Arnolds Park Amusement Park

The Iowa Great Lakes became a resort destination in the late 1800s, when railroads brought visitors to the cool, clear waters of the Okoboji chain. A lakeside amusement ground took shape at Arnolds Park in the 1880s, and over the decades it grew into a full park with rides, dance pavilions, and a pier for excursion steamboats that carried passengers around the lake.

Like many old amusement parks, Arnolds Park has weathered changing times, and at one point community members rallied to save it from being lost to redevelopment. Today it is run with an eye to its history, keeping its vintage rides and lakefront character alive while continuing to draw the crowds that have made it a Great Lakes summer institution.

The heart of the park is the Legend, a classic wooden roller coaster that dates to the early 1900s and ranks among the oldest operating coasters in the country. Its wooden structure and rattling ride give it the kind of old-school thrill that modern steel coasters rarely match, and it draws coaster enthusiasts from far beyond Iowa.

Around it spin the other rides of a traditional park: a Ferris wheel with lake views, a carousel, bumper cars, and a midway of games. The atmosphere is deliberately old-fashioned, a boardwalk world of lights and music at the water's edge, and part of the fun is that it feels like a park your grandparents might have visited.

The park's setting is a large part of its appeal. West Lake Okoboji is one of the deepest and clearest natural lakes in the region, a glacial lake formed by the retreat of the last ice age, and its blue water frames the rides and boardwalk. Excursion boats leave from the park's pier for cruises around the lake, offering a different view of the resort towns lining the shore.

The wider Iowa Great Lakes are a chain of glacial lakes that includes Spirit Lake and East and West Okoboji, ringed by beaches, marinas, state parks, and cottage communities. The whole area comes alive in summer with boating, fishing, and swimming, and Arnolds Park is its historic beating heart.

The lakes country of northwest Iowa lies within the ancestral homelands of the Dakota and the Ioway, for whom the state is named, peoples who fished and camped along these glacial lakes long before the resort era. Their descendants remain part of the broader region's living Native communities today.

European-American settlement came in the 1850s, and the lakes soon drew visitors seeking their clear water and cool breezes. By the late 1800s the railroads had turned the Great Lakes into a resort region, and towns like Arnolds Park, Okoboji, and Spirit Lake grew up to serve the summer trade, a role they still fill more than a century later.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.