Did you know there were once amusements at LaSalle Park?
First, a little history…
This park had its roots in an area known as “Oaklands”, which came to have its own pleasure grounds. It started as a Crown grant of 800 hectares to Lt. Alexander McDonnell.
It later came to be owned by Alexander Brown, who had a two-storey house and built a wharf known as Brown’s Wharf (Port of Flamborough). Brown constructed the first mill on Grindstone Creek and built the road from his mill to the wharf named the Waterdown and Port Flamborough Road. Since Brown owned most of the land, he also erected a toll booth and hotel along the road and he also ran the Post Office.
In 1913-15, the City of Hamilton purchased 57 hectares of the land and made 20 hectares available to the public for recreational purposes. A ferry was commissioned to transport patrons to the park. The park was renamed Wabasso, an Indigenous word meaning “white rabbit”.
In 1917 a dancing pavilion was erected and in 1922 a bath house was erected to provide changing rooms for the swimmers. The bath house was destroyed by fire in 1935 and never rebuilt.
At around 1918, a portion of the park was leased to run an amusement park on the site. There, visitors could enjoy a roller coaster and midway consisting of penny arcades and four rides and became a great tourist attraction for people from neighbouring cities. Steamships transported people daily until 1952.
The park was renamed LaSalle Park, after Rene-Robert Cavalier de LaSalle, an early French explorer who expanded the fur trade into Lake Ontario, and this was his designated landing spot in 1669.
Eventually the amusements saw a slow decline and the amusement park was closed by the mid 1940s.
Even with the amusements gone, the land is still used for recreation. The renovated pavilion is still in use, and the area’s nautical roots continue with the LaSalle Park Marina.
