Cliffside Park, New Jersey: Palisades Amusement Park Site

I remember as a kid my parents would take me to Palisades Amusement Park. It was so much fun. Now it's nothing but big high-rise apartment buildings.

This is the site of the old Palisades Amusement Park in Cliffside Park. This great theme park housed a garish collection of rides such as Atomic Boats, Batman slide, a giant roller coaster and many more. The park closed in 1971.

On Palisade Ave., the main drag along the top of the cliffs in these parts, is a huge residential high-rise complex at the Cliffside Park-Fort Lee border (called Winston Towers, I believe) on the site of the former Palisades Amusement Park, which closed in 1971. Two blocks south of here, Grant Ave. runs from Palisade to the cliff edge. At that end of the street stands an ostensibly abandoned house on the left, in whose yard resides a decaying Palisades Amusement Park ticket booth. I happened to be reading up on the park that afternoon, so I recognized the name "Giant Coaster" barely legible on one side. It's shabby and overgrown, but still colorfully painted. The upper-middle-class neighborhood must be having a fit over the whole property, though, so don't expect this to last.