Picture yourself driving down I-20 in Meridian, MS. It’s your average American town, with Motel 6s and McDonalds. As you near the exit, you decide to turn off because there’s something interesting just off the front road, glinting in the sun. You turn onto Sowashee St. 

There’s a lot with a for sale sign plastered on a billboard over the top of abandoned entrance gates, perhaps last used thirty five years ago. Next to it, a white structure covered in rust stands out against the blue sky, behind an ever-growing forest of trees. Could this be a drive-in?

You continue down the road, and suddenly jerk your car to the right onto the shoulder in surprise. There, looming behind some trees, a specter on this otherwise cheerful summer day. The foliage is lush and green, but what lays behind it is eerie, something out of the twilight zone. 

Concrete block turrets, grey with age. Two. A rusting metal gate, solid and vintage, stands slightly askew. Arching overhead, a sign, or what used to be one. It’s not legible from inside your car, hidden behind a branch, but something compels you to hop out and get a closer look. 

As you step from the car, the chill of the air conditioner is quickly driven away by the hot air of a Southern summer, heavy on your skin like a wet wool blanket. You bat away a cloud of mosquitoes as you step from faded asphalt onto concrete that’s literally vanishing into the grass below your feet. 

And as your hand clears your face, the outline of long-faded letters on the sign becomes clear, tangled overgrowth obscuring the path that once ran beneath it. This was the entrance to Royal Land. 

Today, it’s all abandoned: the amusement park and the fairgrounds and the drive-in and the baseball stadium. But a generation or two ago, this small corner of Meridian, MS was a bustling place to be.

Behind Royal Land: Lloyd Royal

It began with A. Lloyd Royal, Sr. He was a man of the South, born in the 1910s.

Lloyd spent his early 20s, between 1936 and 1944, building at least 14 independent movie theatres across Mississippi. In Greenwood, Hattiesburg, Gulfport, Picayune, McComb, Carrollton, Lumberton, and Purvis, among other towns, Royal established different movie houses. It was January of 1941 when Royal opened his first theater in Meridian, the “Royal Theater”, becoming the fifth movie theater in the town. The Royal Theater, by the accounts I read, was said to have quickly establish itself as a landmark. Think of the time period – the movie theaters would’ve had air conditioning (of some sort) long before it was common in folks’ houses, and this of course is the South – on a hot muggy summer day, where to go but the pictures?

Theaters opened and closed in Meridian through the war years, but the Royal Theater stayed strong. By the 1950s, a big tidal change was sweeping through the States. If you recall my last episode on the Land of Kong, where I talked about the history of US roadways, you’ll remember the Federal Highway Act, which became law in 1956. The 1950s saw a huge boom in American car ownership. Pre-WWII, most people did not own a car. Post-war, a glut of small cheap houses were built outside towns to accomodate returning soldiers and their ever-growing families. Prosperity meant that owning a car was within reach for the average American, and not only that, but cars began to have AC installed as a standard feature. Cars were almost more comfortable than the American living room. 

So what entered the picture? The drive-in theater. 

The earliest forms of drive-in were set up in 1915, but the drive-in theater as a concept was patented officially in 1933 by Richard Hollingshead Jr. His first drive-in theater opened in New Jersey that year, but pre-WWII, there were still only a handful of theaters open in the US – about 15. Post-war, of course, drive-ins boomed like everything else, and hundreds of new drive-in theaters opened each year. 

Lloyd Royal capitalized on that bandwagon, and opened the Royal Drive-In in either 1950 or 1953, at 2601 Sowashee Street, there in Meridian, MS. It was located adjacent to a baseball stadium. 

He stayed connected, serving on the War Activities Committee of the MPAA; the March of Dimes Committee; former President of the Lumberton Rotary Club; and the Legislative Committee of the Meridian Exchange Club. (I was unfamiliar with the latter, as it wasn’t an activity where I grew up – turns out this is a national service organization. The Mississippi District has been a part of the national organization since the 1920s, and it’s still going strong today.)

By 1952, he was President of the Mississippi Theater Owners Association. That same 1952 blurb in the Clark County Tribune called him “one of the most progressive and important exhibitors in the state”. 

By 1959, he’d served as president of the Tri-States Theater Owners Association, as well as president of the Meridian Exchange Club.

Movies of Lloyd Royal

Not only was Lloyd Royal interested in being a business manager and owning his own line of theatres, he was also a part of the movie business itself.

Royal produced or wrote three movies, by most accounts: 1954’s Jesse James’ Women, 1956’s Frontier Woman, and 1960’s Natchez Trace. All were filmed in the South, not in Hollywood itself. Royal by this point was the president of Panorama Pictures, a Mississippi-based production company. 

Two of the movies are still extant and easily watchable today. Jesse James’ Women is available in full under public domain license on the Internet Archive. This one is a classic 50s Western that probably hasn’t aged particularly well, given the summary: “The fugitive outlaw (Don Barry) enjoys the company of several ladies while he and his gang hide out in a Mississippi town.” 

Natchez Trace appears to be the most popular of the three films, with a 6.9/10 rating on IMDB. “The daughter of a murdered plantation owner and her fiance try to disrupt an outlaw’s plans to build an empire of thieves along the popular Mississippi-Tennessee trail.” The movie is named after a 440-mile long trail between Nashville TN and NAtchez MS, which fell out of use when traffic shifted from trail to steamboats on the Mississippi. 

The third, Frontier Woman, was exceedingly confusing by all accounts. Rumor says that most or all of the copies of the film have been destroyed, save for one, said to be in the hands of the film’s tiniest, trivialist star. Today, this film is noted for a tiny triviality. Actor Harold Beckenholdt played an unscrupulous trader in the film. He included his son Ron, then 8 months old, in the film in a small cameo, just because. Of course, you don’t know Harold Beckenholdt, but Harold chanced his name to Rance Howard. And you definitely know Ron Howard, who made his feature film debut here in Frontier Woman. Yes, the very famous Ron Howard, with too many film credits to his name, things like Apollo 13 and The Andy Griffith Show and Happy Days. 

All three movies were well-received at the time of their release, with special showings locally to honor the local filmmaker. 

Buckwalter Stadium, near Royal Land

Somewhere in the mid-1950s, between movie productions and theater openings, Lloyd Royal added “baseball stadium owner” to the list, purchasing Buckwalter Stadium, adjacent to the Royal Drive-In he’d purchased a few years prior, there on Sowashee Street.

The stadium wasn’t new even then. 

It’s falsely claimed in many articles and discussions on this topic that the stadium was constructed in the 1930s. The most popular video about this place (type “1930s abandoned baseball” into Google and this video is probably your top result. I’ll also link it in the playlist I’ve created on my YouTube channel for this episode.) even claims this was built in the 1930s. Unfortunately, these other sites are falsely conflating two different baseball parks: Fairgrounds Park and Buckwalter Stadium.

It is the conclusion of my research in this area that the stadium was actually built in 1947. The local team back then was a new club called the Meridian Peps, and their president was a guy named Charles Buckwalter, who at one time owned the Meridian Pepsi-Cola Bottling Plant, to give you an idea. In fact: “Meridian Peps”, “Pepsi-Cola”… 

Meridian Peps (1946-1950)

The club formed after the war, and the team played minor league baseball, in the Southeastern League. But it was a rocky road. Despite popularity with the locals, baseball was expensive. The Peps didn’t have their own park, so they played at Fairgrounds Park, the site of the now-defunct Valley Fair Mall in modern Meridian. Teams had played there since 1922: Meridian Mets, Meridian Scrappers, Meridian Bears, Meridian Eagles, and now the Meridian Peps. But the Peps weren’t happy with the stadium. 

