Pursuits

The New Jersey Theme Park Where Kids’ Backhoe Dreams Come True

Can kids in bulldozers cure the construction worker shortage?

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Photographer: Ryan Collerd/Bloomberg; Animation: Marisa Gertz

There is probably only one place in America where an eight-year-old can ride a carousel whose seats look like excavator buckets, then swipe at bowling pins with a mini-digger—where, for a ticket price of less than $40, he or she can operate a backhoe, drive a drum-roller, and ride the telescoping arm of a construction lift 50 feet into the air to admire the Philadelphia skyline.

That place is a small theme park in West Berlin, N.J., called Diggerland USA.