John Stevenson is a roller coaster enthusiast. He’s ridden 175 and is the founder of coaster101.com.
He got the bug, as it turns out, at Libertyland, Memphis’ all-American amusement park that opened on July 4th, 1976.
The park closed in 2005, but it’s not forgotten for Stevenson. He started rememberlibertyland.com, and his book Images of Modern America: Libertyland will hit the shelves on September 25th.
Stevenson, a Bartlett native, says that since he was a kid he just simply dug Libertyland, from Colonial Land to Turn-of-the-Century Land. When the park closed when he was 14, he was a member of the Save Libertyland group.
The website was created to serve as a memorial to Libertyland. He included many of his own photographs. The Facebook group is popular with 5,000 members sharing their own images and memories. There is a Twitter account as well.
This online presence attracted the attention of Arcardia Publishing, which reached out to Stevenson in 2014 about their “Images of Modern America” series. But Stevenson was in Chicago and finishing school at the time, so he declined the offer. A couple years later, when he was settled in Nashville with a full-time job, he sent the publisher his proposal.
Stevenson describes Images of Modern America: Libertyland as a pictorial history book, with an intro by Jimmy Ogle and two or more images per page. The book is in chronological order starting with the Fairgrounds before Libertyland, then its designing phase and how it came to be, next on to the opening and its good years, and, finally, the park’s financial problems, the auction, and where everything is now.
Stevenson says his training as a journalist at the University of Memphis gave him a solid foundation to do the research for the book and that he got invaluable help from local historian John Dulaney. Working from Nashville proved tricky, with many weekends and holidays spent in libraries.
“I thought I knew about Libertyland, but it took digging and connecting with historians to get the real story,” he says.
Stevenson recognizes that Libertyland is a thing of the past. He sees his book as sort of a gift to the community, for those who will never know the park and for those who forged friendships, launched their careers, and made memories.
“It’s a tangible reminder, not for the park, but for the people who made it happen.”
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