Acton’s Park was the ‘Safer’ Amusement Park in Brooklyn, Maryland
Iconic Park hosted Baltimore’s elite for festivals, baseball, and shooting tourneys
John Flood’s park on the Patapsco River, just south of Baltimore, was a favorite among Baltimore and Anne Arundel County, Maryland patrons looking to enjoy evenings and weekends from the 1890s through the 1910s. But Flood’s Park had a well-deserved, seedy reputation. Dancing girls, prostitution and gambling were its hallmark. But for those who looking for a slightly more wholesome form of entertainment, Acton’s Park was the venue of choice.
Owned by wealthy landowner Samuel G. Acton, Acton’s Park was an expansive, occasionally notorious pleasure garden with entertainment buildings, well-loved shooting ranges, and ball fields. It was one of many popular waterfront resorts that filled the southern shores of the Patapsco River. Long since gone, the park sat on the shore north of present-day South Hanover Street and Frankfurst Avenue.
While Acton’s didn’t carry quite the notoriety of the legendary Flood’s Park a few miles away on Curtis Creek, it was still enormously popular and drew large crowds from both sides of the Patapsco. Both parks were cut from similar cloth, but Acton’s served a more elite family-friendly crowd, and its clientele was decidedly less bawdy.
Perfectly situated just off the Long Bridge that connected Baltimore’s Light Street with Brooklyn, Acton’s Park, the park was easily accessible from Anne Arundel County or Baltimore and offered an alternative for Baltimore’s elite who wanted for an alternative to crowded and prim Spring Gardens, the rowing-oriented outdoors club located just up the river on the north side of the Patapsco.
Acton had some experience running a pleasure resort. His firm, Acton & Colt, ran a popular resort on Stonehouse Cove before he decided to venture out on his own. Henry Busch was a well-known resort owner himself, and he had built the well-known Park House at a desirable location at foot of the Long Bridge in the 1850s. Busch sold the Park House to Acton in 1857, who immediately improved the property. Seeking a different kind of charm for the venue than was offered by his Stonehouse Cove resort or Flood’s, Acton built expanded the park to included a dancing pavilion near Kent and First Avenues. He even extended the structure over the Patapsco River on pilings. Large windows gave attendees of dances, functions, political events a rare unblemished view of the river.
Acton’s billed itself in Baltimore Sun ads as a riverside family resort. By 1884 it was publicizing specially made railroad excursions to the park across the Long Bridge. It had several large buildings, bowling alleys, a fishing shore, and an artesian well. The park also hosted church festivals, family picnics, baseball games, jousting tournaments, boxing matches, hot air balloon rides, and sports gun shooting matches. It also provided an unmatched vantage point for the regattas on the Patapsco and its buildings even hosted horse, foot and cycling races on its indoor velodrome track.
While sports and leisure were an attraction, people went to Acton’s to drink. It served up large volumes of alcohol and, to a lesser degree than the much bolder Flood’s Park, flaunted pre-Prohibition temperance and Sabbath workday laws. Although Acton was never implicated, Anne Arundel County authorities made frequent arrests inside Acton’s for bookmaking and other illicit gambling.
It was also the host for some Baltimore firsts.
- The American Association Baltimore Orioles tested Sabbath Day work laws by playing their first-ever Sunday game at Acton’s on June 15, 1890. Manager Billy Barnie was arrested after the game, and Samuel Acton bailed him out the next morning.
- The first Baltimore-built seaplane, the Lord Baltimore II, took off from Acton’s Park (by then known as Yockel’s Park) to much fanfare in the local press that included a fly-by to throngs of sightseers on the Long Bridge.
Gun enthusiasts also loved Acton’s Park, and Samuel Acton made them feel at home. Cash prize tournaments were held nearly every week and crowds would flock to the shooting grounds to witness pigeon and grouse shooting and, eventually, clay skeet shooting matches. In one match on April 9, 1887, E.C. Hall and Jack Wilmar, both of the Baltimore Gun Club, squared off. Hall broke 39 clay discs and missed 11, while Wilmar broke 36 and missed 14. They were the first among many matches that day.
Confederate Gun Runner and Entrepreneur
The personality of the diverse park matched well with the persona of its owner, Samuel Grant Acton. Acton was born August 3, 1825, in Augusta, Maine. Fresh out of school he became an apprentice plumber and moved to Philadelphia. Learning that plumbers were in high demand in Baltimore, he moved to Brooklyn and became one of the first to open a “gas-fitting” business with Henry P. Nutter. But Acton and Nutter dissolved that business in the fall of 1851, and Acton had formed a new gas-fitting partnership with Llewellyn Blair, of Baltimore, near the end of that year. But he soon realized that plumbing was not his calling and he abandoned the trade after four years. Perhaps he longed for more adventure in his job. During the Civil War, Acton went south and engaged in the hazardous business of supplying guns and ammunition to Confederate soldiers in southern cities. He frequently ran blockades during the early part of the war and was captured and imprisoned three times.
He remade himself again in 1857 by purchasing property at the northernmost edge of Brooklyn, and he opened his signature accomplishment, Acton’s Park. All those years as a sheriff taught him how to skirt the boundaries of the law without actually breaking it. As the proprietor of the popular resort, he was occasionally arrested for breaking Anne Arundel County’s “local option” statutes, which were pre-Prohibition laws designed to give municipalities and local governments control over what alcohol was sold, by whom, and when it could be sold. Some did not like Acton’s flaunting of these rules.
“‘Step over into Baltimore county and you can get your drink,’ is the formula with which applicants for liquor at Samuel G. Acton’s resort on the south side of the Patapsco River near Long Bridge are greeted daily,” lamented the Baltimore Sun on December 19, 1883. “The county authorities and temperance people are prone to admit that Acton has succeeded in evading the law and virtually sells all the liquor he desires while doing business in Anne Arundel, where local option is supposed to prevail.
