May 16, 2018 7 min read

Jim Rach admitted he is conflicted.

Until recently, he and his wife, Connie, owned Sunset Beach Park, a 57-acre tract of fun in Buffalo Township that has been popular for more than three-quarters of a century. The signature attraction, mere yards off Route 40, is the expansive pool that has refreshingly entertained generations of teens, preteens, toddlers and their parents and grandparents.

But in the past few years, that signature has faded dramatically. Pool maintenance is costly and time-consuming, and swimming in recent times had become the featured attraction. The catering facility, which had served a generation of picnickers nearby on the property, closed about three years ago. The drive-in movie screen still towers over the pool, but that operation shut down long ago. A baseball field, at the far end, does not get regular use.

With pool season ahead, this was a good time to sell – and the Rachs did. Jim, whose family had owned Sunset Beach since the 1950s, said he and his spouse sold the property to an entity he declined to identify, but he said the pool will no longer operate.

That means Sunset Beach is gone – but certainly not forgotten.

Announcement of the closure – on social media in general and the Observer-Reporter Facebook page in particular – sparked a groundswell of responses. The hundreds of postings were split, roughly, between expressions of remorse and warm recollections of days in the sun along the National Road.

A post on the Sunset Beach website early last week said in part: “It is with a heavy heart that we inform you Sunset Beach Park will be closing its doors. This has not been an easy decision … Thank you all for helping make our summers spent at Sunset Beach ones that we will never forget.”

The Rach family was responsible for fostering many of those memories. Jim’s parents, Ferdie and Janis, owned and operated the park beginning with the Eisenhower administration. Ferdie, who will soon turn 90, relinquished control to his son and daughter-in-law a few years ago.

During an interview Monday, Jim Rach dropped his head and admitted the decision to close was “hard, very hard. I spent a lot of time there while I was growing up. We had a fantastic clientele. It was great serving people from Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania.”

Sunset Beach’s exact age cannot be determined, but Bill Northrop Sr., a longtime local resident now living in Florida, submitted a photo from 1939, when he and his brother, John, were children. They are standing on the short diving board, John poised to enter the water, Bill right behind him, awaiting his turn.

Bill, now 84, said in a phone interview that he was about 5 when the photo was snapped.

“It was the pool,” he said. “John and I learned to swim there. We would go there every day when we were at our grandparents’ house.”

John Kowalski had an eventful first day as a Sunset Beach lifeguard in 1958. He helped save a life, maybe two lives.

“I was changing clothes and I heard the lifeguard yell, ‘Help! Help!’ I got my suit on and there was a 350- to 400-pound woman who went off the diving board but couldn’t swim. She pulled him under. I pushed him up out of the water, and he was coughing. Other people helped to pull, and we got her out.”

Kowalski, a 1959 Washington High alumnus and a retired insurance salesman now living in Manhattan, said the woman was immediately banned from the pool. The other lifeguard, he added, had to be stretched out on the grass to regain his breath and senses – and did not return to Sunset Beach.

Sunset Beach created numerous pleasant memories for Misty Cress Harvey. And one that remained a mystery until she gained a larger measure of maturity.

“When I was young, 10 or 11, we lived behind Sunset Beach,” Harvey, who now lives in Kentucky, said in an email.

“At this time, the drive-in was functional and the trees weren’t as tall as they are now. Mom and I could walk up to a certain part of the road and see the screen. We would sneak over there sometimes at night and spend quality time together watching a movie.”

Friday night was not always a family time. “I remember her telling me as we drove past not to look at the screen,” Harvey wrote. “When I asked why, she said, ‘After a certain time on Fridays, they show adult movies.'”

The family film experience was more commonplace, and Debbie Johnson Standiford enjoyed that. She posted on the O-R Facebook page that “my parents would pile my two brothers and me (wearing our pajamas) in the back seat when we were small and spend a date night at the drive-in. They also took us there on holiday nights when fireworks were put off … good memories of that, and of chasing fireflies in the dark when we were supposed to be watching the movie.”

Lisa Belcastro Stasiowski of Claysville said she has “been going to Sunset Beach since I was 5 years old. When I became a mom, I started buying a pass when my son was born. The first time I took him he was 6 months old, and every summer after that I bought a season pass. My son is now 26.”

Virginia Davis is a longtime resident of Belmont County, Ohio, who, as a child, happily endured the 45-minute ride to Buffalo Township to swim at the big pool. “My mom would take us there for picnics and we’d stay all day. We enjoyed hanging out.”

In recent years, she drove her grandchildren to Sunset Beach two or three times a summer. That would be in addition to the kids’ mothers (from Steubenville and Shadyside, Ohio) taking them there on other trips.

“My girls are upset and my grandkids are upset that Sunset Beach has closed,” said Davis, who lives in Jacobsburg. She said this would have been a milestone summer for her 10-year-old grandson.

“Kory was only allowed to swim up to the line to where the trampoline was. We didn’t think he should jump off it until he could swim really well. He’s an excellent swimmer now and he couldn’t wait until he was able to jump off it.”

Now a mother of four, ranging from 14 to 27 years old, Lori Ritchie Balach of Washington said she has “a lot of family memories of Sunset Beach.” They began when she was a child, continued as a parent, and were continuing as a grandparent.

“My friends and I chilled out there when we were kids,” she said. “My kids were there all the time. I’ve had my grandson there. I just wish something could be done about this.”

Holly Harter recalled on the O-R’s Facebook “as McGuffey students, we would walk there every year on the last day of school and spend the whole day there, getting burnt to a crisp.”

Now the sun has set on Sunset Beach Park, a bittersweet occurrence that is sad but includes a warm afterglow. Jim Rach said he and his wife “want to thank the community for all the years of support.”

And the community likewise appreciates eight decades of good times.