What happened to West View Park is a prime example of what many parks faced after closing. After a park closes its gates for good, don't be surprised it this is what you see.

The midway, in the above post card, was located right below the house in the picture, where this department store is located now.

This picture was taken from about where the midway was.  In the rear, against the backdrop of woods,  the landmark ride, the West View Dips once stood.

The only reminder that an amusement park named West View once existed here.

I grew up playing at West View Park, located, more specifically in Bellview, Pennsylvania. I was born in 1955, and began attending picnics and ticket giveways at or around 1965. The Thoroughfare grocery store chain use to provide its shoppers with West View tickets upon the purchase of groceries. On top of that, my families' friends worked for Thoroughfare Grocery Stores and so on Thoroughfare days, we had so many tickets that we could not exhaust them by riding any and all rides in the Park: Boot Hill, the Swings, racing "whippet" (two (2) set of cars on roller coaster tracks that raced each other), the big roller coaster, bumper cars, ferris wheel and an assortment of other rides that drew the attention of running, screaming, pubescent youth. Also, for the post-modern greaser - mid-1960's to early nineteen seventies, there was the grand concert hall equipped with a dancing floor where couples could still swirl around to the big band sounds of Glen Miller and Tommy Dorsey.

My last memory of West View was, in fact, around 1977 when a buddy and I strolled through the park at mid-night while the park was in the midst of deconstruction. In 1977, I had not been to West View for probably 7 years, I was 22 y.o. and walking through the park at that time of night was eery, running into all those memories, phantoms and ghosts of the Park that survived the development that concluded with West View being wipped out.

In those days, there were Kennywood families and West View families. It seemed that families attended either one or the other: no family played at both parks. Kennywood was located in East Pittsburgh while West View was North and West, pretty much diametrically opposed in geography.

-Some memories from a West View Childhood

Thank you for writing!