Imagine hurtling through the air at breakneck speed, your heart pounding in exhilaration as your screams blend in with the rush of wind. That’s the grim reality my dad found himself in during the summer of 1967! Thirty years later, he still spoke in hushed tones when we drove past the site of Fort Wayne’s Jack and Jill Amusement Park and its star attraction, the Monster Mouse.
Amusement parks like Robison and Trier dominate the Fort Wayne history books. I learned about them soon after I was taught to read, but I’d never heard of Jack & Jill until Dad recounted his unusual horror story. See, a couple things made his ride on the Monster Mouse a statistical anomaly. The first was that Dad was the kind of guy who preferred his feet firmly planted on terra firma. He was terrified of heights!
Roller coasters are more than just tubes and tracks, after all. For many, a trip on one is closer to the climax of some action blockbuster! Not for me, though. I’d conquered everything Indiana Beach, Fun Spot, Holiday World, and Kings Island could throw my way before I remembered Dad’s old nemesis. Eventually, I decided to find out everything I could about the Monster Mouse and Jack & Jill.
Dad’s memories were my starting point. As he recalled, the Monster Mouse was tall and fast. The coaster shook and swayed like it was built with pieces from an enormous erector set. What scared him the most was the feeling that his car would whip off the rails at any moment. A derailment was unlikely in his day, but Dad was lucky to have been born in 1960 instead of 1860.
Robison Park opened north of Fort Wayne in 1896. Its premiere ride, the Figure 8, was known as a “side-friction” roller coaster. Newfangled guide wheels gave its trains stability around sharp turns, but up-stop wheels to lock them onto the tracks weren’t invented until later. If the Figure 8 crested a hill too quickly, it could have easily jumped off!
Because of that, coasters like the Figure 8 were necessarily slow and sedate by modern standards. Today, the last remaining side-friction roller coaster -Leap The Dips in Altoona, Pennsylvania- drops nine feet at a time and hits a top speed of just ten miles an hour1. That’s a far cry from Dad’s memory of the diabolical Monster Mouse! In his estimation, it felt closer to piloting a Scout off the top of Lincoln Tower.
Up-stop wheels let later coasters like Robison Park’s Blue Streak and the Comet at Trier Park2 reach terrifying heights and speeds like that. My grandparents remembered Trier and heard stories about Robison, but both were long gone in 1965 when Robert Byers, president of Jack and Jill Amusements, Inc., opened Fort Wayne’s latest -and last- amusement park.
The twenty-acre Jack and Jill Amusement Park opened on June 12, 1965, at the U.S. 30 Bypass south of Lake Avenue. The park wasn’t a regional showstopper like Cedar Point or Valleyfair, but it still featured fifteen rides, an outdoor dancing area, and a kiddieland to thrill the kids of Fort Wayne. Parking for 1,200 cars surely thrilled their parents3.
Most of Jack & Jill’s rides were typical of what you’d expect at a county fair or the Three Rivers Festival. The usual Tilt-A-Whirl, Scrambler, Trabant, Ferris wheel, and swinging gym took up one side of the midway. The other featured a merry-go-round, bumper cars, a Paratrooper, and the park’s kiddieland. For youngsters, the highlight was probably the Allan Herschell “Kiddie Coaster,” sometimes called the “Little Dipper” in the company’s marketing materials4.
The fearsome Monster Mouse anchored the northeast side of the midway and stood just past Jack & Jill’s main entrance. It belonged to the “Wild Mouse” genre of coasters known for their tight turns, sharp drops, and sudden changes in direction. Their switchbacks made for erratic movements that resembled a mouse scurrying through a maze, and companies like B. A. Schiff & Associates cranked them out by the truckload in the early 1950s5.
Parks loved how little it cost to own and operate a wild mouse. The rides were prefabricated, portable, and compact. Soon, other companies like Allan Herschell jumped into the marketplace to satiate the growing demand. Fresh off the success of its kiddie coasters, the firm debuted its first “Mad Mouse” at the Alabama State Fair in 19586. By 1960, Herschell had sold thirty7.
