"Life, it's a pretty good deal.  I recommend it."   -   H.D. Stevens  (1915-2007)

The Early Days of Aquarena Springs

Posted: November 24th, 2008 | Author: Mark | Filed under: Childhood Memories | Tags: , | No Comments »

No, these aren’t passengers on board the Titanic, but are in fact visitors to Aquarena Springs’ Submarine Theater, waiting as the water level slowly rises. The history of the park, and my family’s patronage of it, was addressed in a previous post, where I stated that the theater was introduced in 1951. That makes these October 1950 photographs, taken by Life Magazine photographer Joe Scherschel, among the first views of the attraction.
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Aquarena Springs

Posted: October 29th, 2008 | Author: Mark | Filed under: Childhood Memories | Tags: , , | 2 Comments »

Ducks at Aquarena SpringsI’d imagine that most people, particularly those of my generation and before, have fond memories of family vacations, in particular those that are today often called “road trips”. It’s funny to hear younger people refer to driving vacations that way, because during my childhood most all vacations were road trips, so no such descriptor was needed. My childhood vacations frequently centered around Tennessee and Ohio, my parent’s original “stomping grounds”, although we did hit Disneyland a couple of times. But sometimes a shorter, less epic journey was in order, and Aquarena Springs filled the bill nicely. Located in San Marcos, Texas, just a little over 200 miles from our Fort Worth home, Aquarena Springs was the sort of amusement park that was commonplace in the 1950s and ’60s. Unfortunately those parks, and the values that made them so popular, are all but extinct today.
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