Lakeside Amusement Park

In 1907, brewer Adolph Zang wanted to sell beer at his new amusement park outside Denver and found that local liquor laws disagreed. His solution was to incorporate an entire municipality just across the county line. The Town of Lakeside, Colorado was born as a workaround, and has remained one ever since. It currently has 16 residents, its own police force, and a tax base composed almost entirely of a single amusement park, which is either a marvel of civic ingenuity or the most elaborate liquor license in American history.

The park itself opened in 1908 and has operated continuously since, making it one of the oldest surviving amusement parks in the country. It is the last remaining White City in America, a term borrowed from the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, where 100,000 electric bulbs illuminated neoclassical plaster buildings and briefly convinced a generation that cities could look like that. Lakeside’s version earned the Coney Island of the West, a title that requires some imagination today but considerably less at night, when the lights come on and the whole thing glows above the water.

Some of the original 1908 rides are still running. The park has survived two world wars, multiple recessions, and a century of shifting taste in what constitutes a thrill. Adolph Zang wanted to sell beer. He ended up founding a town, preserving an architectural era, and building something that outlasted almost everything else of its kind. The beer is presumably also still available.