Having lived in Des Moines for six years now, it's sort of amazing that I never explored the area that was once Riverview Park until today. It's a tiny little island in northern Des Moines and it closed in 1978. The floods last year decimated a lot of what was left of the ruins, I think but there's still a lot of fascinating stuff to see. I wish I'd brought my camera, but I didn't know I was going to be there. I'll try to go back one of these days and take lots of pictures.

The first thing I noticed was that this is the absolute best place I could possibly think of to have a little amusement park. An island in the middle of a capital city. Doesn't get any better than that. Immediately to the left from the end of the bridge are the remains of an old kiddie car ride (called Hot Rods, I think). There are concrete slabs and footers and really cool artifacts all over the place. It's like a ghost town without the buildings. Much of the island is overgrown now. It's been turned into a small wildlife reserve. So the area where the giant slide and ballroom were is hardly walkable. Their wild mouse was built over a very old go-kart ride, and you can still see the track from that (that later provided the base for the coaster). The area that had the big coaster (the aptly named "Coaster") is totally flooded right now. You wouldn't even know that it had once been part of the park just looking at it. But the coolest thing is the remains of the Shoot the Chutes ride. The entire concrete track is still intact and you can walk through it.

So when I got home, I naturally found out all I could about the park. I came across this wonderful website: http://www.riverviewparkdsm.com/index.html
It has a ton of pictures and even some video.
I also learned that Adventureland bought the park specifically to shut it down, further cementing my hatred of the place.

This very quickly became my favorite part of Des Moines. I will definitely go back with a camera. If you're in the area, I strongly recommend looking around. It's a little out of the way, but it's worth it.
If any of you happen to know anything more about Riverview, I'd love to hear stories.

Old creepy abandoned stuff is pretty cool.

I remember driving past that old spooky park down in Arkansas a couple of years back.  I wish that I would have stopped and explored.

As a kid I grew up near Fairyland and saw parts of it peaking out from the trees on a regular basis.

That's pretty damn dirty.