TAKING THE B PLUNGE Shipwreck Island Waterpark ushers in improvements BY HANNAH BURKE
70 | AT T HE B E AC H 2022
UDDY WILKES, general manager of Shipwreck Island Waterpark in Panama City Beach, can recall a time when waterslides were a novelty. Early American prototypes, he said, began popping up around KOA campgrounds and RV parks in the early ’70s, when some unsophisticated pioneers discovered if you dig a pond, embed some concrete troughs in a dirt mound, and get a hose going, you could have yourself a time. One Panama City Beach resident, James Lark, was fascinated. Already, he had built a 2,000-foot rollercoaster amid the sand dunes along Front Beach Road, an attraction that established the Miracle Strip Amusement Park in 1963.
PHOTO COURTESY OF SHIPWRECK ISLAND WATERPARK
Beyond the Beach