An October 1946 article in The Greenwood Commonwealth says the following: “Charles Buckwalter, president of the Meridian Peps, Southeastern League, said he would not Benter a team in the 1947 race unless a satisfactory park is provided in which to play. Buckwalter said the club went deeply in the hole last year, spending about $5,000 for the use of the fairgrounds, privately owned, while some other cities had only to pay a token fee of $1 for the entire year.” In November 1946, The Selma Times-Journal echoed similar sentiments, noting that the future of the Meridian club in the Southeastern Baseball League was dependent on “civic pride and spirit”, as the current owners of the Fairground Field baseball park they played at charged them a fee to use the park and would not allow the team to collect on fence ads, which could’ve brought in a proposed $2500. That opinion article closes by saying “That is definitely a losing proposition and Charles Buckwalter is certainly within his rights in refusing to pay through the nose for civic enterprise.”

By January 1947, Buckwalter licensed the Peps to be a subsidiary for the Cleveland Indians, retaining 25% of the stocks for himself and continuing as president. This sale likely allowed him to pick up the additional funds he needed. It’s not entirely clear what happened with this deal, though, as two years later, by January 1949, the club was back up for sale again. In comments to the papers, Buckwalter claimed that he had suffered financial losses for each of the three previous seasons of the club’s operation, and declared that the club needed financial backing or else it would have to leave Meridian for nearby Laurel or Hattiesburg. By February of that year, a group of local businessmen stepped up to the plate, leasing the team and park from Buckwalter in a $10,000 deal (in today’s money, $105,500).  

A 1949 article notes that Buckwalter “personally built the Peps field out of his own pocket”.

Though the citizens had grand plans, the renamed Meridian Millers team and the B-class Southeastern League fell apart after only a year under new management. In 1951 and 1952, Charles Buckwalter began hosting the New Meridian Fair and Cattle Show at his Buckwalter Stadium and property instead of baseball.

Meridian Millers (1952-1955)

By 1952, Meridian was back in the baseball game, however, taking over the Clarksdale baseball franchise in the class C Cotton States League. The Meridian Millers had great success their first year in the league, winning the championship in 1952 and 1953. However, it was not to last. 

Jackie Robinson had broken the color barrier in Major League Baseball after the war in 1947. The hurdles were fierce for non-whites, and the Cotton States League and other Deep South teams did not follow popular sentiment, and refused to integrate, hiring white players only (with one exception, which I’ll get to). This unsurprisingly alienated fans of color. Minor league baseball also started to see fierce competition from a wide range of similarly accessible amusement options. Baseball fans could watch major league baseball on TV or listen to it on the radio. Attendance at minor league games began to drop. 

The Cotton States League team, the Hot Springs Bathers, hired two players in 1953: Jim and Leander Tugerson, both WWII veterans who’d been pitchers from the Negro League. This was done against the opposition of the league president, who is quoted as saying “I advised against signing (black players) and requested they do not attempt it at this time knowing the hornet’s nest it would stir up.” Five days after they were signed, the remaining teams in the Cotton States League voted unanimously to expel the Bathers from the League as a result. 

The Bathers were later reinstated that season, but the Tugersons were shipped to other leagues. When the Bathers had a pitching injury in their roster in April 1953, they called Jim Tugerson back up. He was set to pitch in front of 1500 strong, lights on, bats out. But as a result, the president of the CSL called the game a forfeit before the first pitch had even been thrown. 

Jim Tugerson went back to the D-class Knoxville Smokies, where he was celebrated with a Jim Tugerson Night. And then he filed a federal lawsuit against the Cotton States League, its teams, and its president. The lawsuit was dismissed later that year, but it was too late; it was a sign of a turning tide. Uvoyd Reynolds, another player of color, suited up for the Bathers in 1954.

Not only that, but also in 1954, even “our” team, the Meridian Millers, hired a person of color against the strictures of the Mississippi Constitution set in 1890. And this guy, we’ve got to talk about this guy next.

Carlos “Chico” Heron

Born in March 1936 in Bocas del Toro, Panama, Carlos “Chico” Heron was a right-handed second baseman. In 1954, he joined the Meridian Millers, becoming the first player of color to sign with a Mississippi team. 

He played with a number of different teams both in the US and in Panama over the next decade, before moving to a more managerial position, coaching teams in both Canada and Panama throughout the 70s. He held position of Panama’s National Team coach for more than 20 years. 

The big thing about Chico Heron is that he became a scout in the more modern era since the late 1970s, scouting for the Philadelphia Phillies, the Kansas City Royals, the Saint Louis Cardinals, and finally a little team called the New York Yankees.

It was here that Chico Heron is most known in the US, as he brought a young guy by the name of Mariano Rivera to the attention of the Yankees. Rivera caught the eye of Heron, and after some time pitching under observation in Panama, was signed by the Yankees. Even if you’re not into baseball, you’ve probably at least some passing familiarity with the name. Mariano Rivera was the Yankees closing pitcher for 17 years, between 1995 and 2013. His presence at the end of games was signalled by the song “Enter Sandman”, ominous tones marking how well he saved games. Rivera was a major contributor to the Yankees success during his time there, and it’s only because of Chico Heron that he obtained the position to begin with.

Heron was more than just a scout, though. It’s said that he had a huge influence on the people he worked with, instilling a sense of love and discipline in every player. He was a dedicated man, a giver, and an inspirational figure. 

After Heron’s death in 2007, Mariano Rivera described Chico Heron, saying “he was one of those men that if I call him any time, anytime that I need something from him, he would have done it on the spot.” Rivera went on to say “that’s how close he was to me. I respect that man until the day he died.”

Flashing back in time, back to Meridian and Buckwalter Stadium, we return to 1954.

At the end of the 1954 season, all players of color hired in the Cotton States League were released to other teams. Baseball at this unpretentious field came to an end the next year, as it’s said a team called the Pine Bluff Judges joined with the Meridian Millers mid-season and finished their 1955 season there at Buckwalter Stadium. 

Royal Land

Here in 1955, then, we are almost ready to talk about Royal Land.

Carnivals and Fairs in Meridian

With the collapse of the Cotton States League marking the end of baseball at Buckwalter Stadium, fairs and movies became the non-televised entertainment options of the day. It appears that the Royal family purchased Buckwalter Stadium around this time. As noted earlier, the New Meridian Fair operated at Buckwalter Stadium at least in 1951 and 1952, but from what I can tell, the general opinion at the time was that the fair elsewhere in town under other operation had gone downhill, getting smaller and run-down. By 1956 or 1957, with the purchase of Buckwalter Stadium and surrounding lands, Lloyd Royal began operating the Mississippi-Alabama State Fair in Meridian. 

(As a brief sidebar, for whatever reason, it seems unlikely that the fair operated in 1956 in Meridian, or if it did, it wasn’t noteworthy, and here’s why. If you just Google “Mississippi-Alabama Fair” you’ll get thousands of hits, about the 1956 fair held in Tupelo, MS. Of course the fair was held in multiple cities throughout the season, but 1956 in Tupelo was something different. A young singer named Elvis Presley had become incredibly famous in 1956, and he returned to Tupelo, his birthplace, in a “homecoming” event at the fair that year. It was unsurprisingly hugely popular, and you can find several videos of the event up on YouTube. Elvis’ charm with the crowd is undeniable, and he cuts a magnetic figure up on the slightly elevated stage above his screaming fans. )

The Mississippi-Alabama State Fair in Meridian was from then on held at the old Buckwalter Stadium, behind the Royal Drive-In. The grandstands (the former baseball stands) were used for the big shows and events, and the midway and other concessions stretched out on the land between the baseball stadium and the drive-in. 

It earned a reputation as “of the cleanest and best operated fairs in the South.” Big name carnivals like Century 21 Shows and Heth Shows (famed for their 30-car railroad and “mile-long midway”) provided impressive midways and rides, with the excitement of all of our mid-century and even present day favorites: Caterpillars and Roll-o-planes and Mad Mouse Coasters, Ferris Wheels, and of course, the humble carousel. Refreshments stands and ticket booths were operated by local civic groups and religious organizations. 

