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May 02, 2023

Harrisburg’s Independence Island provided fun, recreation and controversy

If you wanted to spend a few hours of fun on a Susquehanna River island in

If you wanted to spend a few hours of fun on a Susquehanna River island in Harrisburg more than a century ago, you didn't go to City Island. You went to Independence Island, just upstream.

From the 19th to the early 20th centuries, the island, visible to the north of the M. Harvey Taylor Bridge, offered recreation and relaxation for Harrisburg-area residents.

"Its remote location in the middle of the river gave it the feel of a private resort much farther away from home," Erik V. Fasick writes in the book "Harrisburg and the Susquehanna River."

Independence Island had a dance hall, a water slide, a bathhouse and a playground. For a time, it wasn't unusual to see thousands of swimmers cooling off at the island.

At one point, a plan to build an amusement park on the island caused an outcry.

Those days are long gone. Today, primarily boaters stop at the island.

And this year, after more than two centuries of private ownership, the island was sold to the state for $160,000 and folded into a state forest.

Here's a look at the heyday of Independence Island.

It's unclear how Independence Island got its name. One theory is that it was because July Fourth festivities were celebrated there.

This would be fitting because Independence Island was a prime spot for picnics and parties for community organizations, churches, unions, fraternal clubs and ethnic groups.

The island came under private ownership in 1800, and a ferry to the island opened in 1854, according to a history of the Susquehanna River islands at the Historical Society of Dauphin County.

In 1886, a roller skating rink was moved from the city to the island and repurposed as a dance hall.

One popular activity was a coal chute that was altered into a slide so revelers could "shoot the chute" into the water.

The most common way to get to Independence Island was to board a ferry at the foot of Verbeke Street. The ferry was connected by two ropes with pulleys to a wire cable that linked the shore and the island.

Sometimes canoeists used the cable as an anchor, flinging a rope over the wire to snooze in the sun.

But the sagging cable was also a nuisance, especially when the river level rose.

In one case, it endangered a man, yet saved his life.

In April 1916, the cable, submerged in the rising water, overturned a canoe carrying two men. One of the men swam to recover the boat and made it to shore. The other man grabbed the wire and called for help. He was rescued 10 minutes later.

By 1921, it was time for the cable to go.

After years of litigation, a judge ruled that residents of the Hardscrabble neighborhood, which occupied the west side of Front Street from Herr to Calder streets, had to vacate so the city could raze their properties to expand Riverfront Park.

The pole at Verbeke Street that connected the cable to the island was in Hardscrabble.

Besides, the cable was no longer used for ushering a ferry to the island. Now it was carrying electric light wires there.

The following year, the city ordered island owner E. Charles Ensminger to remove the cable, which he did. A team of six horses removed the half-mile-long wire from the river.

Two decades later, an earlier Independence Island ferry cable helped in the World War II effort. In 1942, Harrisburg firefighters dredged the river for metal scrap. While pulling an old boat boiler from the water off Pine Street, they happened upon a 600-foot steel cable. They estimated the cable would provide 1,200 pounds of scrap.

In the early 20th century, Harrisburg experienced a civic "awakening."

The City Beautiful movement, a Progressive Era push to improve things such as infrastructure, architecture and public health, was transforming Harrisburg.

A major aspect of that transformation was the city's park system, including Riverfront Park. Along with that, the city recognized the potential of the river, holding a water carnival on Labor Day 1907 and the Kipona Festival in 1916. The Dock Street Dam also was completed in 1916.

Meanwhile, the river had become an increasingly popular place for boating and swimming.

"(T)he river has become the city's playground," The Patriot reported in 1920.

Independence Island was a key part of that playground, drawing thousands of people.

The city had been buying or leasing parts of what is today City Island for a number of years, opening a municipal beach and, in 1921, a bathhouse.

It was part of a plan to draw residents away from the privately owned Independence Island and keep them and their money from heading to the Jersey shore, Fasick writes.

So when Ensminger, who owned Independence Island for more than 20 years, sold the island to a group of businessmen in February 1922, it drew objections from city leaders.

The group planned to build an amusement park on the island.

Harrisburg leaders worried that such development would mar the beauty of the river, and the state health secretary said the island's proximity to the city's intake pipe risked contaminating Harrisburg's water supply.

Some Harrisburg officials proposed purchasing all the islands in the city limits and making them part of the municipal park system.

"There is no more important phase to Harrisburg's development than oversight of the Susquehanna river basin," The Patriot said in an editorial after the sale was announced. "Not only should both banks of the river be under the city's park control but the river itself and all that it contains."

But this never happened. Neither did the amusement park.

Though crews demolished the buildings on Independence Island in preparation for the park, work stopped in the summer of 1924. The businessmen fell behind on their mortgage payments, and Ensminger bought back the island at a sheriff's sale in September.

Independence Island remained in the Ensminger family until this year, when Charles Ensminger's great-grandsons Robert and John Ensminger sold it and neighboring Bailey's Island to the state.

The Department of Conservation and Natural Resources placed the islands in the Weiser State Forest and plans to continue preserving them. They remain open to boaters.

"We saw it as an opportunity to bring state forest land closer to our Capitol," a state Bureau of Forestry official told The Burg, "and to conserve the islands for future generations."

Joe McClure is a news editor for The Patriot-News. Follow him on Instagram: @jmcclure5nine.

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