Article: Waterpark in Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois
Ebenezer Floppen Slopper's Wonderful Water Slides is an abandoned waterpark located on a hill near the intersection of Illinois Route 38 (Roosevelt Road) and Route 83 in Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois.
Site history
The site opened in 1951 as a gravel pit and landfill under a local businessman named Clayburn Robinette until the late 1970s. By the 1960s the site was known as "Mt Trashmore".
When the landfill reached ground level, it was covered with concrete, brick and an eight-foot clay cap. The site was a large hill that became overgrown. Mark Collor was driving past the site and took interest due to the potential for water slides.
"Try to find a hill in Chicago, it's a little hard," Collor told the Chicago Tribune in 2009. "My friend and I saw that hill with that sign on top of it for The Flame restaurant, and I said, 'There's a hill!'"
Collor signed an agreement with the Robinette family to build two water slides and a few small buildings on the property.
The park's tongue-twister name came about because Collor had been amused by a story his brother-in-law had told about meeting a man in Joplin, Missouri, named Ebenezer Floppen.
Operation history
When the park first opened on July 5, 1980, it had only two simple, 800-foot concrete water slides. People slid down on rubber mats in groups of up to eight at a time. The mats were colour-coded to manage the flow of crowds through the slides: for instance, patrons carrying red mats entered the slides at noon and came out at 12:30, while those with blue mats entered at 12:30 and left at 1pm.
The water park had paid for its installation costs by 5 August 1980, and became a major summer attraction for residents of surrounding towns and communities as people lined up for rides down the large winding slides. After two years, Collor sold the park to a businessman he knew from Oak Park and River Forest High School.
During the 1980s, the park added five additional slides. The new slides included: two flat racer slides in which people slid down head-first on folded rubber mats; two semi-enclosed tube body slides; and a smaller slide in which patrons rode inner tubes into a nearby wading pool.
The slides were also unique in that they were lined with a blue rubber foam material which would prevent injuries from contacts with the slide walls. Due to the design of the two main large concrete slides, especially with the V-shaped configuration of their side walls, people could also slide quite high up the walls of the slides, especially when hitting a turn at high speeds.
Around 1987, the large concrete slides were resurfaced with flat bottoms with humps and bumps. Patrons rode the slides solo on inner tubes, getting bumped up and down and sideways as they went down the renovated slides. To fit the new rides, the park was renamed "Doc River's Roaring Rapids Water Park."
Closure and rumors
The park closed for good at the end of the 1989 season for undisclosed reasons. Neglected and abandoned since, the slides and wading pool have fallen into ruin. The site has become popular with urban explorers, and the mystery surrounding its closure has given rise to online speculation that park patrons had been injured or killed.
As a ruin
The site is still owned by the Robinette family, which operates a nearby demolition business. There are security cameras, signs warning against trespassing, a roadblock on a road that leads to the park, and a permanent chain-link fence has been erected around the site. None of this has deterred curious explorers.
By July 2009, the two large concrete slides had numerous cracks and splits in the concrete that had sprouted saplings six to eight feet tall. At that time, the rubber foam lining had peeled off the slide walls and lay jumbled in the slides, the slide walls were covered with graffiti, and the slides were also filled with tree branches and dirt, especially about 150 feet above the plunge pool, where a retaining wall had recently collapsed and filled one of the slides to its rim with dirt and weeds. Both racers were cracked and peeled badly: surfacing was missing in a few spots filled with more weeds and overgrowth, the body slides were choked with leaves and branches, the smaller inner tube slide had numerous saplings sprouting from its base and was also badly split and cracked, and the wading pool was also cracked and full of weeds. Other retaining walls elsewhere in the park that once held elevated gardens continued to sag severely in July 2009. As of April 2019, the only remnants of the water park that can be seen from Route 83 are some lights that illuminated the water park. A big red billboard that says “Advertise Here” can be seen at the top the hill.
References External links
Images of the park in operation at the Oakbrook Terrace Historical Society
Photographs taken at the derelict park in June 2006
Video exploring the park in February 2010 |
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Water slides were clean, trashy fun
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Water slides were clean, trashy fun
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By Vikki Ortiz Healy PUBLISHED:
July 10, 2009 at 1:00 a.m.
| UPDATED:
August 22, 2021 at 1:35 p.m.