Royal was an excellent manager, as evidenced by his long track record in the movie theater business, regularly coming up with new ways to thrill his guests. In 1959, he staged a helicopter landing in nearby Quitman to help promote the fair. This was a huge deal at the time, and I think it still would draw a small crowd even today. After a weather delay, one lucky passenger was picked up and flown in a Bell G47 Whirlybird to the Meridian fairgrounds. Apparently the helicopter was the centerpiece of the Atterbury-Hornbeck trapeze act which operated at fairs around the country in the late 1950s. This act featured two acrobats doing daredevil stunts, dangling outside of the helicopter while it flew and hovered over the grounds of the grandstands. Unsurprisingly, several acrobats got injured during the brief lifetime of the act.

The highlight of the 1960 fair was the unique high diving grandma, Ella Carver. In this pinnacle of spectacle, thousands crowded the grandstands of Buckwalter Stadium and watched as the 72-year-old Carver leapt off a flaming 90-foot-tall tower, diving into a 6-ft-deep bucket of water covered in flames. 

Operations continued on. 1960 saw Lloyd Royal opening his own newspaper in Meridian, the Meridian Leader, a weekly competitor to the established Meridian Star. One story I saw had it that he wanted more flexibility on opinion pieces and availability for print advertising, the lifeblood for a movie business back in the day.

And in 1964, Lloyd Royal expanded his fair operations, opening a new fair in Hattiesburg. All the while, his movie theater operations had continued, opening new theaters throughout the South.

Royal Land

And in 1967, Lloyd Royal and his sons began construction on something new, adjacent to the drive-in and the stadium fairgrounds. 

There are two versions of the story. In one, likely the more true version, the rides for Royal Land, for that was what they were building, were purchased secondhand and refurbished into working condition.

In the other, more colorful version of the story, rides had been abandoned by the carnies at the fairgrounds over the years. Broken, rusting, and otherwise unusable, the rides were then salvaged, cobbled together into something barely functional.

The second option is likely an embellished story, but this is the popular conception of Royal Land that remains on most abandoned theme park and basic urbex sites. It’s of course very unlikely that any ride destined for the scrap heap would be able to be pushed into service in a theme park, even in a small Mississippi town. 

Miniature Train at Royal Land

The most renowned ride at Royal Land was the miniature train, remembered in nearly every recollection I saw about the amusement park. 

It appears that the train was a miniature GM aerotrain streamliner, similar to those made by Ottaway Amusement Company (if you remember back to the Joyland episodes I did last year, you’ll remember this amusement magnate). A video of a similar train can be found on YouTube, operating at the Ellis, KS railroad museum. Picture the 1950s space age aesthetic, sleek and shiny, with passengers perched on the backs of the open-air cars. 

The train was said to run on a track around the circumference of the park, roughly half a mile to a mile long, through the woods and over a trestle bridge, around a lake stocked with jumping goldfish. 

There was a real train car at Royal Land, too: an L&N Pullman car serving as a restaurant, as well as an old boxcar used as storage. The seminal source for information about the park is a decade-old story from the local paper, and it suggests that “the train” was leftover from a movie set, though the story is unclear whether this is the Pullman car or the miniature train ride. Most likely, this comment is in reference to the Pullman car – the train restaurant was used prior to its days as a restaurant in the 1966 film “This Property is Condemned”. Indeed, in the newspaper article, Monte Royal is quoted talking about the temperature of the train, saying that it “was a bakery in that thing in summertime.” As the train ride was completely outside and un-air-conditioned, this was then about the Pullman car.

Other Rides at Royal Land

Royal Land also had a handful of other rides. It’s reported that there was a merry go round, as well as other circular or umbrella-style flat rides that you could find at any fair. Given the name of the podcast, you know I wish I had more information on the carousel, but alas, with this one, so much has been lost to time. 

There were pony rides, including one named Trigger with a bad temper, who is said to have kicked and bucked something fierce. 

There was a Ferris wheel, which Monte Royal (Lloyd’s son) recollected having nightmares of it falling over on him. One comment I read suggested there might have been a kiddie Ferris wheel as well as an adult-sized wheel, but this is again not clear. 

And of course there was a little roller coaster, likely a classic Allen Herschell Little Dipper coaster, that simple circuit with its classic ups and downs. (If you recall, I talked about one back in the Little Amerricka episode. A fun first coaster.) It seems as though it wasn’t always assembled correctly; our newspaper article describes the coaster as having difficulty getting over the hills sometimes and needing to be pushed by hand.

There was a go-kart track adjacent to Royal Land, as well, very visible from the satellite view of Google Maps. It’s not clear whether it was part of Royal Land or a separate thing. Apparently there used to be races on Sundays for several years until the nearby hotel complained about the noise. Reportedly, the track sat abandoned for decades before becoming a radio-controlled car track for a few years recently. 

Most of the park was said to be operated on an old “half-broken” generator that was constantly breaking down or operating with too many draws on the power. The stories described in the newspaper article about Royal Land are like something out of a Stephen King book. It’s said that when too much was running at once, everything would slow to a crawl, even the music of the rides. Can you imagine, half-speed or slower plinkety-plink carousel carnival music, weirdly spinning up and slowing down? Terrifying. 

Royal Land, Abandoned

Royal Land opened in 1968, and operated in 1969 as well, before shuttering for good. While it was open, the place was a wonderful spot for local families, birthday parties, etc. (You could get your name on the marquee out in front of the park!) There was nothing nefarious about the closure, no murders or deaths or illicit activities. As you can probably guess, the real reasons were economic: Royal Land simply didn’t make enough money to stay in business. It wasn’t financially viable to keep operating Royal Land. 

Now of course, the Internet will Internet, and I’ve seen lots of plausible suggestions that might also have contributed to the downfall of Royal Land: insurance costs, land located on a flood plain, bad wells, tax costs, not enough guests. Whether any of these reasons contributed is unclear. Ultimately, the visitors for the site simply weren’t there.

There are no extant pictures of Royal Land in operation that I’ve been able to find. Everything is lost in people’s basements and attics, on old film reels and fading away in photo albums. If you’ve got photos of Royal Land in any state, please send them in! 

The closest thing I could find was on a Remember Meridian Facebook page, and it showed an interesting modular-type building located inside the old Royal Land parks gates. It turns out, based on comments from that page, that this was simply a house for the Royal family, built after the park’s closure and demolished in the mid-90s, situated inside the old theme park gates. I can’t even imagine living on such a site but it truly sounds like a hoot. I’d be delighted to live in such a place.

After Royal Land closed, the rides were slowly auctioned off one by one. I saw a comment online saying that the roller coaster was the last to go, and that the kids in the family assembled and disassembled the little coaster for school projects. 

Abandoned Royal Land Today

Though Royal Land had closed, the adjacent businesses stayed operational for several decades longer. The Royal Drive-In closed in 1985, and the last fair operated in Buckwalter Stadium in the late 90s, around 1998. So yes, that incredibly well-filmed, beautiful viral video about the 1930s baseball stadium? Well, it’s more like an “abandoned for 20 years stadium”. Still impressive on its own merits, but it certainly hasn’t been abandoned since the 1950s like the video suggests.

Interestingly, it seems that a documentary is being made, or perhaps has been made already. Panamanian filmmaker Alberto Serra is working on a documentary about the life and legacy of Chico Heron and his influence on modern baseball legends like Mariano Rivera. Part of the documentary filmed at Buckwalter Stadium. The film is to be called Chico Heron y el Ultimo 42; a trailer for it was released in January. It appears the documentary was released last July in Panama; I’m not clear if the new trailer indicates a new release, perhaps on the film festival circuit, is coming.

