Wow Photo Wednesday

This week's Wow Photo is brought to you by tinkerers and inventors from across the ages. This amphibious contraption, though attractively displayed here, is on the dock - not in use - and it apparently did not become the "watercycle" its creator probably hoped for, with one in every garage. Oh, well,  back to the drawing board - at least it was a fun way to get wet and enjoy the hot sun at Denver's Lakeside Amusement Park, where today's photo was taken.

For decades, Lakeside Amusement Park was the essence of summer fun in Denver, when simple pleasures did not require a good wi-fi connection, and before millions of people could easily hop in the car and have air-conditioned wilderness experiences while clogging the pristine Rockies with their shiny metal and glass. The garden-like setting with boating, live theater, bumper cars, ferris wheels, a roller coaster, mirror houses, clowns, sideshows, and endless goodies to eat was a world apart, where people could escape from daily routine long into the night, strolling by water twinkling with the festive lights of an early 20th Century utopia.

Photographers loved Lakeside for its settings and for its crowds of people ready and willing to have their pictures taken, and the 165 Lakeside Amusement Park photos we have in our Digital Collections provide a peek into a magical place that elevated summer days into warm memories at a time when horizons were smaller and life was simpler. The Library also has books and manuscript material all about Lakeside, here.

"Wow Photo Wednesday" celebrates photographs in the Denver Public Library's Digital Collections that have "The Wow Factor" and that highlight the myriad delightful nuggets in our database.