Muncie’s Westside Park is getting a new playground1. You might think it’s earned one after the park was completely submerged by hundred-year floodwaters just a few weeks ago, but it’s only been nine years since the current playground was installed2! More time has passed since Westside lost the landmark Miracle & Jamison Mark IV Timberline structure I remember from my youth, and here’s hoping whatever comes next is even half as memorable as the Timberline was.
The current playground at Westside Park is sort of rinky-dink, but if you grew up here from 1980 to 2010 or so, you probably remember its awesome Timberline or the identical model at McCulloch Park. The mammoth contraption was less a piece of playground equipment than a sprawling wooden fortress, with towers, bridges, slides, tunnels, and endless places to climb, hide, and explore. As a kid, I didn’t know it was a Miracle & Jamison Mark IV Timberline, or even that it had a name. I just knew that going to Westside Park meant getting turned loose on the coolest playground around.
The Mark IV Imagine City was introduced in 1972 by the Miracle Recreation Equipment Company in conjunction with Jamison, Incorporated of Grinnell, Iowa. Model 111-183 in the company’s catalog3, Mark IVs were pricey -$23,000, or about $127,000 today. Still, they were also built to last, with an expected lifespan of forty years. Timberline-themed versions like Muncie’s arrived in 1976 with rustic touches inspired by America’s bicentennial4. Westside got its Timberline in 1983, and McCulloch Park followed with its own the next year.
Unfortunately, Muncie’s Mark IVs eventually went the way of the dodo. Westside’s disappeared first, in 2016, followed by McCulloch’s in 2022. I don’t have any skin in the playground game these days, but what replaced Westside’s Timberline always looked a little underwhelming to me. Then again, I’m not exactly the target audience for modern playground equipment, and that’s a good thing! Shave thirty years off my age and remove the caution tape from around Westside’s current play structure, and I’d probably have a fantastic time. Of course, that’s because I wouldn’t know what came before.
Westside’s Mark IV stood eighteen feet high and featured a wave slide, a double-deck satellite tower, a twelve-foot-tall “Tornado Slide,” a crow’s nest, and a scary system of ladders and hatches. The playground seemed almost as alive as we kids were! Its metal and wood wobbled, creaked, and swayed while dozens of us tore across it, climbed through it, and scrambled on top of its fiberglass slide shrouds where we almost certainly weren’t supposed to be.
I don’t mean for this to turn into a “kids these days” lament, especially since I appreciate every parent who takes their kid to a park instead of issuing them an iPad. Every generation had its own version of Westside, and I’m sure plenty of older Muncie peeps remember playground equipment there that disappeared long before I came along. Go back another generation or two, and they might have remembered Westside as more of a playground for adults.
Westside Park dates to the 1890s, when the Citizens Street Railway Company5 bought the land and built a trolley loop to it. The privately-owned park featured an enormous skating rink, a beer garden, a baseball diamond, and a swinging bridge across the White River6. Its main attraction, though, was the Figure 8 roller coaster.
Built for $7,000, the Figure 8 was said to be one of the best roller coasters in the state7! Believe me, it would not be called that today. The Figure 8 was an early “side-friction” coaster whose trains lacked the up-stop wheels that lock modern cars to their tracks. These days, you’d be far more scared on a Scrambler! Today, the last remaining side-friction coaster Leap The Dips in Altoona, Pennsylvania- drops nine feet at a time and reaches a top speed of just ten miles an hour8.
Westside’s brief life as an amusement park ended in 1918. By then, the Union Traction Company had taken over the Citizens Street Railway, and fewer people were making the trip as Muncie established public parks of its own. Running streetcars to Westside’s remote location cost more than the park generated in revenue9, so most of its attractions were demolished. The site spent decades as an overgrown mess10 before the city revived fifteen acres of the old amusement park with a new concession stand, picnic tables, grills, and playground equipment in 1954. A new baseball field followed later11, and a $50,000 improvement project eventually bought the playground I remember so fondly12.