The old L&N Pullman car was removed, moved to the Meridian Railway Museum. It was L&N 6157, known as Miss Alva’s Diner. The train car was featured in the 1966 film “This Property is Condemned”. I saw a comment online that this was actually not the correct number, that this had been painted for the movie and that the actual info was “The car is Louisiana & Arkansas (KCS) 353, ex-PULL 4127, nee-Monteith, a former Plan 2411 16 Section sleeper that KCS rebuilt as a coach.” but I wasn’t able to find more information to this end. Here’s a FB group thread discussing how the train cars were moved from Royal Land to their current location. It’s actually quite sad to see recent pictures of the Pullman car – it’s rusted and faded, numbers and letters nearly illegible. The scene is a far cry from the crisp green paint with white lettering and fancy trim that once beckoned visitors to Miss Alva’s Bar-B-Q. Like so many other pieces of rolling stock, this Pullman car is almost certainly destined to sit and rot until it’s nothing more than a piece of rust.

As for Royal Land itself, nothing remains except the iconic castle gates, which are visible from the roads. If you’re tempted to visit, please don’t. The land is private property, reportedly crawling with ticks, and nothing of any note beyond the gates is left on site to see. The land is for sale, should you be interested, but the Royal family still own the property and will prosecute any and all trespassers. 

Instead, take a virtual walk. There are a couple of unauthorized trespassing videos available on YouTube, or you can take a look at a motion picture, filmed with permission instead. Royal Land has been featured in a indie flick called Ozland in the modern era. This movie is available on Amazon Prime. Fast forward to timestamp 41:02, and take in a beautiful HD view of the old castle gates, the destroyed fairgrounds, the old baseball stadium. The movie was filmed in 2014, and very nicely encapsulates the entire Royal Land / Buckwalter Stadium / fairgrounds area as it stands today.

Conclusions

Lloyd Royal, the master of Royal Land, brought liveliness and entertainment to Meridian and the South for decades. Fairs in Petal/Hattiesburg and Meridian, the Royal Drive-In as well as other theaters, Royal Land, WQIC (a radio station)…this was a man with his hands in many businesses, a successful businessman. He and his family had a long impact on the area. 

Today, some of those enterprises are defunct, but others still live on under new operation. And for what’s gone, there are still memories of the days and places gone by. 

This park, Royal Land, has been inside my brain for quite some time. There’s nothing quite like that sudden haunting image in front of you, of seeing the dark castle gates, slowly being enveloped back inside a forest of greenery. Once the land was clear and neatly manicured, full of laughter and music and rides; today it’s been reclaimed by the fast-growing flora of the South, silent but for passing cars on the frontage road and the highway nearby. 

But if you stop and listen, maybe, just maybe, you can still hear the carousel music, like a whisper on the wind of a legacy of childhood joy. Can you hear it?

Remember that what you’ve read is a podcast! A link is included at the top of the page. Listen to more episodes of The Abandoned Carousel on your favorite platform: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | RadioPublic | TuneIn | Overcast | Pocket Casts | Castro. Support the podcast on Patreon for extra content! Comment below to share your thoughts – as Lucy Maud Montgomery once said, nothing is ever really lost to us, as long as we remember it.

References

1. “Chico” Heron y El Último 42, más allá de un documental. Bitácora Deportiva. July 2019. https://bitacoradeportiva.com/2019/07/chico-heron-y-el-ultimo-42-mas-alla-de-un-documental/. Accessed February 18, 2020.
2. 3 Feb 1949, 2 – The Greenwood Commonwealth at Newspapers.com. World Collection. http://newscomwc.newspapers.com/image/256241454/?terms=%22charles%2Bbuckwalter%22&pqsid=eMjDxW4rkefPBHTN8UZlxA%3A1677000%3A605032549. Accessed February 20, 2020.
3. 10 Jul 1947, Page 18 – The Anniston Star at Newspapers.com. World Collection. http://newscomwc.newspapers.com/image/115196523/?terms=%22meridian%2Bpeps%22%2Bbuckwalter&pqsid=eMjDxW4rkefPBHTN8UZlxA%3A387000%3A475837619. Accessed February 20, 2020.
4. 13 Jan 1949, 5 – The Selma Times-Journal at Newspapers.com. World Collection. http://newscomwc.newspapers.com/image/570844874/?terms=%22meridian%2Bpeps%22%2Bbuckwalter&pqsid=eMjDxW4rkefPBHTN8UZlxA%3A387000%3A475837619. Accessed February 20, 2020.
5. 31 Oct 1946, Page 1 – The Greenwood Commonwealth at Newspapers.com. World Collection. http://newscomwc.newspapers.com/image/237763696/?terms=%22meridian%2Bpeps%22%2Bstadium&pqsid=eMjDxW4rkefPBHTN8UZlxA%3A29000%3A1076385601. Accessed February 20, 2020.
6. 1930’s Baseball Stadium Abandoned in the Woods. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Sy7NUlFGtY. Accessed February 15, 2020.
7. Hall S. A Hollywood Tour of Scottsboro (AL) by Lloyd Royal.; 2019. https://vimeo.com/351968575. Accessed February 20, 2020.
8. ABANDONED Amusement Park (RECLAIMED BY FOREST). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovw5LVEKqdg&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR3nWeQfdL_4rcPT6lqeOmH3pI03Sxv6stepCgpCsekuGacQOhkKBiVcZdw. Accessed February 17, 2020.
9. Abandoned amusement park in Meridian, Mississippi. reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/creepy/comments/29elrm/abandoned_amusement_park_in_meridian_mississippi/. Accessed February 15, 2020.
10. Abandoned Places. https://www.facebook.com/groups/2401827766750140/permalink/2431009947165255/. Accessed February 17, 2020.
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Cover image courtesy Kirk @ Secret Fun Blog; podcast carousel background by 4045 @freepik.com; theme music “Aerobatics in Slow Motion” by TeknoAXE.

Roadside Attractions and the Interstate Highway System

As I’ve discussed so often on this podcast, many smaller theme parks and roadside attractions in the US harken back to the days when the roads in the US were much less established. In particular, some of the attractions I’ll be talking about today, like Mount Rushmore and Dinosaur Park, were both products of the late 1930s, well before the Interstate Highway System. To really center ourselves on today’s episode, I wanted to dig a little deeper into the history of roads in the United States before we talk about today’s theme park Dinosaur World.

In the beginning of the 20th century, the nation primarily had dirt “auto trails”, marked by colored bands on telephone poles to help orient travelers (or barns or rocks or literally any surface facing the road). Roads were more or less terrible – they turned to impassable knee-deep mud after rains or floods, and then became scored with huge ruts and furrows that made any cart or car ride bone-shakingly uncomfortable.

The railway was the primary mode for interstate travel, with roadways being of mostly local and rural interest. Think about your average country dirt backroad and you might have the shape of it. For long-distance travel, a person was far more likely to choose the railroad, because it actually did the job. There was chatter and growing support for a set of improved interstate roadways, but Congress wasn’t yet interested in providing federal funding for such projects, with nice roads reportedly considered luxuries. Auto trails, then, were run by local trail associations, uniting local roads of various qualities and differing signages. 

And I was surprised to learn that many of these roads weren’t laid out along the quickest route or the route that made the most geographic sense. No, apparently the businesses and towns along the routes paid dues to the trail associations which published trail guides and promoted the use of their routes. Therefore, it was to the benefit of pretty much everyone except the traveler to have routes be quite indirect.

The Lincoln Highway

A man named Carl Fisher, remembered for little things like the Indianapolis Motor Speedway and major development of the city of Miami Beach, has been credited with the conception and development of the literally groundbreaking idea, the Lincoln Highway. In 1912 he began promoting a dream: a modern transcontinental highway to connect New York and San Francisco. “Let’s build it before we’re too old to enjoy it!” he told his friends, people like Theodore Roosevelt, Thomas Edison, and Woodrow Wilson. 

It was still a trail association, but on a grand scale.

