Three tickets are needed to ride the roller coaster in Green Bay, Wisconsin, which was formerly part of Elvis Presley’s hometown park. That comes to seventy-five cents. You got that right. In a nation where a family’s monthly grocery budget can be depleted by a single afternoon at a large theme park, Bay Beach Amusement Park has inexplicably refused to comply.
The first thing you notice when you stroll through the gravel parking lot on a hot Saturday in July is that there isn’t a ticket booth at the entrance. It doesn’t exist. The park has been free to enter for more than a century and has been owned by the city of Green Bay since 1920. The aroma of popcorn wafts from one of the snack shacks nestled between the rides as families spread blankets close to the pavilion with coolers in tow. It resembles a long-running neighborhood block party with a Ferris wheel rather than a commercial enterprise.
While most tourists are chasing toddlers toward the bumper cars, they probably don’t consider the significance of this place’s history. A man by the name of Mitchell Nejedlo purchased the land in 1892 with the intention of developing it into summer cottages. He changed his mind, opened a dance hall and bathhouse, and found it difficult to sell the marshy, mosquito-infested lot. When Captain John Cusick took over in 1908, he constructed a long dock, operated a steamboat from the Walnut Street Bridge, and installed a device known as a “shoot the chute,” which slid a boat carrying twelve people down a fifty-foot ramp and into the bay. Even though no one alive has ever ridden it, people still talk about it.
The 1920 donation was what made all the difference. The property was simply turned over to the city by Green Bay aldermen Frank Murphy and Fred Rahr, who had purchased it in 1911. The buildings, the attractions, eleven acres. A present. It’s the kind of gesture that would be nearly unthinkable today, and it initiated the park’s entire economic model. With no quarterly profits to defend or shareholders to appease, Bay Beach has been able to do something truly radical: intentionally stay cheap.
The strange, magnificent focal point of it all is the Zippin Pippin. One of Elvis Presley’s alleged favorites, the wooden coaster was first constructed in Memphis and sat decaying for five years before Green Bay purchased it in 2010 and rebuilt it. It opened in 2011, and on weekend afternoons, the line still stretches through the middle. An Elvis coaster moved to a municipal park on the shores of Lake Michigan seems a bit out of the ordinary, but it works.
The park hasn’t exactly remained motionless. In 2019, a 100-foot Ferris wheel was constructed. In 2023, the NebulaZ and the Bay Beast drop tower were introduced. Late last year, work on shoreline improvements began, and an inclusive playground opened in 2024. Although the prices haven’t changed, this could be interpreted as a gradual modernization. Each ticket is still only a quarter. The majority of rides require one or two. A family of four can spend less than fifty dollars, including food, on an entire afternoon.
When you stroll around Bay Beach, you get the impression that you’re seeing something that the rest of the entertainment industry secretly decided wasn’t lucrative enough to maintain. The audience is unconcerned, local, and generational. Grandparents gesture to rides from their own youth. Groups of teenagers stroll by while consuming cheese curds. It’s difficult to ignore how uncommon this feels. For now, the Pippin continues to rattle around its wooden track and the quarters continue to clink into the ticket machines; whether Green Bay can continue for another century is another matter.
