CLEMENTON, N.J. – There was always something different about Clementon Park.
It wasn’t Six Flags. It wasn’t trying to be.
For generations of New Jersey families, that was part of its appeal: an old-fashioned amusement park tucked beside a lake in Camden County, with a wooden roller coaster, carousel, Ferris wheel, kiddie rides and later a water park. Parents who had gone there as children could return years later with children of their own.
I did exactly that.
Years ago, I took my children to Clementon Park and remember it as a quaint, old-fashioned place — the kind of smaller family amusement park that was already becoming harder to find.
Now its gates are closed again.
Clementon Park & Splash World announced Wednesday that it has ended operations after the 2026 season and will be offered for sale. Its final scheduled operating day was Labor Day, Sept. 7.
“After five memorable years, we are saddened to announce that we have made the difficult decision to close the park and plan to offer the park for sale,” the owners announced.
For a place that opened in 1907, those words carry considerably more weight than the closing of another seasonal attraction.
Clementon Park Has Been Here Since 1907
Clementon Park began during an entirely different era of American entertainment.
Theodore B. Gibbs and his sons established the park along Clementon Lake in 1907, during the heyday of trolley parks — amusement destinations built at or near the ends of streetcar lines to encourage weekend ridership.
More than a century later, Clementon was among the dwindling number of surviving American amusement parks with roots in that period.
It survived a devastating 1931 fire.
It survived the rise of automobiles, suburban shopping centers, television, destination theme parks and the massive corporate amusement complexes that changed what Americans expected from a day at an amusement park.
And it changed with them.
Splash World arrived in the 1990s, adding water attractions to a park whose identity had been built around traditional rides. In more recent years, families could find the Hellcat wooden roller coaster, Dragon Coaster, Sea Dragon, Scrambler, Tilt-a-Whirl, Grand Carousel, C.P. Huntington Railway and Giant Gondola Wheel alongside the water park.
Some of those names sound almost like a roll call from another era.
That is precisely what made Clementon unusual.
The Park Already Came Back From the Dead Once
This isn’t Clementon’s first goodbye.
The park abruptly failed to reopen after the 2019 season as its previous ownership encountered financial trouble. The property eventually headed to foreclosure auction, leaving rides, buildings and more than a century of history sitting behind locked gates.
For a while, it appeared Clementon might be finished.
Then came an unlikely rescue.
IB Parks & Entertainment acquired the property in 2021 for approximately $2.37 million and began repairing and preparing the neglected park. Clementon reopened that June after nearly two years without visitors.
It was the kind of comeback historic amusement parks rarely get.
Gene Staples, whose company had also rescued Indiana Beach, said after acquiring Clementon that the park immediately reminded him of the kind of amusement park he knew growing up.
“The minute I saw it in person, I knew we needed to do it,” Staples said at the time. “I’d never been there before, but it reminded me of where I grew up.”
Five seasons followed.
Then, this week, another closing announcement.
Owners Hope Someone Will Save Clementon Again
The announcement doesn’t necessarily mean the rides will be torn down or the property redeveloped.
Not yet.
The owners say they intend to sell Clementon and specifically expressed hope that someone will buy it with preservation in mind.
“It has been a privilege to care for a place that has meant so much to generations of families,” the park said. “We are hopeful that we will find a buyer who shares our love for Clementon Park and will carry its history and legacy forward.”
That sentence may be the most important one in the announcement.
The 52-acre property is valuable land, and a sale doesn’t guarantee that the next owner will operate an amusement park. No buyer has been announced, and additional details about the sale are expected later.
For now, Clementon is back in the uncertain position it occupied five years ago: closed, for sale and waiting to find out whether its history is enough to save its future.
“Thank you for the memories, the support and five wonderful seasons,” the owners said. “We are truly grateful to everyone who has been part of this journey.”
New Jersey Has Lost Plenty of Amusement Parks
Clementon’s uncertain future also touches a larger piece of New Jersey history.
Long before giant regional theme parks dominated the business, New Jersey was dotted with smaller amusement parks and lakeside attractions. Families didn’t necessarily plan vacations around them. They went for an afternoon or a Saturday night.
Many disappeared.
Olympic Park in Irvington closed in 1965. Palisades Amusement Park, once one of the most famous amusement parks in America, closed in 1971 and was eventually replaced by high-rise development. Bertrand Island Amusement Park on Lake Hopatcong lasted until 1983.
Other names survive mostly in old postcards, family photographs and memories.
At the Jersey Shore, amusement traditions remain alive in places such as Wildwood, Ocean City, Seaside Heights and Point Pleasant Beach. But Clementon represented something slightly different — an inland, neighborhood-scale amusement park that somehow kept going for 119 years.
That is why this closing feels different.
A roller coaster can be dismantled. Land can be sold. A parking lot, warehouse, apartments or another development can occupy the same acreage.
What can’t easily be recreated is a place where several generations of the same family remember riding the carousel, getting soaked at the water park or taking a child on his or her first amusement ride.
Clementon has already proven once that closing doesn’t necessarily mean dying.
Clementon’s uncertain future comes just two years after New Jersey lost another multigenerational amusement landmark. Gillian’s Wonderland Pier in Ocean City closed in October 2024 after nearly a century of Gillian family amusement history on the Boardwalk.
Owner Jay Gillian, whose family had operated amusements in the resort since 1929, said the business was no longer financially viable, bringing an emotional end to a place where generations of Shore families had ridden the Giant Wheel and other attractions. The loss of Wonderland Pier — followed now by another shutdown at 119-year-old Clementon Park — shows how quickly New Jersey’s remaining old-school, family amusement parks can disappear.
In 2021, somebody bought it, repaired it and opened the gates again.
Five years later, one of New Jersey’s oldest amusement parks is waiting for somebody to do it one more time.