I remember being 10 years old and so excited when a friend called with the invitation.
Mom! Pia wants to know if I can go with her and her mom to The Flame today! Can I go? Please?
“The what?” my mom asked.
The Flame! You know, the water slide by Kiddie Kingdom? It’s sooo cool!
Looking back, I realize “The Flame” was not really the name of the water slide off Illinois Highway 83 in Oakbrook Terrace. It was the name of the local restaurant that advertised for years on a giant billboard atop the water park’s hill.
And after decades of visiting modern-day water parks, I also know the term “water park” was a generous way to describe the two simple slides that charged customers by the half-hour for unlimited turns in the early 1980s.
But for local children — and families from surrounding communities who heard about it — Ebenezer Floppen Slopper’s Wonderful Water Slides were an exciting alternative to our parents’ sprinklers during summer months.
“It was something new, different than the public pool or your neighbor’s backyard,” said Cheryl Downer, 47, who remembers driving herself to the slides as a teen and spending the day slipping down them. “We went there to experience it, try it.”
What we didn’t know at the time was that the water slides’ hill was a bunch of garbage.
Literally. The property belonged to Clayburn Robinette, who bought it in 1951 and for years operated a gravel pit and then a landfill for non-methane-emitting waste (technically called a cold-fill). This was before there were strict environmental and other laws dictating how garbage was handled. Robinette’s site was so well-known by the 1960s that it was nicknamed Mt. Trashmore, said his son Tom.
When the landfill reached ground level, the older Robinette closed it down and covered it with concrete, brick and an 8-foot clay cap, as was required at the time. Although the family kept the land in a trust, it remained unused for decades. Grass and other vegetation grew on top of the mound, and it became a large hill in an otherwise flat area.
In the late 1970s, a man who grew up in River Forest had hopes of bringing a water slide to the area. Mark Collor already operated a water slide in suburban Kansas City, Mo. “Try to find a hill in Chicago, it’s a little hard,” said Collor, who remembers the exact moment driving along Illinois 83 when his business venture came together. “My friend and I saw that hill with that sign on top of it for The Flame restaurant, and I said, ‘There’s a hill!'”
Collor introduced himself to the Robinettes and told them about his plans. They later signed an agreement to allow Collor and his crews to build two 800-foot slides and a few small buildings on the property. Then, after chuckling at a story his brother-in-law told about a fellow he met in Joplin, Mo., named Ebenezer Floppen, Collor gave his new slides a tongue-twister name.
Ebenezer Floppen Slopper’s Wonderful Water Slides opened on July 5, 1980, and had paid for themselves by Aug. 5. Customers lined up by the hundreds for a turn down the winding slides. Staff managed the crowds by the color of the pads each slider used. People carrying red mats went in at noon and came out at 12:30, for instance, while those with blues started at 12:30 and were done at 1, Collor said.
After two years, Collor sold to a businessman he knew from Oak Park and River Forest High School. The new owners took on several investors, and the operation stayed afloat for at least seven more years. Toward the late 1980s, despite such new techniques as foam on the slides, the place had run its course and closed for good, Collor said.
Collor moved to Austria and worked in the tourism industry for more than a decade. He returned to the U.S. shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, when tourism declined sharply. He’s 66 and still works for the same resort company, this time out of an office in Oakbrook Terrace. A few years ago, he stopped by the business owned by Clayburn Robinette’s sons, Robinette Demolition Inc., which is near the water slides’ hill. He asked whether they thought his water slides would have been as successful today.
“Now they have water parks that are $50 million. It’s unbelievable,” Collor said.
The hill is lush with trees and overgrown brush. The large billboard still stands, although no one is using it.
Downer, who got married and moved to a Villa Park neighborhood near the water slides’ location, said children sometimes wander through the wooded area, exploring.
Every once in a while, a child will see the concrete remains of the slides and come back excited.
“They say, ‘There’s a slide up there!'” Downer said. “And you go, ‘Uh … yeah.'”
———-
“Whatever happened to …” runs Fridays in the West Chicagoland Extra. If you have a fond memory from the area that you’d like reported and updated, send it to Vikki Ortiz at vortiz@tribune.com.
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