When the Schulers came here with their steel mill in 1903 they soon acquired the street railway line in Gadsden, Alabama City and Attalla and ran it successfully for years.
One of their first acts to stimulate business being the creation of Elliott Park just west of Alabama City. They built a lake, a pavilion and a baseball park.
The lake was used largely for boating. The pavilion was a large one that was used for skating, dancing, theatricals and for the Chautauqua program that was produced once a year.
William Jennings Bryan with his lecture on the “Prince of Peace” was a feature attraction of the Chautauqua program for one year.
A small zoo was started and it looked for a while that the park would grow into a big one. The baseball park was a small bandbox affair, so small that in every game there was a ground rule that a ball knocked over the fence went for two bases only.
Imagine a park like that for league baseball but the class D team of that day afforded much pleasure to the fans, the first one ending the season with the lowest percentage of wins of any league in the United States.
Roy hunt, a young man who owned and operated the Belle Theater, a moving picture house, took pictures of the fans and players and exhibited them on the screen. He got to the point where he could make movies and sell them to the news reel companies.
His success along that line carried him to Hollywood where he became one of the greatest and most important cameramen in the movie industry.
One day the stores closed so that everybody could go out and see a ball game between the store proprietors and their clerks. Louis Herzberg, a proprietor outfielder, bet a friend ten dollars that he would hit a home run. He was finally laughed into a bet that he could not hit even a three-bagger.
His first time at bat he slammed out a long hit which in his playing days he could have stretched into a home run, but he became exhausted and staggered into third base and waited for the ball to be thrown in. He simply could not go a step farther. He was one of the star members of the baseball team at the University of Alabama.
The Elliott Park finally ceased business for lack of patronage and after being idle for some time it was taken over by a Masonic club organized for the purpose of operating it. The club built a fine swimming pool and for several years the resort was again popular.
All the buildings have been removed and the people seek entertainment at municipal swimming pools, at nearby lake resorts and trips by automobile. The automobile had much to do with killing off the Elliott Park project.
Contact The Vagabond at dkcrown@bellsouth.net.