Species evolve over time, and it wasn’t long before Herschell’s mice sprouted variants of their own to open the market further. Hot on the heels of the Mad Mouse, the company introduced the smaller Mite Mouse for younger riders and the Monster Mouse for real thrill seekers. A typical Mad Mouse stood twenty-one feet tall8, but the Monster Mouse reached a height of thirty!
Available on its own or as part of a conversion kit, the Monster model of Herschell’s Mad Mouse added a taller lift hill, a new drop, a wide curve, and a dip to the original Mad Mouse layout. At full speed, its cars could reach a speed of thirty miles an hour9!
Dad’s white-knuckle ride on a roller coaster wasn’t just a statistical anomaly because he was afraid of heights. His trip was more unusual because Herschell only produced eight Monster Mouse assemblies10 and three Mad Mouse conversion kits before it merged with Chance Manufacturing of Kansas in 197011.
The rides were rare, and photos of Fort Wayne’s Monster Mouse are few and far between. Fortunately, postcards of identical models installed elsewhere help complete the picture. Quassy Amusement Park in Connecticut was home to a Monster Mouse confusingly called “Monster,” then “Mad Mouse” from 1982 to 201012. It was likely built from a conversion kit.
After seeing it in action, I don’t blame my dad for being shaken! Put yourself there. Your parents dropped you off and your pals convinced you to get in line. Conversations buzz around as your friends swap stories of past trips and share nervous laughter in anticipation of the ride ahead. You’ve never been on a roller coaster before, and your anxiety reaches a fever pitch as you inch closer to the loading platform.
You’re in the car before you know it. There’s no turning back. Your heart races in tandem with the click-clack of the climbing car as you reach the summit. You glance down at your chest. “Hey,” you ask as your car careens through a curve towards the drop stretching down below you. “Shouldn’t this have a seatbel-“
Too late! Gravity has taken hold. The world blurs into a kaleidoscope of colors as you hurtle towards the ground at breakneck speed. Unfortunately, you’ll spend the rest of your short life ensnared in the terrifying trap of the Monster Mouse.
Just kidding- here’s what observers saw. After you got in, your car turned to the right and ascended the ride’s thirty-foot lift hill. Another turn greeted you at the top. Your car glided down some shallow track until you whipsawed through a switchback. There, you ripped around a curve into the ride’s main drop, took a broad curve into a dip, then whipped into the typical Mad Mouse layout of bunny hops, bumps, and hairpins, and bunny hops. Stem to stern, you were out of the mouse’s clutches after two minutes.
As far as I know, Dad never set foot on another roller coaster again. Nevertheless, he became one of a select few to ride a Herschell Monster Mouse, even in Fort Wayne. Unfortunately, Jack & Jill didn’t last very long- only four seasons, as best I can tell. In 1967, Recreational Development Corp. of Lockport, New York, filed suit against the park, stating that management owed them $2,522.
Even though the lawsuit insisted Jack & Jill was in imminent danger of insolvency13, the park opened for its fourth season on May 12, 1968. It even featured new attractions like pony rides, a flying scooter, a haunted house, and expanded picnic facilities for 3,000 people14!
By June, the park’s independently operated miniature golf course had moved across town to Northcrest Shopping Center15. Newspaper ads dropped off at the end of the season, and it looks like that’s when the fun ended for good.
I haven’t found the exact day it closed, but vintage aerial photos show Jack & Jill as a drop yard for trailers by the early 1970s. The footprint of the empty park appears to have remained until 1975 when a big-box discount store was built on top of it16. Going from an amusement park to a K-mart is a stark change, and I wondered what happened to all the rides.
I’ve seen speculation that the Monster Mouse was moved to Adventureland in North Webster. Unfortunately, that was almost certainly not the case. Adventureland was home to an earlier Schiff Wild Mouse, and I’d bet dollars to donuts that the park purchased Jack and Jill’s Kiddie Coaster instead. The old Herschell coaster was sent to Fun Spot in Angola in 2002 and last operated at Bell’s Kiddieland in Oklahoma17.
As for the Monster of the midway, the Roller Coaster Database lists twenty-two total Monster Mouse installations including Jack & Jill’s. Of those, several opened after the park shut down. Fort Wayne’s Monster Mouse may have gone to Fantasy Farm in Ohio, Legend City in Phoenix, Dogpatch USA in Arkansas, Six Gun Territory in Florida, or somewhere else entirely.
