Tag Archives: runout lane

Have I mentioned that I adore abandoned buildings? Was my post about the Camarillo State Mental Hospital not clear enough? I can remedy that. Today on the drive home from the Vegas, I pulled off on a side road to get a closer look at something that has been lurking in the back of my mind for YEARS, begging to be trespassed and visited.
Rock-A-Hoola Waterpark, located in Newberry Springs, California.
This waterpark (originally named Lake Dolores Waterpark) was designed back in the late 1950s by Bob Byers.
His original plan was to have this park for private use of his extended family.
Over the next 25 years, rides were added and the park expanded as tourism to Las Vegas rose, as did interest in motocrossing in the sandy area.
The park was incredibly popular from the 1970s to the mid-1980s.
The popularity ran out in the late 1980s, and Byers sold the park in 1990.
The new owners tried to revitalize it with a new name (Rock-A-Hoola) and re-opened it in 1998.
The park was open for three more years and amassed three million dollars in debt.
In 1999, a park employee was paralyzed after he used one of the slides after hours.
He went down the slide and into the runout lane, but the water wasn’t at the height that it was supposed to be.
He realized that he wasn’t slowing down as much as he should have been and hit the concrete end of the runout lane, which you can see in the picture above.
He was paralyzed and sued the park. He was awarded $4.4 million dollars, which undoubtedly lent a hand to the upcoming bankruptcy and closure in 2000.
In 2002, new owners decided to give it another go. They spent $400,000 updating the park and renamed it “Discovery Waterpark.”
The park was open seasonally until 2004, when it closed for good.
Since then it’s been ripped apart, piece by piece, and sold to other waterparks.
Vandals have also gone wild, spray painting every standing structure, prying open doors and shattering any glassware they can find.
The lazy moat is filled with tattered mattresses, and the vandals really want you to know that “Nutsaks” are available there. (See the bridge above)
No, seriously. They really, really want you to buy some of their “Nutsaks”.
The stairs that led up to the tallest slides have been overgrown by large bushes. Sharp bushes. They hurt to walk through. I suffer for the good of my blog.
This park is beautiful and tattered, eerie and forgotten. I think it was made just for me.
I really need to find a history class that teaches only about abandoned towns/buildings/parks such as this.
This was my idea of a perfect day.