Ramona Park was an amusement park located in the city of East Grand Rapids, Michigan between 1897 and 1955. The Park included a double track wooden roller coaster, a theater pavilion, a ridable miniature railway and boat livery.HistoryRamona Park was located on the west shore of Reeds Lake in East Grand Rapids, Michigan, and owned and operated by the Grand Rapids Street Railway Company, a trolley park By 1921 the Ramona Amusement Corporation was formed and managed by the Railway Company. Trolley parks were common in the United States from the late 1800s into the mid twentieth century. Local transportation companies received fares for patrons riding the trolleys and also park admittance fees. A good example of a trolley park is Coney Island.Through the years people traveled to Reeds Lake and Ramona Park from Grand Rapids and other cities in West Michigan, first using horse-drawn trams, street steam railroad, interurban, electric streetcars or trolleys and finally, by the mid-1930s, city buses. The cars and bus routes were always, and still remain today, number 6.Reeds Lake was a summertime destination spot for years before the Park was established. The Lake was several miles from the city of Grand Rapids. There were picnic grounds, pavilions for entertainment, and boat liveries that supplied flat-bottomed skiff boats. As early as the 1850s passenger steam boats carried up to several hundred passengers. Captain John Honore Poisson was followed by his sons, Charles and Joseph, and grandsons, John and William as excursion steam boat captains.
