I have always found libraries fascinating places to visit, whether in person or online. Where else can you enter, with the sole intent of getting a book on one particular topic, and come up with information on several other topics as well, all which you suddenly are curious to learn more about?
The Brookside Park postcards that the Wheeler Memorial Library has online were one of those unexpected items that piqued my interest recently. They showed women in white billowing dresses and men in straw hats enjoying a day out. A day of simple leisure time brought to the forefront in a picture from the past. That’s when I decided to do a little research about Brookside Park, the place where these people from yesteryear were spending their day.
Brookside Park, I learned, was created by the trolley company which ran from Athol to Orange and during the late 1800s. “The company as one of its very early activities, promoted an amusement park, first the old Central Park and later Brookside Park,” according to the “History of Athol,” compiled by William J. Lord
Activities for a day there, which of course you took the trolley to, were varied, offering a multitude of choices for all. There were baseball games with both traveling and local teams competing. Members of these traveling teams included Pat Moran, who at one time coached the Philadelphia Phillies, who won the National League Pennant in 1915, according to J.R. Greene, author of “Quabbin’s Railroad; The Rabbit Volumes 1 and 2.”
The park was more than just a place to enjoy sports, though; it was also a home for the arts. Theater performed by touring stage companies appeared at the park, as well as bands being hosted there. The park boasted both a pavilion and a dance hall. Many visitors also packed picnic lunches for their day at the park.
The trolleys themselves had their own tale to tell, beginning in the late 1800s. When the idea of a trolley was first suggested in town, concerns were raised, both about the location of the tracks being laid into the road and how the vehicles would impact the equine traffic then sharing the road.
The tracks, despite several contentious town meetings, were eventually built into the brick roads used at the time — roads which have long since been paved over but not totally forgotten. “I remember seeing bricks exposed during street work in the 1960s,” Greene said.
As for the concerns about equine travel, Lord’s history states, “that as soon as service began on South Main Street, the street was full of citizens down there to acquaint their steeds with the innovation.”
The cost of the trolley was a nickel each way. “During the summer the roof would be up and the sides would be open; in the cold weather, canvas would be used to keep the cold weather out,” said Greene.
These trolley days of course are long gone, now replaced by highways and motorized vehicles. Still, viewing the postcards, memories of these days somehow leave a wistful feel for the local trolley and Brookside Park, which so many enjoyed in the late 1800s.
The Brookside Park postcards as well as other fascinating Orange history can be viewed online at the Orange Public Library Archives at http://www.orangelib.org/archives/album/index.html