Down on Cape Ann, at the Gloucester end of Rockport's Long Beach, a midway in miniature was so completely the creation of the local street railway that when one died, the other died too. The company in 1895 had built a trestle across the dunes behind Little Good Harbor Beach and put up a pavilion, dance hall, vaudeville theatre, Ferris Wheel, photo studio and bowling alley. The single-truck open cars, had the habit of galloping like a horse. Guard bars were let down on both sides before crossing the trestle...Even so, a careless passenger was occasionally tossed off into the dunes. One day the breeze took Ada Merchant's hat, the motorman stopped the car, climbed down off the trestle and retrieved it for her.
The Trolleys inspired a small hotel, and a long boardwalk above the tide, bordered soon by a lengthening row of small summer cottages. Folks would arrive at Gloucester for the day from Boston on the snow-white excursion steamer Cape Ann and grab the electrics for a shore dinner and a gambol (and a gamble..some said..) at the Long Beach Pavilion, encouraged, perhaps, by reassurances that North Shore Trolley parks were 'kept free from objectionable characters and anything that might offend ladies and children who might visit these places unaccompanied'. For 25 years the little beach park within reach of the salt sea spray paid its way until it fell victim to it's sire bankruptcy in 1920.