Muncie got thirty-three years out of Westside’s Mark IV Timberline before it was ripped out. By then, the structure was rusty, the tube leading to the crow’s nest had been blocked off with a third of a trash barrel, and parts of the wood were splintering away. It was time, but it was sad to see it go. Part of my childhood was being torn apart! I’m biased, but its replacement always looked underwhelming by comparison. It had plastic slides, stairs, a net ladder, and a fire pole, but it lacked the sheer gravitas of the Timberline. Soon, it’ll be gone too.
After this summer’s flood, I wasn’t surprised to hear that Westside’s current playground might be replaced. What did surprise me was learning that the city had already planned to do it. “We’re going to tear out the old equipment,” Muncie Mayor Dan Ridenour said in a video. “We’ve got new playground equipment that was already underway to put in13.”
Curious, I asked my friend Brad Marshall, president of Muncie’s Parks and Recreation Board, what was up. Am I a journalist now? Brad told me this particular improvement was being chaperoned through the process by Muncie’s city engineer. He’d have to look at his notes to be certain, but his gut told him that safety issues, repair costs, ADA accessibility, and momentum from Westside’s recently-built skate park all helped inform the decision. A “four quadrants” approach to spreading park improvements around different parts of Muncie likely played a role as well14.
I won’t be playing at Westside anytime soon, but I’ll be excited to see what gets installed next. Could it possibly be something like Miracle’s old Timberline? Is Miracle even still in business? As it turns out, it is! The company makes some playgrounds so tame that I would have turned my nose up at them as a toddler, but it also offers a line of “Extreme Generation” equipment with elevated skyways I wouldn’t have touched as a teenager!
I have no love lost for Westside Park’s outgoing equipment, but maybe thirty years from now, some kid who spent his summers playing on it will stumble across this blog post and remember it from the photos I took during its final days. Maybe he’ll think the playground that replaced his beloved equipment is lame, too.
That’s part of what makes Westside interesting. The outgoing playground represents just one era in more than 120 years of amusements there; a history that started with a skating rink and roller coaster, evolved through swing sets and slides to the Mark IV Timberline, and continues today. The equipment keeps changing, but generations of Muncie kids keep making it their own. That’s pretty neat.
I just hope officials choose to keep DIck Kishel’s concrete turtle. If anything happens to it, Muncie might revolt!
Sources Cited
1 Walker, D. (2026, August 21). Mayor: Westside Park’s playground area will temporarily be shut down. The Star Press [Muncie]. Web. Retrieved September 3, 2026.
2 Roysdon, K. (2017, June 26). Westside Park gets refresh with playground equipment. The Muncie Star Press. p. A2.
3 Parks & Recreation Journal (1974, August). Miracle & Jamison Equipment Company. Advertisement. Inside cover.
4 (See footnote 3).
5 The Franchise of the Citizens Street Railway Company (1893, September 10). The Muncie Morning News. p. 8.
6 Westside Park Drew Thousands From Eastern Indiana; Near-By Saloon and Fight Arena Recalled By Old-Timers (1937, March 13). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 14.
7 The Passing Of Westside Park (1918, June 14). The Muncie Evening Press. p. 2.
8 Cornwall, T. (2010, Fall). Leap-the-Dips: A Thrill From the Past. Pennsylvania Center For The Book [State College]. Web. Retrieved September 3, 2026.
9 (See footnote 7).
10 Owens, E. (1953, October 14). Old Westside Park. The Muncie Evening Press. p. 4.
11 Terhune, B. (1954, April 24). Two New Parks Will Become Part of Muncie’s Growing System. The Muncie Evening Press. p. 14.
12 LaGuardia, J. (1983, September 15). Park Board may issue bonds to finance softball complex. The Muncie Evening Press. p. 8.
13 (See footnote 1).
14 Marshall, B. & Shideler, T. (2026, September 4). Personal communication.