Today, Herschell Monster Mouse coasters are extinct and little in Fort Wayne connects us to Jack and Jill’s star attraction. The memories of laughter, the rush of adrenaline, and screams of delight and terror that once filled the air off of North Coliseum Boulevard now only linger as whispers in the wind.
Still, the spirit of the Monster Mouse lives on in the Summit City as a testament to the power of nostalgia. It was only here for a couple years, but the coaster left an indelible mark on those, like my dad, who rode its thrilling rails and lived to tell the tale.
Sources Cited
1 Cornwall, T. (2010, Fall). Leap-the-Dips: A Thrill From the Past. Pennsylvania Center For The Book [State College]. Web. Retrieved February 3, 2024.
2 Hawfield, M. (1994, June 20). Trolley whisked thrill-seekers to park. The Fort Wayne News-Sentinel. Web. Retrieved February 3, 2024.
3 Opening Date Set For Jack and Jill Amusement Park (1965, June 7). The Fort Wayne News Sentinel. p. 21.
4 Kiddie Coaster (n.d.). Lagoon History Project [Farmington]. Web. Retrieved February 3, 2024.
5 Marden, D. (n.d.) B.A Schiff & Associates. Roller Coaster Database. Web. Retrieved February 2, 2024.
6 A Blast From The Past — Herschell’s Mad Mouse (2010, July 22). Newsplusnotes. Web. Retrieved February 3, 2024.
7 (See footnote 6).
8 Alan Herschell Company, Inc. Since 1880 (n.d.). Allan Herschell Company [New York]. Web. Retrieved February 3, 2024.
9 Monster Mouse Puyallup Fair (n.d.). Ultimate Rollercoaster. Web. Retrieved February 3, 2024.
10 Marden, D. (n.d.) Monster Mouse. Roller Coaster Database. Web. Retrieved February 2, 2024.
11 Chance, H. (2004). The Book of Chance. Wichita Press [Wichita]. Book.
12 Commemorative 110th Anniversary Magazine (2019, Summer). Quassy Amusement Park & Waterpark [Middlebury]. Web. Retrieved February 3, 2024.
13 Receiver Sought (1967, August 7). The Fort Wayne News Sentinel. p. 9.
14 Amusement Park Will Open for Season Sunday (1968, May 9). The Fort Wayne News-Sentinel. p. 22.
15 Stack, S. (1968, June 8). Jim Enyon’s Enterprise One Designed to Capture Golf Fanatic. The Fort Wayne News Sentinel. p. 15.
16 810 N Coliseum Blvd (2024). LowTaxInfo. Allen County Assessor’s Office [Fort Wayne]. Web. Retrieved February 3, 2024.
17 Marden, D. (n.d.) Safari Kiddie Coaster. Roller Coaster Database. Web. Retrieved February 2, 2024.
Awesome. I remember much of what your father shared with you. There were even more memories in here for me.
Mom ended up owning Spotlight On Fort Wayne (magazine name later reused without permission).
Dad helped design the Scout and owned a couple of them.
That coaster didn’t have banked turns and yeah. Felt like an Erector Set!
Thanks for commenting! Unreal that your mom owned Spotlight On Fort Wayne. Let me know if I can credit my image in any better way.
My grandpa Hayes and his brother Joe were major scout fans. Let me thank your dad on their behalf.
I went to Jack & Jill and rode the monster mouse many times. My Dad worked in the tune & test area at International Harvester just down the road from the amusement park. As I recall the park had a discount day for Harvester employee families. After Jack & Jill closed we had to drive over to Cedar Point in Sandusky to ride the Blue Streak roller-coaster!
The blue streak would have been a big step up!
I think I know this Thomas Divelbiss!!
I remember it well, and it scared the stuffing out of me, too! I went there several times and I even remember the year my dad’s employer rented it out for their annual Company picnic, probably 1965 or 66. It was a great place for a divorced dad to take kids on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon in the summertime.
I’ve also read that some great bands played there, at a dance hall on the premises called The Flame.