It was once the granddaddy of all...

It was once the granddaddy of all Southern California amusement parks, a three-block “Walk of a Thousand Lights” along Long Beach’s seashore on Ocean Boulevard between Pine and Chestnut avenues.

In 1902, a saltwater plunge opened. After the Majestic Dance Hall was added, it became the Pike amusement park. It later was renamed the Nu-Pike, though the name never caught on. The park’s popularity continued through the 1940s, and it reigned as the largest amusement park west of the Mississippi.

The star attraction was the mile-long Cyclone Racer, the world’s longest, fastest and, many thought, scariest double-track roller coaster. Installed in 1930, it was improved over the years until it ultimately reached 80 m.p.h.

The roller coaster had a featured role in the horror film “The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.” In the movie, a monster rose out of the water and chewed off a chunk of the ride. But the destruction was painfully real in 1972 when the once-feared attraction was razed.

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Charles Looff, a renowned woodcarver who moved to Long Beach from Rhode Island in 1911, bought a portion of the 18-acre park. Looff built an odd, domed building to serve as his home and workshop. The building was the centerpiece of the then-bustling Pike and housed the city’s first hand-carved carousel.

Thirty years after Looff bought the park, his son Arthur went into partnership with concessionaire Al Brown to create Lite-A-Line, a game similar to bingo but played on what looks like a pinball machine.

When the Pike was at its peak in the 1940s, playing Lite-A-Line was a standing-room-only proposition in the building once occupied by the famous merry-go-round. The carousel had been moved across the street and burned in a 1943 fire.

But the game was beset by 20 years of legal battles over whether it was gambling, a violation of California law. A Superior Court judge ruled in 1961 that it was a game of skill, rather than chance, making it legal.

During the park’s heyday, more than 50,000 people jammed its midway on weekends to watch motordrome daredevil Reckless Ross, maverick dentist Painless Parker, the dancing headless chicken, or the Flaming Man who, once ignited, would slide down a cable from a nearby theater into the ocean.

Everyone from film star Clara Bow, the “It” girl, to Lee Majors, the Six-Million-Dollar Man, appeared in productions filmed there. In 1976, a member of the “Six-Million-Dollar Man” crew made a gruesome discovery about the Oklahoma Mummy Man, an attraction everyone thought was a wax dummy hanging from the gallows in the fun house.

The crew member accidentally pulled off the mummy’s arm, revealing a bone. The mummy was later identified as Elmer J. McCurdy, a small-time train robber who had been killed in 1911.

Mummified corpses of gunned-down outlaws or even bodies reputed to be those of famous badmen were common carnival sideshow attractions early in the century.

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By the late 1960s, the Pike was unable to compete with Disneyland and other large theme parks. Concessionaires began moving out. But the Pike was dealt its most serious blow in 1974, when the Navy announced that it was scaling back its Long Beach Naval Base and pulling out most of its ships.

In the spring of 1979, the amusement park closed, ending 76 years of carnivals beside the sea.

Along with the park’s closing came the gradual disappearance of related businesses. But the Lite-A-Line games continue today in the dome-shaped Looff building--with its neon sign saying Looff Hippodrome--virtually the only Pike amusement still operating. Long Beach officials are considering a proposal to relocate the historic 3,250-square-foot structure.

A new development of high-rise office buildings and condominiums has been studied and discussed for nearly two decades. But that project has yet to get under way. The General Telephone Co. building replaced the Pike’s saltwater plunge, but mostly vacant land stands where a fantasy world once reigned.