During my travels over the years when playing or watching the game of bowling, I’ve been in large and small ‘playing establishments’. However, the smallest houses in which I’ve bowled weren’t the smallest that operate as a business, and the largest center in which I’ve played hasn’t been the biggest.
Aside from the Chevy Chase Country Club with its 8 ‘alleys’, the bowling center in which I’ve bowled that had the least amount of lanes was Walkersville Lanes, which isn’t too far from Thunderhead Bowl and Grill (about 30 minutes). ‘Walkersville’ has 10 lanes of duckpins. Most of the large bowling centers where I’ve played have ‘maxed out’ at 48 lanes, and were mostly AMF/Fair Lanes centers. However, I did bowl a few times at a place known as Greenway East in Baltimore back in the late 1980s, and it had 68 lanes (51 duckpin and 17 tenpin). But a fire ended up closing down those lanes in the 1990s, I believe.
Although a 10-lane bowling establishment might seem on the small side in comparison to what we see at Thunderhead Bowl and Grill, there are quite a number of alleys across the United States that have less lanes. As of 2019, there were around 195 6-lane centers in the nation, and about 460 8-lane houses. Conversely, on the larger side, there were over 130 establishments with at least 50 lanes. To give an approximate breakdown, there were a little over 65 centers with 50-58 lanes, about 45 or a little more that housed 60-68 lanes, and around 8 or so that had 70+ lanes, and an additional 9 with 80+ lanes. In regard to the 70+ lane centers, three of them exist in the state of Indiana – 1 alley has 70 lanes (Chippewa Bowl in South Bend), and 2 centers with 80 lanes (Western Bowl and Woodland Bowl, both in Indianapolis). Topping the list, however, Michigan had the only 90-lane center at Thunder Bowl in Allen Park.
In 2019, I compiled info on the bowling establishments on the North American continent. Overall, there were over 4,300 bowling alleys in North America, and more than 3,800 of these were in the U.S. There actually may have been more than 500 in Canada, however – I was doing a mass mailing and didn’t go too deep above the northern border of the USA.
Thunderhead Bowl and Grill, with its 28 lanes, ranks around 1,100th of these 4,300+ bowling centers in regard to size, so Taneytown is well-represented with its accommodation of the sport of bowling to the community.
The most common sized bowling center is that of a 24-lane center, in which there were roughly 562 of them across the country.
Other approximate figures that might be of interest are as follows:
10-lane centers: 200
12-lane centers: 450
14-lane centers: 60
16-lane centers: 486
18-lane centers: 85
20-lane centers: 215
22-lane centers: 50
24-lane centers: 562
26-lane centers: 60
28-lane centers: 63
30-lane centers: 40
31-lane centers: 5
32-lane centers: 390
34-lane centers: 32
36-lane centers: 106
38-lane centers: 18
40–46 lane centers: 310
48-lane centers: 74