Butler County enfolds a total of 469 square miles and contains two amusement parks. Both share one of those square miles.

Both also share State Rte. 4, a property line, some of their patrons, and as little else as possible.

Each of  the two men who own these parks has decades of experience in the entertainment business, ambition that compels him to be always renovating and expanding ... and a 15-year disagreement with the other.

Americana and Fantasy Farm and their owners, Howard Berni and Edgar Streifthau, are entwined in a struggle whose roots can be traced to 1901, when Streifthau watched blocks of ice being loaded on a canal barge near Middletown; or to the late 1800's, when Berni's great great uncle was manufacturing organs for merry-go-rounds. 

The two histories touch in 1960, at what was called LeSourdsville Lake.

 It was in that year that Edgar Streifthau sold his interest in the amusement park he built to Howard Berni and his partner for half a million dollars. 

The park was vastly changed from May 8, 1922, when Streifthau officially opened his dance hall, swimming lake and picnic area on 30 acres of land he leased for $600 a year; changed, too, from 1931, when Streifthau picked up an option and bought the land for $10,000.

The property first formally changed hands in 1791, when Dr. Clarkson Freeman bought 631 acres at five dollars per acre (the earlier transfer of the land from the Miami Indians to the U.S. government was rather bloody, and formalized belatedly).

In 1834, six years after the Miami-Erie Canal was routed through the property, the acreage was split among four buyers, who paid $30 per acre. One of the buyers was a former general in the French Army, Benjamin LeSourd, whose ambition was to establish a great city on the tract. 

For a time, LeSourdsville did prosper, thrived on canal boat traffic and guests riding the stage coach between Dayton and Cincinnati 'The town at one time boasted a blacksmith shop, packing house, sawmill, warehouse office, general store, two taverns and several residence.

In.1855 LeSourd sold part of his land to the A. H. Knorr Co, of Cincinnati which built a 19-acre lake fed by the canal. Around the lake the company erected 12 large structures to store blocks of ice cut  from the lake during the winter. The ice was shipped by canal to Cincinnati where 74 wagons delivered it throughout the city. Knorr  even shipped to several southern states by barges traveling the canal to the Miami and Ohio Rivers.

The prosperity evaporated with the introduction of ice manufacturing equipment in 1892, and the land became the home of a chicken ranch, which abruptly failed. The land was sold to N.T. Taylor, who farmed it until 1921, when  Edgar Streifthau began rebuilding the levy and excavation the lake, which had been filled in and farmed.

In the 39 years of his ownership, there was rarely a construction season which did not see some building going up, comeing down of being enlarged.

The pattern continues at Americna under Berni's direction. In the past two years, almost 800 feet of midway have been added to the park, as well as a new game building, a food complex ,and, structures to house the Hanneford Circus and 180-degree  movie.

But for the past 16 years, Streifthau, now 82,  has been busy building another amusement park next door. His new domain now includes over 250acres of pastures and woodlots for his buffalo and deer, 34 rides, picnic facilities, swimming pool and motel.

Howard Berni is less than amused by the transformation. As he interpreted the contract he had with Streifthau, Berni said, "technically, he wasn't supposed to put a park up within a hundred miles of us. "We left the door open when we made the original contract with this fellow," he added. -"He took advantage of a loophole, which was unfair, in a sense, but it's something we have to live with."

For his part, Streifthau said "I have no bad feelings against him, buthe certainly doesn't like me. I've invited him to come by here at any time; I'm never ashamed of what I'm doing. If there were some way to cooperate, I think it could be an advantage to both of us - our competition, for both of us is Kings Island" he said, "not each other. We're not catering to the same group of people." Streifthau said that Fantasy Farm was intended to appeal primarily to families with small children, while Americana targeted your singles and teenagers."

Berni doesn't seem to share that perception. "Basically, any amusement park is going after the same people. I would say that Kings (Island) is basically going after the teenager these days," he said. "We, in the past, have been going mostly for the families, but we will be bringing these big rides in, and then we'll go for the same group. The guy next door (Striefthau), he's going after the teenagers too."

Identity plays a major role in the success of an
amusement park, and both Fantasy Farm and Americana are working to define themselves  in terms attractive to the patrons they want to lure. 

LeSourdsville Lake became Americana for precisely that reason, Berni said, though ,some persons were upset with the change when it was made, "It wasn't that there was anything wrong with the name LeSourdsville," he said. "it just wasn't a name that stayed in your mind, and nobody could spell it. We decided to change the name to change the image after the expansion. We were trying to get the  image of the old park out of their minds. That was the whole bugaboo of the thing. And in the last two years, it's been on the upswing all the way."

Curiously, when Berni stopped using the name LeSourdsville, it started to appear in Streifthau's ads, and the two men make one of their periodic appearances in court. Streifthau was ordered, Berni said, to make clear that heis park was no LeSourdsville, bus was located at a community called LeSourdsville.

And so on.

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