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Olcott Beach has restored a Carousel and is presently operating a small Amusement Park in memory of the 'older days'. Click image above to travel to their website.

Above is OLD Carousel they sold to Cuba Lake.... Below first picture is NEW Carousel they operate....

Olcott Beach - Olcott, Newfane, New York

Olcott Beach..Olcott Amusement Park...Krull Park...on Lake Ontario...near Lockport, New York...
History seems confusing here. Olcott Beach the following ::: With the rail already transporting goods to and from Olcott, it was logical to extend it to take tourists right to the beach. And since the rail would run infrequently, hotels and other accommodations would be needed. Within a couple of years Olcott had become a resort hotspot. At one time there were 8 hotels, the largest being the Olcott Beach Hotel (the remains now a part of Krull Park). Restaurants (such as the Castle Inn), concert venues (the Rustic Theater), and amusement parks (such as Dreamland) sprang up to keep visitors busy for days on end. At the height of Olcott's tourism boom, the rail brought in over 100,000 tourists each year.

The Olcott Beach Hotel was a grand lakeside resort with its own pier, sandy beach, and Amusement rides. Built by the International Railway Company in 1902, it featured over 100 guest rooms, 14,000 sq. ft ballroom, beauty salon, barber shop, game room, and lake-view veranda. Due to both a crumbling foundation and tourism industry, the hotel was demolished in 1937.

Like many lakeside resorts in New York (see Ontario Beach Park and Onondaga Lake) several factors contributed to its decline. For one, most people could not afford luxury during the Great Depression. Second, the rapid adoption of the automobile by American families, allowed people to skip the train and trolley and drive themselves to the beach. There they would spend the day and then drive back that night, negating the need for hotels. By the late 1930s most tourism institutions at Olcott had disappeared.

Then there was an Olcott Amusement Park that was have known to have been open from 1942 to 1986. This does not include other Parks such as New Rialto and Dreamland/Luna Park.

The carousel was first owned by bachelor brothers Albert and Fred Stadel of Wellsville, New York. The carousel in its current form was in operation by 1915, when the Stadel brothers began taking it throughout the southern tier of New York state and in some communities in northern Pennsylvania. Scherer said this carousel, which measures 48� in diameter, is among the largest traveling carousels, which have an average diameter between 36 and 40 feet.

Between 1930 and 1933, the carousel took a rest from its travels at Olcott Beach on Lake Ontario, and in 1933 it was sold to an amusement park on Cuba Lake (OliveCrest) in New York's Allegany County, where it remained until the park closed in 1972. The museum (New York State) acquired the carousel from a private collector.

Olcott Beach, NY, a former tourist area on Lake Ontario. Nearby Krull Park once housed the Olcott Hotel, which hosted many famous musicians in the 1930's and 1940's, including Louis Armstrong, Glen Miller, Ella Fitzgerald, and Les Brown. The sound of their music echoed across the lake, giving pleasure to boaters and to those who strolled the long pier that extended from the shoreline over the lake. The hotel burned down about 1950, and all that remains is the stone foundation and broken pieces of the majestic pier. We lived there about five years before town fathers decided that Olcott Beach should become what it used to be. Salmon and trout were stocked in the lake, the old amusement parks were revamped, and shops were constructed along the lakefront. People began coming back. Our house was a block from the marina, the hot spot for the numerous fishing derbies conducted from March to November. The serenity was gone during those months. Fisherman had fistfights in our yard, vying for position to sign up for the derbies. Boaters tested their engines at 5 a.m. in front of our bedroom window, as they waited in line to pay their docking fee.

Men knocked at our door at all hours, asking if we had worms or fish eggs to sell, or if we sold boat motor parts. Life became a nightmare. I finally lost it when one of the fishermen ogled my daughter. At fifteen, she looked pretty good in a bathing suit, and she had the.....

CREDIT: Submitted by Email. shepaug-at-mailworks.org