On the Beach: Wags & I on City Island in the Susquehanna River

Photo from a Kodachrome Transparency by my dad, Ross J. Care. All Rights Reserved.

Fire? What fire?


City Island Bathing Beach in the Susquehanna River, Skyline of river front Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, USA on the east shore across the water. Late 1940s.


The bathing beach was on the north tip of City Island. It was a concrete beach which faced the southern flowing river which divided at the island.

A new bridge, the M. Harvey Taylor, was built across the river just north of the island sometime in 1952.

The rest of the island was rather wild and undeveloped. There were fascinating (and probably dangerous) ruins of a water works and, as I recall, some kind of reservoir in the northern middle of the island for many years. I very much regret never having shot photographs of these bizarre, atmospheric, and oddly poetic sites. The water works ruins would have been a great location for a horror movie!

Later there were also rock concerts on the island for a time and eventual, inevitable gentrification with the building of a new baseball stadium which I assume is still there.

But I think I liked the ruins better........ I sometimes still revisit a version of that quaint, regional archeological site in my dreams.

Apparently when this photo was taken there was a distant fire to which Wags and I are happily oblivious. But I still remember that artistic wooden canoe with its colorful decals.