a fire in 1980. With the advent of additional electric streetcars in the late 19th century, an amusement park was developed at the end-of-the-line and a boardwalk was built along the adjacent beach area. These were a favorite of sailors on leave from the Norfolk Navy Base. Buses replaced the streetcars in the late 1940s. In the mid 20th century, for a number of years, AM radio station WGH broadcast live from a booth under the roller coaster. Completion of the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel in 1957 connected the Ocean View area to the Virginia Peninsula. However, it and other newer highways encouraged visitors to continue on to the Virginia Beach resort area on the Atlantic Ocean, a small city which boomed after merging with Princess Anne County in 1963. In particular, construction of nearby Interstate 64 and the Virginia Beach Expressway (now part of Interstate 264) made it easier for tourists from afar to bypass Ocean View en route to the Oceanfront area of Virginia Beach. Decline, Reemergence After several years of decline in the 1970s, during which Busch Gardens in Williamsburg opened less than an hour's drive away, Ocean View Amusement Park was closed after Labor Day, 1978 and was torn down soon after the filming of a 1979 made-for-TV movie called The Death of Ocean View Park, which starred Mike Connors of Mannix fame, Barry Newman, and Academy Award winner Martin Landau. A key scene featured blowing up the landmark wooden roller coaster "The Rocket". While there had been popular concern as to the structural integrity of the famous but aged wooden structure, early attempts to film its destruction with explosives met with failure. Finally, on the third attempt, and with a bulldozer off camera helping to pull the structure down, the landmark appeared to explode in a large fireball. Also, the 1977 movie Rollercoaster (with Timothy Bottoms), George Segal, Henry Fonda, and Richard Widmark, features "The Rocket", as well as other shots of the park in the opening sequences. In the early 21st century, as the entire coastal property market surged with new growth, redevelopment in the Ocean View community has resulted in new upscale residential properties replacing old beach cottages and small motels along the resort strip. Property values, especially bay front property, particularly in the East Beach neighborhood, have increased significantly in value. Today, U.S. Route 60 is the main roadway paralleling the bay along