Early funding for the project came from private investors and businesses, before the government was interested. The progress of the Lincoln Highway was widely reported throughout newspapers, with each major or minor monetary contribution publicized and promoted, improving public opinion regarding public roadway projects. Convoys were sent across the country, to scout the route, visit the towns, and generally promote the project. The US Army had a well-publicized contribution, called the Transcontinental Motor Convoy in 1919. It took them two months to travel across the country, due to broken bridges and muddy crossings which stranded vehicles. These difficulties were used to show the need for better interstate highways and helped build popular support on both federal and local levels. 

The Numbered US Highway System

The Lincoln Highway also encourage or required high quality paved roadbeds along its routes. It was groundbreaking, and many additional associations built or improved roadway systems under the trail association model, often in the popular transcontinental direction. There were over 250 named routes by the mid-1920s, things like the Pikes Peak Ocean to Ocean Highway, the Three C Highway, the Dixie Highway, and so on.

However, the increase in named roads and automobile traffic led to a rise in problems as a result. Some routes went through dues-paying cities instead of through the best route for drivers, such as the Arrowhead Trail, favored back in the day by the state of Utah for keeping LA-bound drivers in Utah for hundreds of (desolate) miles longer than the competing Lincoln Highway. Confusion among drivers over which route to take was common, and was almost encouraged by cross-promotion from different trail booster associations. Additionally, many routes overlapped, which caused further confusion among drivers. 

And ultimately it seemed as though the association model meant fewer people were willing to take responsibility for road conditions, signage, and improvements (meaning roads weren’t maintained). The common method for directions at the time referred to landmarks – turn after the red barn, take the right-hand fork after the fallen log, and so on – well, this was just confusing, and if any slight change in the environment occurred, drivers would be hopelessly lost. As state highway engineer Arthur Hirst remarked to a National Road Congress in 1918, “The ordinary trail promoter has seemingly considered that plenty of wind and a few barrels of paint are all that is required to build and maintain a 2000-mile trail.” A 1918 map shows the mind-boggling number of short trails drivers were told to use: https://www.loc.gov/item/73692230/. 

In 1918, Wisconsin led the way to a more logical process which is still in use today: a uniform numbering system. Signs were posted everywhere along routes, with the plan being “to be rather profuse with these road markers” as travelers would flourish with the “kindly reminder that he is still on the right road”. No longer in Wisconsin then would travelers be confused – now a direction could be “take number 12 until you meet number 21”, much more clear (particularly in the midwest’s snowy weather, where I speak to you from today). However, names lingered in prominence for another decade or so, even in those states like Wisconsin and Iowa that had adopted numbering systems. 

By the early 1920s, however, the governments had gotten involved, with the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHO). The number of vehicles had gone from 0.5 million in 1910 to almost 10 million by 1920, and over 26 million by 1930. The government, through a series of committees and meetings, developed what would eventually be called the US Numbered Highway System, or in casual parlance, US Routes or US Highways. The trail associations obviously kicked up a fuss (why not substitute “arithmetic for history, mathematics for romance”, said one Ernest McGaffey of the Automobile Club of Southern California, who advised motorists at the time to always pack a tent, shovel, and ax when driving), but in the end, logic won out.

On November 11, 1926, all of the old national road trails were officially renumbered into the US National Highway System. (The in-depth history of the change from names to numbers is fascinating, and I recommend reading Richard Weingroff’s article “From Names to Numbers: The Origins of the U.S. Numbered Highway System”.)  The numbered system almost immediately rendered the trail association system obsolete, with new clear iconic black and white shield signage telling drivers where they were and where they were going, clear and simple. The federal government also began to maintain and improve the roads in this system.

This, then, is the road system in place at the time of the construction of Mount Rushmore and Dinosaur Park.

Interstate Highway System

Of course, as I discussed some in my previous episode on the towns called Santa Claus, these were still smaller roads, often only two lanes. Pavement or even good quality road condition was still not a guarantee as we might think of today. As early as 1938, FDR, the 32nd US president, began commissioning studies and reports on potential “superhighway” corridors, with additional reports and plans coming in over the next decade.

The 34th US President was one Dwight Eisenhower, and he was a champion of the proposed Interstate Highway system. If you recall, the 1919 Transcontinental Army Convoy was meant to showcase the Lincoln Highway, as I mentioned a few minutes ago. A young Lieutenant Eisenhower happened to be a part of that convoy, and found the experience incredibly memorable. Combined with his experiences of Germany’s autobahn system in the 1940s, he saw considerable advantage in constructing a true interstate highway system. 

The Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 became law, and marked the beginning of the Interstate Highway System. Through a gasoline tax funding the Highway Trust Fund, the federal government would pay for 90% of the cost of interstate highway construction. (The gas tax is still in place today.) Construction began immediately in 1956, and a few roads were grandfathered into the system, such as the Pennsylvania Turnpike, portions of which were constructed in 1940. 

I won’t dwell much more on the interstate highway system, as I’ve already covered it in a bit more depth in other episodes. It wasn’t until 1992 that the system was declared complete, some 35 years after its implementation (and 23 years longer than it was originally said to take). And of course, although this seems recent, the mid-90s were still almost thirty years ago. (!)

Emmet Sullivan

Against this background, I bring you back to the topic at hand. It’s time to talk about a man named Emmet Aloysious Sullivan, born in 1887, back in the Gilded Age. He was originally a cowboy in Montana. After serving in the first World War, Sullivan returned to South Dakota and turned to sculpture. 

Sullivan, of course, was the guy who did many of the Dinosaur World sculptures. We’ll get there. It’s a long and winding podcast road today. Before he sculpted Dinosaur World in Arkansas, Sullivan worked on a number of different projects.

Sullivan is widely noted for being one of the assistant sculptors on Mount Rushmore, there in the Black Hills of South Dakota. He’s said to have worked closely with the head sculptor, the famous (and infamous) Gutzon Borglum. Look into this guy if you need a deep dive, for real. There’s no payroll records of Sullivan working on the project, no obvious newspaper stories, but South Dakota was even less populated at the beginning of the 1900s than it is now in 2020, so it’s likely that the two sculptors were at least familiar with one another in passing.

Sculpting of George Washington on Mount Rushmore began in 1927, and was completed in 1934; the seven-year construction period was due to the onset of the Great Depression. Subsequent presidential heads were completed in 1936, 1937, and 1939.

After his time on Rushmore, Sullivan continued his work as a sculptor, on a slightly smaller scale. His next project was a roadside attraction called Dinosaur Park, located not too far from Mount Rushmore, in Rapid City, South Dakota.

Dinosaur Park in South Dakota

Against our background of a burgeoning motorist society, still lightyears more retro than our systems today, Emmet Sullivan’s Dinosaur Park was commissioned in February of 1936 by the WPA (Works Progress Administration). In case you’ve forgotten your high school history classes, I’ll be happy to oblige. The WPA was part of FDR’s New Deal programs, designed to combat the Great Depression. The goal was to employ the unemployed, ultimately some 3.3 million people at its peak. Jobs were all public works, most planned and sponsored by states, cities, and counties. There were things like roads and bridges, libraries and post offices, museums and playgrounds and swimming pools and parks. 

Dinosaur Park was WPA #960. Its purpose was to “perpetuate the facts of history” and to give visitors “a fair idea as to the appearance, size, and characteristics of our earliest known inhabitants”. The idea for the park was credited to two people: Dr. C. C. O’Hara and R. L. Bronson. Dr. O’Hara was the retired president of the South Dakota School of Engineering and Mines. He was also a paleontologist, fascinated by the fossils he and others discovered in the Badlands of South Dakota. Bronson was much less storied, being a secretary at the Rapid City Chamber of Commerce. He was said to have conceived of the idea for the park after seeing a mechanical dinosaur at the Chicago Century of Progress expo.

The location, of course, was to help promote tourism and attract visitors who were driving out to see the under-construction Mount Rushmore. Rapid City is the major city in the area. It’s the closest town near the monument (about half an hour away) and tourists would and do pass through Rapid City off US Route 16 (today, I-90 occupies much of the old US-16 route) to get to the site. Today, the town is called The Gateway to the Black Hills. 

