Lake Winnie celebrates 100 years of family ownership

By Mason Edwards, Chattanooga Times Free Press

Staff photo by Mason Edwards / On June 17, 2025, Tennyson Dickinson, park director of Lake Winnepesaukah and great-grandaughter of founders Carl and Minette Dixon, center, celebrates with attendees and speakers on a stage overlooking the lake and the famous, now one-of-a-kind, boat chute, first built in 1927.

LAKEVIEW, Ga. — Whether a summer day trip or the site of your cousin's company picnic, Lake Winnepesaukah has been part of the fabric of Chattanooga area childhood for 100 years.

From hand-stamped wristbands to "Come On, Get Happy" jingles echoing through local TVs, each generation knows "Lake Winnie" a little differently — but almost no one alive remembers a time in the area without it. This week, the South's oldest family-owned amusement park turned 100.

Lake Winnie's Tuesday morning celebration included remarks from several local politicians, an amusement park historian and other national amusement park experts. It also featured a proclamation read by former Georgia state Sen. Jeff Mullis on behalf of Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp and Lt. Gov. Burt Jones.

"'As one of the few remaining family-owned amusement parks in the United States, Lake Winnie has continued its tradition to deliver fun through generations, remaining the South's favorite family amusement park,'" Mullis read.

When Tennyson Dickinson, park director and great-granddaughter of cofounders Carl and Minette Dixon, stepped up to the stage, she told a story of her daily bike rides to the park, where she' would take half-popped popcorn kernels and dump them in the lake. Then she would ride around the lake and come back to find plenty of fish attracted by the popcorn, which she said was like "fishing in a barrel."

"I really don't think my great-grandparents could have imagined what we are now from that small wooded lake they purchased 'against the better advice of our friends and family,'" she said, quoting family lore. "They opened it to the public in 1925, and that was the only year there was actually swimming in the lake."

Still operated by the same family, Lake Winnie is the second-oldest family-owned park in the country, beating out a long list of at least 26 other parks that were established later, according to Jim Futrell, director and historian for the National Amusement Park Historical Association. Only Trimper Rides in Ocean City, Maryland, has been operated longer by a single family than Lake Winnie, according to Futrell. The Trimper family opened that park in 1893.

"Of the approximately 500 amusement parks in the United States, only about 10% are owned and operated by multiple generations of the same family," Futrell said. "Lake Winnepesaukah is in its fourth generation of management and ownership by the same family, which is rare, and not only among amusement parks, but in business in general as only 3% of businesses are able to successfully transition to the fourth generation of ownership."

(READ MORE: Remember When, Chattanooga? Do you remember Lake Winnie in the 1960s?)

The park has contributed significantly to Georgia's tourism, the regional tourism manager for the state of Georgia, Marcie Kicklighter, said. According to her, Georgia's tourism industry supports over 463,000 jobs and generates over $80 billion in economic impact each year, and attractions like Lake Winnie play a big role in those numbers.

"North Georgia welcomed 45 million visitors in 2023 and generated $82.6 million in visitor spending. Recreation and attractions like Lake Winnie accounted for 12.5% of that spending," she said. "This is a testament to the fantastic tourism product you've developed over the years, including your 5 acre water park ... making Lake Winnie the park we know and love today."

Several former park employees have worked in government, including Catoosa County Commissioner Steven Henry, who said his daughter works at the park now.

"So now my daughter won't talk to me because she works rides and I worked games, and evidently they don't get along," he joked.

He said he appreciated the story behind the start of Lake Winnie, how Dickinson's great-grandparents purchased the property when it was a hunting club with the goal of turning it into a place for family recreation, and he celebrated the family's ability to overcome adversity over a span of 100 years. What the family has provided for the community, as an amenity through all that time, weighed on his mind, he said.

"I thought about how hard they had it through that time, because they faced a world war, they faced a depression, a recession, a Korean conflict, a Vietnam conflict, and on and on, they had adversity," Henry said. "But then I thought about what they provided to those soldiers and those people that come back, that needed that release, that needed to get away from it, and maybe this park was a place they found just to unwind, just to spend that time with their family to be back home after they'd faced all them battles."

In recent years, the park faced heightened attention to safety following two separate incidents, including a 2018 fall from the Wild Lightnin' roller coaster. An official investigation later found the incident was not caused by mechanical malfunction. The second incident was a 2023 waterslide accident involving a young boy on the Fourth of July. Both incidents led to brief ride closures and renewed emphasis on safety protocols.

Dickinson said Lake Winnie's commitment to safety is the park's No. 1 priority. Lake Winnie has independent inspectors, unannounced inspectors from its insurance agency and inspectors from the state of Georgia on the property each season, Dickinson said.

"We train our employees to be on the lookout for any situation which might not be a positive one," she said in an interview. "Before we open for the season, we invite an independent inspector to come out and inspect each and every ride, bolt and lap bar... we must pass both of those before we open to the public."

(READ MORE: Investigator: No malfunction in Lake Winnie roller coaster that led to woman's fall)

Despite setbacks, the park has grown, like with its 2013 multimillion dollar water park expansion, without losing its historical appeal, said Michael Costello, managing editor of Funworld magazine, a part of the global association for the attractions industry.

"Lake Winnie has proven that they have the best formula. They blend the old with the new," he said in an interview. "They have this beautiful lake, these green spaces, these wonderful old century old trees, and underneath all that, you have these vintage rides, you have an old wooden roller coaster, you have the boat chute ... and so having that for guests today, it just makes the park even more memorable."

Futrell, who drove to the event from Pittsburgh, talked about how Lake Winnie was one of the rare parks to expand during the 1960s, and that Chattanooga is special for its continued importance. Notably, Lake Winnie is home to the boat chute, which was built in 1927 and is the last remaining operational mill chute ride in the United States.

"There are very few amusement parks that get to celebrate their centennial, fewer still that are owned by four generations of the same family, and as far as I know, none that were led primarily by women over such a long history," Futrell wrote in a press release.

"Chattanooga is really fortunate to have such a special place," he said in an interview, contrasting the park's permanence with Nashville's loss of Opry Mills. "You have this gem of an amusement park where you can share these memories across generations."

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Almost every local has a Lake Winnie story to share, according to Linda and Chuck Feagans of Fort Oglethorpe. They met as teenagers at the park in 1970 and married two years later. Chuck Feagans said a lot of concerts with big names happened there, and he got to experience them without knowing how important they were at the time. He added that a park story once inspired a song.

"Tom T. Hall came, and the roller coaster had a dog that chased it around every time, and his name was Cannonball," he said. "So he wrote a song called the 'Chattanooga Dog' from that experience."

Other than the water park and few other additional rides, the Feagans said the park remains a whole lot like it was when Chuck first started working there at 9 years old.

"They gave him a bucket tied around his neck and a stick, and he went around picking garbage," said Linda Feagans, 70. "In our area, this has been a special place. It lets some kids have a job, something to do in the summer. We got our memories here. Now we're bringing our grandkids here."

In a follow-up interview, Dickinson teased that park leadership hopes to have some future announcements on upcoming attractions.

As far as the park's legacy, she wrote her reflections in a press release.

"This celebration belongs to my whole family. I only wish that they could all be here to see us reach this milestone," Dickinson wrote. " I wanna thank everyone who has ever walked through the gates, and every happy childhood loved the park and decades later brought their children to enjoy it."