Fontaine Ferry Park, Amusement park in Shawnee neighborhood, Louisville, United States.
Fontaine Ferry Park was an amusement park on the south bank of the Ohio River in the Shawnee neighborhood of Louisville, Kentucky. The grounds included rides, a swimming pool, and a dance pavilion, all set along the riverfront.
Aaron Fontaine bought the land in 1814 and ran a ferry crossing there for decades. The site was turned into an amusement park in 1905 and stayed open until the late 1960s, when declining attendance and racial tensions led to its closure.
For most of its history, the park was segregated, barring Black visitors from entering. Protests held at the gates in the 1960s became a visible moment in Louisville's civil rights movement.
The site is no longer open as a park and the grounds are largely abandoned. It sits in the Shawnee neighborhood, reachable by car from downtown Louisville, but there is little to see on the spot today.
The park's carousel was relocated to Illinois after the closure and can still be ridden there today. It is one of the few physical traces of the site that survived and ended up in active use elsewhere.
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