The Chutes - Fulton Street, San Francisco, California, 1903

The Chutes on Haight Street

Coney Island, New York proved that a private park based primarily on rides and arcades could draw crowds and cash.  The Chutes opened in San Francisco on November 9, 1895 on Haight Street between Cole and Clayton streets, featuring a water-ride called Shoot-the-Chutes.  Flat-bottomed boats charged uncontrolled down a 350-foot water flume that rose 70 feet above the water.  They hit the pond at up to sixty miles-per-hour and shot to the end where they were collected and lined up again.  Loading up with new passengers, they again began the ride up the inclined track to the platform at top of the ride.  There was the occasional mishap when a gondola flipped and deposited the riders in the pond—but then, that was all a part of the fun. 

Captain Paul Boyton created the Shoot-the-Chute ride for Coney Island.  Soon known as the “Famous Ride”, it continued to realize excellent profits, eclipsing all other attractions over several seasons.  Similar water toboggan rides had been popular in Europe for a while.  Boyton (not Boynton as often cited) set up another Shoot-the-Chutes ride in Chicago the time of the 1893 World’s Columbia Exposition (World’s Fair).  Not listed in the Official Guide, it may have been just outside the grounds or added after the guide’s publication.  Regardless, it proved a major success there as well.  Boyton decided to capitalize on the ride’s success but didn’t want to build or manage rides all over the country.  Instead, he sold non-exclusive rights to the name and the ride’s design.  The Chutes purchased the rights for San Francisco.

When the chutes first opened on November 2, 1895, it was just the one ride and a food concession stand.  Entry cost a dime for adults; a nickel for kids.  The park, located on the city’s transit line near Golden Gate Park, “just a short walk from the Children’s Playground,” offered easy access as well as a replacement for the Midway of the 1894 California Midwinter Exposition at the park.  By the following summer, the Chutes began adding more rides and attractions.

At the top of the ride stood the Camera Obscura housed in a Japanese-style structure.  The device used a giant convex lens focused on a mirror to provide a telescopic panoramic view of the area around the Chutes reflected in the mirror.  Just as the boats reached the top, they entered the dark building gaining an amazing view reflected on the mirror.  Their attention fixed on the mirror and its view; they plunged without notice to the pond below.  The Camera Obscura at the Cliff House is a good example of this ancient technology that dates back to Chinese philosopher Mo-Ti (5th century BC), Aristotle (Greece, 384-322 BC), Arabian scholar Alhazen of Basra (10th century AD) and Leonardo Da Vinci’s notebooks (Italy, 1490).   The German astronomer Johannes Kepler first used the term “camera obscura” in the early 17th century.

The Scenic Railway, evidently drawing a separate charge from the Shoot-the-Chutes ride, offered a comparably adventuresome attraction.  A roller-coaster in all but name, it made dips and climbs that surpassed anything in the east per the park’s brochure.  The ride circled the perimeter of the grounds, nearly a mile in length.  It included an upper and lower track with only one train allowed on that track at any one time with a system of lights, signals and brakes preventing any chance of collision when traversing between the two tracks.  Six riders per car made the journey terminating in an 800-foot tunnel with an electrically lighted scenic diorama of foreign lands inside. 

The brochure stressed the safety of the ride and that set the theme for the park.  Many amusement parks and midways were thinly disguised operations intended to titillate and fleece the public.  Not so, at the Chutes—it focused on clean family fun to the point of segregating any alcohol served so women and children could take refreshment without being exposed to drinking.  Adjoining the Refreshment Pavilion, the Chutes Café offered ice cream soda and other refreshments with no liquor served.  The Chutes and its owners maintained a positive moral image during their entire history in the city. 

The park also added a Miniature Railway with a track gauge of only 9 inches.  Built for the park at half the scale of eastern parks, the six-foot locomotive and tender pulled ten cars, each seating two people.  The locomotive was named “Little Hercules” because of its pulling strength. 

