Peter Daulton has credits on over 60 major motion pictures as a visual effects camera operator and a computer graphics animator, including every Star Wars film since Return of the Jedi. Now “retired,” his video company is producing projects that remind him of his childhood, like visiting the few remaining “Trolley Parks” in the nation.
Trolley parks were the precursors to today’s amusement parks, Daulton, 64, said in a statement. Most were built by streetcar companies in the late 1800s to increase business by giving riders a weekend destination at the end of the line, usually located at a park or lake. In the early 1900s there were more than a thousand trolley parks. Now only a few remain open.
Daulton’s latest project, Trolley Park: Out West, visits the last remaining trolley park on the West Coast - Oaks Park in Portland, Oregon, which includes what he says is the oldest roller skating rink in the country. It is scheduled to air Sunday on Philadelphia’s WHYY, but is also available for streaming this month.
“American Public Television partners with producers and stations to distribute the very best programming content to public television stations across the country, and the ‘Trolley Park’films educate and engage our viewing audiences with stories of their respective geographic past,” Olivia Wong, vice president, marketing & communications for APT, told NJ Advance Media on Monday. “Peter Daulton is documenting a slice of American social history in these films as a few of these trolley parks remain in some form, but many more of them no longer exist.”
Dalton said plans are in the works next year to feature New Jersey’s last remaining trolley park in Clementon, Camden County.
“I think these places have value,” Daulton told NJ Advance Media this month. “I think the people who maintain them, work and visit them recognize that value. I try to tap into that joy for us as adults so that we can remember that joy and maybe think about taking kids out to places like Clementon Park.”
Clementon, the 114-year-old amusement park, was bought from foreclosure and reopened in 2021 after being closed for two years.
Daulton grew up in northwestern Pennsylvania and discovered a few years ago that Midway Park - the place where he first rode a carousel - was not only still open, but had barely changed in the years since he had first visited as a child in the mid-sixties. Trolley Park: Midway Memories launched the series in 2023.
Daulton said he has never visited Clementon Park, but read a New York Times article about it just before it reopened and was intrigued.
“I’d love to tell the story of Clementon Park as our next one,” Dalton said. “I think it’s the fact that it was saved. It would have been sold off in parts.”
A request for comment from what is now known as Clementon Park & Splashworld, and its owner, Indiana Beach Holdings, was not answered.
“When you have the drama of the park suddenly closing and the risk of that community losing that park and someone coming in and resurrecting it, I think that adds a little extra drama to the story I’m telling,” Daulton said. “Common ground has been hard to find in this country for the last few years and I believe these trolley parks actually represent common ground.”
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Bill Duhart may be reached at bduhart@njadvancemedia.com.
