Excerpts from "Dreamland," by James E. Casto, Goldenseal 
Magazine.  
Wayne County WV    
     

                                                                                       
 DREAMLAND
                                                                                     
by James E. Cast
     
Over the years, untold thousands of youngsters virtually grew 
up at Dreamland, spending an endless procession of long summer 
days at the popular Kenova swimming pool, the oldest and largest 
in the Tri-State region of West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio.
     
From Memorial Day to Labor Day each year, Dreamland was where 
teenage girls went to show off their new bathing suits, work 
on their tans--and check out the guys.  The place where teenage 
boys could practice their dives from the imposing high board, 
roughhouse with their friends--and, of course, check out the 
girls.
     
Meanwhile, adults flocked to Dreamland for Saturday night 
dances that featured not just popular local musicians but a 
virtual Who's Who of musical talent from the Big Band years.  
Music lovers say the unofficial end of the Big Band era came 
in 1956, with the death of band leader Tommy Dorsey.  But, 
for many in the Tri-State, it came in 1973, when the Dreamland 
dance pavilion was destroyed by fire.
    
"My grandfather, J. D. Booth, built Dreamland in 1925,"  says 
Alex E. Booth, Jr., a retired Huntington businessman who now 
lives in Stuart, Florida, and summers in West Virginia.  "At 
first there was nothing but the pool itself, along with a 
little sandwich stand."
     
J. D. Booth already ran a successful Kenova grocery store.  
Venturing into the swimming pool business might seem an odd 
course of action for a grocer, but there was a logic to it, 
Alex Booth says.
     
"My father had opened up a business selling ice and house coal.  
They had wells for the ice house.  They saw all that water going 
to waste, and they started thinking about businesses that used 
lots of water.

That's when they got interested in a pool.  Ironically, despite 
the wells, they didn't build it anywhere near the ice house but 
down on the Big Sandy riverbank.". . . .
   
  
Located on U. S. 60 at the eastern end of what was then a private 
toll bridge over the Big Sandy to Kentucky, Dreamland was 
situated about as far west as West Virginia goes.  The pool 
was an immediate success, partly because it was convenient to 
both Huntington and Ashland.  Soon, people from as far away 
as Logan were driving to Kenova to spend the day at Dreamland.
     
The new pool was not universally welcomed, Booth says.  
"Kenova was--and is today--a very religious community.  And 
the opening of the pool caused quite a commotion in some of 
the churches.  Some people didn't think it was right for 
men and women to be swimming together, although the bathing 
attire of that era was certainly not what you would call 
revealing.  And then, too, some people didn't think it was 
right for the pool to be open on Sunday."
     
Nonetheless, Dreamland thrived and each season saw more 
activties added.  Soon, in addition to swimming, there was 
tennis, handball, basketball, volley ball, table tennis, 
badminton and shuffleboard, along with facilities for 
picnickers.
     
The pool itself was constructed on an imposing scale--125 
feet by 250 feet--and graduated from only a few inches at 
the shallow end to a depth of nine feet at the other. . .
On busy days, long lines formed to use the diving boards 
and water slides, and two mid-pool floats were crowded.
     
"My grandfather died in 1936,"  says Booth,  "and the 
management of the pool fell to my grandmother, Bertha, and 
my father.  Then my father got involved in the coal 
brokerage business, so he didn't have time to deal with 
the pool.  From that point on, my mother, Roxena, and 
I more or less ran it.
     
"There was lots of hard work involved in getting the pool 
ready every summer and then keeping it running right.  I 
was still pretty young when my father put me in charge of 
the chemicals we used to purify the water in the pool.  We 
took the water straight from the Big Sandy and ran it 
through a settling basin.  We tried drilling wells but 
the well water had too much iron in it.  When chemicals 
hit the water, it turned brown.  Nobody was going to swim 
in water that looked like that. . ."
     
     
The dance pavalion was added to the roof of the main building 
in the late 1930's, and quicky became a popular spot. . . .
     
     
By the late 1940's, Booth's father had become so busy in the 
coal business that the family had to get rid of the pool.  
"We sold it and moved to Huntington,"  Alex Booth says.
     
It was April of 1949 when the Booths sold Dreamland to a trio 
of Huntington businessmen--Nicholas Tweel, Felix Hage and Fred 
Salem.  Salem eventually would become the pool's sole owner 
and general manager and would operate it for more than 20 
years. . . .


Casto, James E.,  "Dreamland,"  Goldenseal,  Volume 22, 
Number 2, Summer 1996, pgs.  44--49.