Emmet Sullivan and Dinosaur Park

The designer for the dinosaurs was of course, sculptor Emmet Sullivan. Up to 25 other people were involved in the construction at the project’s peak, costing ultimately around $25,000.

Construction was not straightforward, and there was a dispute between Sullivan and the WPA which halted construction in the winter of 1937-1938. The dispute, and I can’t make this up, was over the dinosaurs’ teeth and how they were to be installed. Apparently Sullivan resigned as project foreman and kept the dino teeth. After some persuading, he gave the T-rex’s teeth to the WPA people for them to install and said he’d make the rest of the dino teeth later. His replacement did not follow directions regarding the teeth installation, and therefore Sullivan refused to make any more teeth for the other designers. After a few months, the Chamber of Commerce broke the stalemate by hiring Sullivan to work for them and complete the project, subsequently opening in summer 1938.

Each dinosaur was built upon a base of two-inch black piping, and then a framework of steel tubes, which was then covered by heavy steel mesh and then of course, that wonder, concrete, 4-5 inches thick. Atop, a layer of paint: tradition indicates the dinos were originally gray; but fairly early on based on newspaper reports, a green and white color scheme was introduced. “The Rapid City Journal reported that, “reincarnated in steel and concrete on ground they once trod in quest of plant food, five giants of a past age will soon look down from Hangman’s Hill on some of the wonders of the present age—a ten story 269 building, the automobile, and the airplane.””

The dinosaurs, for those listening, are cartoonish and almost sarcastic in appearance. They’re fun and delightful, but this is definitely the 1930s image of dinosaur – very at odds with today image of fierce, fast, bird-like beings. 

Sullivan was said to be inspired by Charles Knight’s murals at the Field Museum when designing his dinos, as well as fossils from the South Dakota area. That same Charles Knight, a year after the park opened, was said to have described its dinosaur sculptures as “awful”. These included a trachodon, brontosaurus, stegosaurus, tyrannosaurus, and triceratops.

Sullivan stayed connected with Dinosaur Park for the next couple of decades – he and his wife Lorriane ran the concession stand at Dinosaur Park until about 1965 or 1966.

One source gave Dinosaur Park the label of “the first Dinosaur theme park”; given our terminology here on the podcast, it’s quite clear that this was not a theme park, being only some dino sculptures on a hill. However, it’s an interesting historical dinosaur attraction, and informs our continuing discussion on Emmet Sullivan’s dinosaurs, as we wind our way towards Land of Kong in Beaver, AR via a long, twisty trail association type of podcast road. 

Christ of the Ozarks

Round about 1966, Emmet Sullivan and his family left Rapid City. He was reportedly looking for a potential job on a project commemorating the Trail of Tears, when he had a chance meeting with a guy called Gerald L. K. Smith and his wife Elna L. Smith. I’m not going to delve too deeply into their histories because it’s really outside the scope of this show, but suffice to say that these two had some incredibly troublesome personal politics and a long history of using racism and religion as far-right political attack. Senator Strom Thurmond said of him, “We do not need the support of Gerald L. K. Smith and other rabble rousers who use race prejudice and class hatred to inflame the emotions of the people.” 

The Smiths retired to Arkansas, and hunted for a project. The project they settled on in their retirement was called Christ of the Ozarks, a five-story-tall concrete and steel behemoth set up on the top of Magnetic Mountain in Eureka Springs, AR. This place was a former spa town, a haven in the days before World War II when spring water was considered the amazing cure-all. After the war, as actual remedies to diseases began to become commonplace, the popularity of towns like Eureka Springs began to fall. 

One article described Eureka Springs in the modern era as a melting pot for quackery of various types: UFO enthusiasts, bikers, car restorers, and chakra healers. Whether any of that’s true, I can’t say, but it does seem that there was a live and let live attitude, so when announcements were made about this giant sculpture with a potentially problematic backing, very little fuss occurred. “Father Francis Jenesco expressed the prevailing attitude, “I’m not against it. I don’t know that much about it. I know [Smith is] a very controversial gentleman, so beyond that, please don’t quote me.”” 

Sullivan was the primary sculptor for the giant Christ figure, although only for the body and arms. Reportedly the face and hands were done by his associate, Adrian Forrette, as Sullivan, this self-taught artist, apparently didn’t consider himself great at hands or faces. The statue as a whole is is minimalistic, with simple lines and an almost cartoonish aspect.  

There are plenty of facts and figures available about this sculpture online, things like “each hand is built to hold the weight of a car” and “the sculpture can withstand 500 mph winds”. At the time, Christ of the Ozarks was one of only four giant Jesus sculptures in the world, with the others in Rio de Janeiro, Spain, and Columbia. The sculpting took about a year, and the massive statue was dedicated in 1966. If you’re interested in additional in-depth details on the attraction, including sociopolitical fallout, visit this link: https://web.archive.org/web/20051217000520/http://users.aristotle.net/~russjohn/sacpro.html. 

Wall Drug Dinosaur

Sullivan was known for another dino, as well: the Wall Drug dinosaur. 80 feet long (yes, eighty, not eight), this mega-sculpture has lightbulbs for eyes and sits near I-90. You know there’s got to be a good story if it has a giant dinosaur.

See, we’ve got another guy. There’s always a guy. 

Ted Hustead, a pharmacist, opened up a tiny drugstore in 1931, in a town called Wall, SD, known back then as “the geographical center of nowhere”. Said by Dorothy Hustead’s father to be “just about as Godforsaken as you can get”, the Husteads spent their first five years in Wall barely breaking even with “Hustead’s Drugstore”, as it was called then. People just weren’t coming.

One day in 1936, as Ted Hustead recollected, his wife Dorothy came up with the solution: travelers were thirsty after driving across the hot prairie. Why didn’t they put up signs on the highway advertising free ice water? They used “Wall Drug” as the name on the signs since it was shorter and easier to read and remember.

Reportedly this wasn’t groundbreaking, as every drugstore offered free water back in the day, but their new signs on nearby US-14 worked and business boomed.

By the 1950s, Ted and Dorothy’s son Bill began improving the business and making it into a true attraction. He built indoor restrooms, added an art gallery and a mall and a museum and so on and so forth.

But the times, they are a-changin’. In the mid-1960s, the path of the road US-14 was shifted with the construction of I-90, the new freeway (remember the Federal Highway Act of 1956?). Wall was bypassed, as an alternate route. The Husteads didn’t sit back, however, to let their business fade away. They commissioned Emmet Sullivan to build a giant dinosaur sculpture to serve as a billboard, pointing guests back to Wall Drug. 

The timing isn’t exactly clear – it’s most likely that the dino would’ve been completed between the Christ of the Ozarks (June 1966) and the beginning of Farwell’s Dinosaur Park (announced May 1967) but it could’ve been before or during Christ of the Ozarks, too. I’ve found several photos of the dinosaur dated to 1967 (ex: https://flickr.com/photos/thedouglascampbellshow/3136340925/in/photolist-5M9yTx-5kK7kw-5MdNTu) but none earlier than that, so I do think it’s quite likely that after he was done with the Christ statue, Sullivan moved to Wall to build the large bronotosaurus-like dino.

The giant apatasaurus did its job, recruiting visitors back to Wall Drug for its five cent coffee and free ice water, and the store survived the road changes. Not only survived, but thrived. 

Dinosaur World in Beaver, AR

Finally, finally, we get to the meat of our story, down in Beaver, AR, about fifteen minutes outside of Eureka Springs. It’s time to talk about the strange park that was Dinosaur World, or Dinosaur World by any other name. It also went by Farwell’s Dinosaur Park and John Agar’s Land of Kong.

From here we meet another guy, one Ola Farwell, anecdotally quite a character from the stories I’ve seen. 

