a few ruins remain within the forest, but they provide a fascinating look into Indiana’s history.
When you get to Charlestown State Park, you’ll want to take Trail 3, then follow the signs for Trail 7 to get to Rose Island. You’ll make your way over the historic Portersville footbridge, crossing Fourteen Mile Creek to reach the peninsula and its ruins. During Rose Island’s heyday, visitors would either drive to a swinging footbridge to cross over, or take a steamboat over to the peninsula.
The land was purchased in 1923 by entrepreneur David Rose, who proceeded to name it Rose Island and fill it with activities and entertainment. The resort had a hotel, pool, wooden rollercoaster, dance hall, Ferris wheel, and even a small zoo. Today, informational signage along the trail helps provide historical context for the ruins you’ll see scattered through the old Rose Island grounds.
All the noise and excitement the park once held has disappeared now into natural serenity and birdsong. But the original arches still stand, and as you walk beneath them, surrounded by thick forest, you can imagine the throngs of excited vacationers and daytrippers whose footsteps you follow in.
Much of Rose Island was destroyed in a 1937 flood, which saw parts of the resort under as much as 10 feet of water and ultimately left it ruined, never to be rebuilt. There are markers throughout the park now that show the estimated flood levels in 1937.
The crumbling remains of Rose Island’s structures have since been slowly overtaken by nature, and perhaps one day will fold entirely back into the landscape.
But for now, these traces of the old Rose Island resort remain. You can step right into the old swimming pool, now filled with gravel and plant life that’s managed to break through, though still retaining its original metal ladders. In its time, this was reported to be the first water-filtered swimming pool in the Midwest.
