Despite the presence of the railroad, the property remained part of the Proctor farm until Henry Conger purchased it in 1893 and developed an amusement park there.
As part of the park Conger built a number of buildings, including a bathhouse, boardwalk, restaurant and ice cream parlor at the end of a dirt road that would later be renamed Lakeside Avenue.
But one year later, another change in ownership would alter the land use of Lakeside for good, as part of the property was sold to the Draper family with the intention of constructing a textile mill.
The construction of the textile mill was not mere happenstance, for as the lumber industry began its decline in the later half of the nineteenth century, Burlington's city leaders began looking towards other industries for sources of revenue. One such industry that city leaders focused on was the textile industry; and in 1893 George Draper & Sons of Hopedale, Massachusetts met with city leaders to discuss bringing their state-of-the-art Northrup automatic loom to Burlington. The Drapers were attracted to Burlington because of the favorable business climate generally, and low cost of labor, power and freight specifically. The Queen City Cotton Company (Q.C.C.C.) built their mill in 1894 on Lakeside Avenue, about two hundred yards east of Lake Champlain and just west of Pine Street, which was the center for much of Burlington's industry at the time. The new cotton mill opened up in February of 1895 with two hundred workers and the new automatic loom.
From the start, Lakeside was serviced by trolleys that brought workers to the mill from as far away as Winooski. The Burlington Traction Company operated the trolleys which began picking up the workers at 6:20 every morning and left the mill shortly after 5:00 every afternoon. At the time the mill was built, the trolley line already extended down Pine Street, past Lakeside Avenue, to the Scarff Addition an 18 block southward extension of the city that had been laid out in 1880 after Nebraska real estate promoter, Charles Scarff, had purchased the 100 acre Foster farm. All that was needed to connect the trolley line to Lakeside was a short spur, which was completed in 1895. The trolley service changed to busses in 1927 when the Burlington Traction Company officially became the Burlington Rapid Transit Company and there has been a bus service to Lakeside ever since.
Note - Court play at neighborhood parks is prohibited from 10pm-7am.
Department of Geography
State University of New York