Dinosaur World: Farwell’s Dinosaur Park

Ola Farwell was a cattle man in the Eureka Springs, AR, area, described in a 1918 newspaper as “a prominent young farmer and stockman”. He married Maye Shaffer, a popular local school teacher (interestingly, the marriage was kept secret until the end of Mae’s last school session, very Little House on the Prairie). Reportedly, she sat on a scorpion on the wagon seat as they headed off to their honeymoon.

There in rural Northern Arkansas, he bred free-range Hereford cattle, advertising said cattle for sale in the local paper as early as 1919. His farm was later called White River Stock Farm. Based on newspaper accounts, he was attempting to introduce higher grades of cattle on farms in the area, with the slogan “it pays to breed the better kind”. (Here is where I take a brief sidebar to delight in the old newspaper habits. In my research, there were dozens of wonderful brief mentions of what people were up to, including this gem: “Ola Farwell is having lumber sawed on his place.” Early social media, truly.)  For much of the first half of the 20th century, Ola Farwell was constantly in the papers, buying and selling Hereford (whiteface) cattle.

The Farwells moved to Eureka Springs and owned a feed lot and a grocery there. Maye Farwell was a businesswoman of her own right – she worked at the grocery and made and supplied school lunches for the local Old Red Brick Schoolhouse. It was in her name that the family residence at 218 Spring Street, Eureaka Springs, was purchased.

But certainly, one can only do such farming for so long. 

By May 1967, a notice appeared in the Northwest Arkansas Times, describing a “giant dinosaur park” that was now under construction, under the direction of that giant of sculptors, Emmet Sullivan. 

Of course, as we’ve established, Sullivan had been in Eureka Springs for a few years, constructing the Christ of the Ozarks statue, with side trips for the Wall Drug dino, and it was here that he met Ola Farwell and the two became friends. 

Farwell reportedly always loved children and dinosaurs, so a dinosaur-themed park directed at children seemed a natural retirement project.

According to the first newspaper report, five whole sculptures were planned initially, placing the attraction more on the scale of Dinosaur Park in South Dakota. 

Ultimately, of course, over a hundred different concrete sculptures occupied the 65 acres of the parklands, there in Northern Arkansas, just next to a body of water called Spider Creek, and the large Spider Creek Lake. Once, these were called Cedar Creek and Dinosaur Park Lake.

Though of course Sullivan directed and designed the dinos, many local workers were said to be responsible for the actual construction, supposedly at the “dinosaur factory” across the street from the park. These include Bill Sherman and Jessie Orvis Parker, said to have been responsible for constructing much of the steel framework for the dinosaurs. A. C. McBride is described as the man responsible for much of the cement concrete work. And finally, names like Mike Evans and Bill and Gary Armer are said to have painted the dinos in “realistic colors”. The exact meaning of thisis is somewhat up for debate: legend holds that the dinos may have originally been painted in dull browns, and then at some point, perhaps in the early 90s, were repainted in the vibrant multicolor scheme that can still be seen faded even today in 2020. 

Orvis Parker (or Jessie, as he was called) is a common name in the Farwell period of the park. It’s said that he ran or even owned the park under Farwell, responsible for the grounds and the gift shop, and his wife Mary running the restaurant or cafe. According to a grandchild online, her cooking was excellent – hamburgers, fries, milkshakes, and fountain sodas. Several extended family members online in comment sections about the park fondly remember their childhoods growing up, running around and experiencing the park. 

This era of the park was immortalized on film, in the intro to the 1969 horror flick “It’s Alive!”. The movie is available on YouTube, so feel free to see it for yourself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FzhuX4du9U. 

Inside Farwell’s Dinosaur Park

The park itself, then, as sourced from a contemporary newspaper article a few years after the park’s opening, worked as follows. It operated from 7 am to 7 pm, year round, at a cost of $1 per adult, and $0.50 per child. Two concrete dinosaur babies hatched from eggs served as greeters by the entrance, along with a fierce caveman figure. After purchasing your tickets from inside the restaurant/gift shop, you’d head out on the two mile course, either on foot or by car (speed limit: five miles per hour).

The first part of the pathway was lined with rocks and fossils from all over the US, reportedly a favorite hobby or collection of Farwell’s. At the time of the article, Farwell was reportedly in the process of building a “large, authentic replica of the moon to eventually house the rock collection and other exceptional exhibits”. This dome-shaped structure was eventually built, and housed something called the largest Noah’s Ark mural in the world. 

Inside the park, then, of course, were the attractions: the animals. All fake, of course, done up in concrete. The early days reportedly saw as many familiar animals as dinosaurs: monkeys, deer, rabbits, a kangaroo, and a monster snake. The snake, unlike some of the others, was actually a grapevine, painted yellow with orange spots, and still quite fearsome. A sculpture of a brown bear with an open mouth held an entire hive of honeybees, buzzing merrily on warm summer days.

Dinosaur Park’s thrills primarily came from the long, swinging wooden bridge, over what was then called Dinosaur Park Lake. Running from land to a pavilion and then back to land, the bridge was either very high above the water in dry times or almost touching the water in wet times. From the pavilion, guests could get fish food out of a dispenser to feed the many trout stocked in the lake.

Most of the dinos at the time stood nearby to the bridge. There was the star: 22-foot-tall T. rex, with a fish clamped between his jaws. A saber-toothed tiger. A Paleoscincus, looking like a prehistoric turtle. They weren’t confined to land, either: “Climbing out of the lake is also another giant dinosaur and an ominous octopus with a 32-foot tentacle spread. ” Up on the hillside, more dinosaurs and prehistoric animals: Triceratops, the club-tailed Unitarium, Stegosaurus, duck-billed Trachodon, a tasked Mastodon, and the classic, the beloved Brontosaurus.

Future plans (as of the early 1970s from this article) called for “an elaborate replica of Noah’s Ark” up on a hill, to be reached by cable cars.

The early days at Dinosaur Park were idyllic.

Dinosaur World: John Agar’s Land of Kong

Of course, change and time come for us all.

By the 1970s, the interstate highway system had been under construction for 15-20 years. Families were still far more likely to travel by car than by airplane, so family vacations, even to distant attractions like Disney, still went by numbers of roadside attractions. Farwell’s Dinosaur Park continued to attract visitors.

Sullivan died in November of 1970, three years after the Dinosaur Park opened, survived by a wife, two children, and multiple grandchildren. Farwell and his Dinosaur Park carried on, however, at least for a while. New dinosaurs were regularly added, constructed in that “dinosaur factory” across the street. Guests were generally happy with the park, although on occasion, guests demanded money back because “the dinosaurs were fake”. For some portion of the park’s life during this period, a local realtor named Reeves was said to operate bumper boats on the park’s lake. 

In 1980, Farwell sold the park. He still lived in the area (and indeed, it wasn’t until almost a decade later, in 1988, that Ola Farwell passed away) but he was getting older and saw the writing on the wall regarding his time with the park. A man named Ken Childs, and his wife June Davidson, decided to purchase the park and liven it up.

And they were friends with a guy called John Agar (pronounced Ay-gar), by his son’s account in an old interview from “Scary Monsters Magazine #76”.

Now, most people who are listening to this episode have no idea who John Agar is. I didn’t, not until I did the research for this episode. Turns out, he was a minor big deal back in the day. Agar is perhaps best known for being Shirley Temple’s first wife. They made two movies together prior to their divorce (Wikipedia, that always correct resource (sarcasm) cites “mental cruelty” as the grounds for diverce). Agar then continued making films on his own, becoming strongly associated with B-movie horrors, movies like The Mole People, Revenge of the Creature, and so on.

June Davidson and Ken Childs, with the permission of their friend John Agar, renamed the park “John Agar’s Land of Kong”. It was a tie-in to the 1976 King Kong remake, which was popular at the time and which Agar had a minor role in.