“Mr. Acton’s bar-room stands on a pier built for its accommodation about 30 yards out over the water of the Patapsco beyond the low-water mark. Customers walk out on this pier and, stepping over a large crack in the floor, as the ingenious liquor dealer claims, gets into Baltimore County. Shortly after Anne Arundel was captured by the temperances people, and Acton’s peculiar bar became an established fact, proceedings charged him with violating the law commenced. Last October the case was tried, when the jury failed to agree. They stood three for conviction and nine for acquittal. The case hinged upon the construction of the acts of assembly.”
The Sun’s attempt at prodding authorities into action failed, and the wine and spirits kept flowing over the Patapsco.
After owning his eponymously named park for 20 years, Acton sought another career scenery change and became a local constable for Anne Arundel County. In 1877 he was elected deputy sheriff and served in those roles for 15 years. When he retired as sheriff of Anne Arundel’s Fifth District, his son, Harry Acton, was named chief of police there.
Acton tried yet another career and was elected to the Maryland House of Delegates, where he served two-year terms in 1878 and 1882. This change was more of a sure bet, since he had been active as a Democratic Party mover for many years. In his signature bill he sponsor a law to abolished tolls on the Long Bridge, the regionally important bridge built by John Cromwell and Richard Owen Crisp between Brooklyn and Baltimore’s Light Street. Although it was a bridge built with private funds, it still required the State’s approval since it crossed the Patapsco River. And the State was so desperate for a bridge there that it granted Crisp and Cromwell rights to charge exorbitant fees to cross. Being a local business owner somewhat dependent on the bridge to get Baltimore patrons to his park, he had skin in the game there. But the law wasn’t entirely self-serving. Businesses on both sides of the river were being hurt by the bridge’s high fees, and he was viewed as a savior for the everyman by sponsoring the legislation.
Acton stayed busy through the late 1890s, and, along with George N. Potee, John F. Lowekamp, Joseph M. Clark, John F. Williams, William C. Pennington, J. Swan Frick, Hiram Woods and John Gill, became owners of the South Baltimore and Curtis Bay Railroad Company. But his first and true business love was the park that bore his name.
Guilty of Liquor Sales on the Sabbath
In 1894 the Anne Arundel County State’s Attorney finally caught up with Acton. He was charged with selling liquor on Sunday within the county at his park. Acton protested, and while admitting that there was a liquor sale made at his park on the Sabbath Day, he asserted in court that the sale was within the confines of his building stretched out on pilings over the Patapsco River, and so, technically, not within the jurisdictional reach of Anne Arundel’s law enforcement arms. The district court disagreed, asserting that Anne Arundel controlled a full half of the Patapsco — including the half that Acton’s building resided over. Acton appealed, and a year later the appeals court upheld the lower court ruling.
After years as a Democratic Party boss and resort owner, Acton decided to retire in 1897. He sold Acton’s Park to John S. Shriner, a Pennsylvania investor. In retirement Acton bought the legendary Walnut Springs Hotel from hotelier Charles Balla and turned the famous hotel into his private residence. Meanwhile, Shriner’s attempt at running the park failed and Acton repurchased it in 1902 at auction. But his reinvestment in the property ended abruptly when he succumbed to a stroke in September 1903.
Acton’s Park continued to operate, but it was never quite the same. It was acquired by Baltimore restaurateur Frederick Yockel in 1904, and the iconic park was rebranded Yockel’s Park, but the name never really caught on. A year later it was purchased by the Baltimore and Ohio Athletic Association and the park became its home with a great fanfare. The association spent a hefty $4,000 on building renovations (nearly $60,000 in 2019 dollars), built a gymnasium, and continued hosting shooting matches through the pre-Depression years.
Ownership Changes for the Park
Baltimore’s annexation of Brooklyn and Curtis Bay changed things. The city acquired part of the park in 1919 and riparian water rights that went with it. The remainder of the park, which included a cabaret hall, bowling alleys, dancing pavilion, a saloon, and a two-story frame house that were built by Acton, were purchased by John H. Geis, who owned the lumber yards adjacent to the park. Geis sold the park to Charles Dixon, who rebranded the park Dixon’s Park in 1920.
Outside of the watchful caretaking practices of original owner Samuel Acton, the park fell on hard times. A fire broke out on July 6, 1921 in the park’s dancing pavilion and did $3,000 worth of damage ($43,000 in 2019 dollars). A little more than a year later, on Oct. 31, 1922, the entire park, its wooden structures built entirely from lumber provided by Geis, burned to the ground when a fire broke out in the cabaret hall on a crisp Wednesday morning. Dixon and his family lived on the premises and narrowly escaped the fire. The fire was reported at 3:30 a.m., but investigators suspected it had been burning undetected for much longer. Four fire companies were dispatched to put out the blaze, including those from Brooklyn, Fairfield and Wagner’s Point, but by the time they arrived the loss was nearly complete. The flames were so intense that Geis needed to protect the lumber in his yard from the flying embers. The horses in his stables were removed as well.
Entertainment Loses to Industry
In the aftermath of the fire, Geis reacquired the property and he used the land as a truck farm and lumber mill. A few years later Baltimore City acquired the property and sold it to John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Corp., and thus the move toward fully industrial uses along Brooklyn’s shoreline began. Acton’s Park was a mainstay for family amusements on the shores of the Patapsco for decades, and even managed to outlast John Flood’s notorious park.
But industry would have its way. Companies like Standard Oil knew that the deep, deep channels of the Patapsco River made it one of the best shipping ports south of New York. These companies were far better funded than Acton and Flood. Once the Patapsco’s secret was revealed, the days of large amusement and pleasure parks became just memories.