An English-built merry-go-round, “The Galloping Horses” and a classic American Merry-Go-Round completed the additions for that summer.  The galloping horse effect referred to the gentle up and down motion provided by crankshafts above each horse, a novelty at the time.  The American ride lacked the galloping motion, but children rode it without charge.

A building called “The Bewildering London Door Maze” challenged visitors to find their way from entrance to exit; no easy task.  Each room had multiple doors, some movable and some stationary.  It was possible to retrace steps back to the entrance if needed for a fresh start and if hopelessly lost, there were attendants there to guide them.  Traversing “The Maze” for the first time often took a considerable amount of time.

Aside from Shooting the Chutes, a visitor could also do his own shooting.  The shooting gallery offered the opportunity to display one's skills with a .22 rifle.  Reports from the rifle shots sounded throughout the park and beyond.  Adjacent to the shooting gallery, a ball toss included “Dinah’s Wash Day,” the goal being to break the clay pipe from a moving mechanical black washerwoman’s mouth.  Social consciousness was in short supply, even in San Francisco. 

The Zoo also opened in 1896, the only permanent facility with animals from all climes claiming more than its fair share of carnivores.  Their top-liner, Wallace the Lion drew the crowds.  Said to be the largest, fiercest lion in America, other zoos offered as high as $5,000 to purchase him.  Part of his attraction came from the fact that he had proved untamable, though many a lion-tamer tried.  Other animals available for viewing included a South American jaguar, the Black Bear Brigade, a pair of Indian Leopards, kangaroos, wallabies, a brigade of cinnamon bears and a small pride of lions.  The hyena proved a major disappointment; the melancholy beast never laughed.  The Congo family, three orangutans, Joe, Sally and Baby Johanna Congo, joined the fray late, around 1900.  The trio aped a human family when seated at table, Joe smoking his pipe and Sally sipping tea while Baby Johanna tossed the dishes or played with her doll.

The Dawinian Temple housed a great array of monkeys including Capuchin, Rhesus, Saponins, Spider, Pigtail and Dog-face, many available to touch and feed by hand.  Glass cases encircling the interior of the structure contained reptiles from around the world. 

The Chutes Museum displayed a sad lot.  It included all of the zoo animals that died in captivity—stuffed!  Rajah, the Bengal Tiger, largest of his species, constituted one of the feature attractions of the museum.  The brochure, Chutes and its Myriad Attractions, 1901 stated, “Here may be seen the three-thousand dollar, long-tailed and long-maned horse, “Beauty.”  This animal in life, was one of the chief attractions of the zoo; in death, he is a permanent object of interest, not alone to those who knew him in the zoo, but to those who now see him for the first time.  A more beautiful animal never lived.”  . . . “Also the immense alligator “Jess”, over fourteen feet in length, can be here be seen, along with numerous other animals of all descriptions that, for too short a period, constituted a part of the live animal collection in the chutes zoo.”

The Chutes Theatre opened on June 27, 1897, claimed to be the largest vaudeville house west of Chicago.  Operated year-around, day and night, the auditorium measured 100 feet wide by 130 feet long seating 2,000 on the lower floor and another 1,000 in the gallery.  The theatre sponsored amateur nights, local performers and vaudeville acts, animal acts, and acrobatic performances as well as audience participation events like Cake Walk Night where those skilled in the art of cake walking competed for prizes.  By 1899, the Chutes began booking name acts like Little Egypt with her “Hoochy Kootchy” act.  They also demonstrated Edison’s Chromatograph.  Both shows succeeded in drawing large crowds. 

Its rides, theatre, attractions and restaurant kept the park lively until Midnight. Outdoor electric illumination as well as an illuminated electric fountain lit up the park at night.  An electric tower similar to the one built for the Midwinter Fair marked the parks location for those in the surrounding areas.  The beacon could be seen for miles.

The Chutes moved twice; once in 1902 to Tenth and Fulton and then in 1909 to Fillmore Street, but then, that's another story.

The first Chutes on Haight Street, 1899

Inside The Chutes on Fulton Street, 1903

Jim@HistorySmith.com