Q: In the 1960s, before there was a Six Flags, there was a small permanent amusement park called Funtown on Stewart Avenue. Can you provide any details about this park?
—Ed Norris, Locust Grove
A: There was a roller coaster called the Wild Mouse. There were carnival games. There was plenty of not-so-healthy food.
Funtown was a small theme park that turned Stewart Avenue into the place to be for many youngsters in the early 1960s.
Actual Factual Georgia readers who lived in Atlanta at that time shared their memories of Funtown.
“My dad was the foreman for the electrical contractor that installed all the electrical wiring for the project,” Stone Mountain’s David Bowman said. “It seems that Funtown had a pre-opening event for dignitaries, workers and others involved with making Funtown possible, which our family attended. I believe I was 13 or 14 years old. My siblings and I were thrilled. As I got old enough to drive, my girlfriend (future wife) would visit there on a Friday or Saturday evening and have a lot of fun.”
Funtown advertised on the local TV shows and students could turn their report cards into free admission, said Danny Nix, who lives in Woodstock.
“I still have those red-stamped report cards that got me into Funtown,” he said.
The theme park was just part of the growth along Stewart Avenue at that time. There also was the Lakewood Fairgrounds and the Stewart-Lakewood Shopping Center, an open-air mall.
“The Stewart-Lakewood area was a great place to grow up,” said Peachtree Corners’ Mike Shepherd, who lived about a mile from the park at the time.
He said the rides included a Ferris wheel, tilt-a-whirl, tea cups and another roller coaster.
Funtown was fun for some, but not for all.
The park was segregated, a fact that Martin Luther King Jr. addressed in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” in 1963.
He wrote: “… When you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children.”
“That really hit me the first time I realized that,” said Atlanta historian Jim Auchmutey, who attended a birthday party at Funtown. “That the place I remembered as being so fun was the source of sorrow and resentment for others.”
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