John Agar is quoted as saying: “A friend of mine who’s now deceased, Ken Childs, he bought this place that a farmer had built up with a bunch of dinosaurs and stuff like that on it. They wanted to build a King Kong and refurbish the existing dinosaurs there. They looked like cartoon characters, instead of what they would actually look like. It was like Walt Disney went down there and did them. Ken contacted a guy in Texas to build this Kong for him. The place was eventually called “John Agar’s Land of Kong.” I just let them use my name. I think it’s still there. I’ve never seen the actual place in person, only photos. He was a friend and I just let him use my name. I guess he figured, since I was in KING KONG it had some relevance.“”

In the late 1970s, the park had already had a large plywood King Kong stationed by the roadside to beckon guests (apparently with a cutout of Ayatollah Khomeini with a noose around his neck, a popular sentiment for a few years). Other political viewpoints were also displayed openly: caveman Ronald Reagan spanking caveman Tip O’Neill was said to have been painted on another mural at the park, a very 80s thing.

But Childs and Davidson wanted something more than plywood and murals. 

So they commissioned a guy down in Texas, Bert Holster, to build a King Kong sculpture, to put in the park proper. 

Holster was known for building smaller fiberglass sculptures, but this King Kong was off the scale. Exact dimensions are not agreed upon, but he’s said to be more than 35-45 feet tall and designed to hold a life-sized person (looking like Fay Wray) in one hand, he was bigger than anything Holster had ever Holster had to cut a hole in between the two stories of the abandoned fire house in Clarksville TX that he used as a studio in order to accommodate the construction of the beast. King Kong was built out of fiberglass on top of a plaster and wood base, later removed. Originally, he was built with some animation: reportedly, his arms beat his chest, his eyes lit up red, and his jaws moved in the early years. However, these effects reportedly quickly broke.

Kong was built over three years, installed sometime in 1984.

It’s said that Farwell had originally wanted a sculpture of General Douglas MacArthur, but that local officials nixed this idea, being okay with the second choice of King Kong. 

1984 was a busy year. In 1984, Ken Childs died, and the park was left in the hands of his wife, June Davidson. Accounts online paint some possible familial infighting as a result. The ownership of the park after Childs and Davidson is muddled at best, unfortunately, without me being able to physically go down to the records offices, which is out of the scope of this podcast. Some commenters online claim that there were potential legal issues involved with the estate post-1984. 

Dinosaur World

The park was said to have been the largest dinosaur park in the world, although this is a claim easily made and difficult to prove. Sculptures were still said to have been added, repaired, and repainted. A dome building had been constructed, near the King Kong sculpture (take a look in the background of the King Kong image above). Though originally this had been intended for the fossil exhibits, the “World’s Largest Noah’s Ark Mural” was said to have been begun inside this dome. It’s not clear if it was ever finished or what happened to it. (By the time the park was closed and abandoned, the mural had long gone, although this is getting ahead of myself a little.)

In 1995, June Davidson changed the name of the park to Dinosaur World, in order to follow the tide of the then-popular movie Jurassic Park. The attraction retained the name Dinosaur World until its ultimate closure in 2005. Dinosaur World is the name the park is best known for today.

It’s said that it was Davidson and what appear to have been her siblings who ran the park after this point; June Davidson was later said to have moved to California. Ted Prysock is said to have run the general store and overseen daily operations for some time. In fact, Ted is pictured on the mural in front of the old ticket booth and restaurant – he was the man in the middle with the trucker hat. Reportedly, the mural image was a remarkable likeness.

Brother Bob Prysock, sister to June, is also said to have served as caretaker and/or possible owner, although when the park ownership was transfered to him is unclear. Other managers and caretakers have also been mentioned in online accounts: Danny, Nita, John. Somewhere around 2004, the park was sold, from “Dinosaur Bob” Prysock to the current owner, Peter Godfrey. Mr. Godfrey also owns the Spider Creek Resort (cabins, fishing, etc) which his father had owned before him, making the local property purchase a natural one. 

A late version of the Dinosaur World website remains archived on the Internet Archive. The ad copy reads: “Welcome to Dinosaur World. We are a 65 acre park with over 90 life size prehistoric replicas. The park is arranged where you can walk or drive through with over 2 miles of road. See a FOUR story King Kong. Bring a picnic because we have a lake with tables close by. You can even fish if you bring your own equipment and have an Arkansas fishing license. There’s a waterfall and swinging bridge also. Don’t forget to stop by our gift shop on your way out. We have all kinds of unique items. Park is open from March to mid-December. We are open 7 days a week in the summer. Hours are from 9 am – 6 pm but are flexible so you may want to call ahead just to be sure. Admission: $4.00 – Adults, $3.50 – Seniors, $2.50 – Kids 4 -12”

Right before the park closed, it served as a filming location for a brief scene in the Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst vehicle Elizabethtown, and the iconic T. rex with the fish in its mouth is featured on the DVD cover. 

The park closed for the usual reasons, it seems, which you could guess by this point if you’re a regular listener to the podcast. (Sidebar: I’m surprised by how unsurprising the reasons for a theme park closure are. Very few parks close with a catastrophe (like Six Flags New Orleans); most close because of entirely prosaic and unsurprising reasons.) Insurance costs were said to be rising, and the tourism market had fallen significantly after 9/11 across the board. Places like Disney World could rebound, but a small place like Dinosaur World, already faltering, couldn’t. The hours became more irregular, the maintenance became spottier, the roads were less regularly traveled. Indeed, the changing patterns of road travel have routinely been suggested as the ultimate long-term downfall for Dinosaur World. However, I couldn’t link this to any specific road closure; rather, it seems that US 412, some 30 miles south of Dinosaur World, may have become the preferred route for east-west travel across Northern Arkansas, where previously the more scenic and less direct US 62 had been preferred. If the roadside attraction is no longer easily accessible off the main road, well…

Dinosaur World Memories

There are many online who remember Dinosaur World from the good days, when it was a functioning amusement park. In general, people who visited it loved the place. If you were a kid and visited, the place was a wonderland, the stuff childhood summer dreams are made of. The dinosaurs were huge and there was tons of open space – two miles’ worth of open space, of trees and grass and water. You could touch everything – it was made out of concrete, you weren’t going to break anything. You could run and jump. 

Comments online recall the thrill of the place – the simple joys of the wooden swinging bridge, the nearby campground with a small candy store, the cheap ceramic dinosaurs sold in the gift shop. There were fish in the lake, plywood dinosaur flats called “2D-sauruses”, off-color paintings throughout the gift shop and bathrooms. 

Seeing that first dinosaur from the road as you drove to the park was the most special thrill of them all, according to former visitors – that jump and excitement of the unreal made real.  

Abandoned Dinosaur World

After its closure in 2005, Dinosaur World sat, abandoned. Visits are documented regularly online. Some folks managed to get permission to explore, others were chased away by someone from a trailer on a hill near the park entrance, others simply trespassed without interacting with anyone. All images and stories paint a picture of a tired roadside attraction, past its prime, only looking as good as it did because of the strength of concrete and rebar. 

One interesting exploration story comes via user WhitewallsJohnson on TheSamba.com, a forum for VW enthusiasts. This person discovered a uniquely-painted VW bus, rotting away inside the front gate of the abandoned theme park. After some hunting, they found the contact info for the owner, and began making offers. Eventually, one was accepted. The VW van was driven off to a new home elsewhere in the Ozarks, and the new owners refurbished the bus. The exterior that originally attracted them, however, stayed the same, as recently as 2015: bright yellow, with hand-painted “Land of Kong” words and unique dinosaur-cavemen-King-Kong scenes on both sides. Above the running boards, “65 acres of dinosaurs” was written. It’s an incredibly kitschy type of advertising from back in the day, and speaks to the joyful fun that could be found in a place like Dinosaur World. Of course we all know that dinosaurs and cavemen and King Kong didn’t exist together in reality. That didn’t make the juxtaposition any less fun.

Back in Eureka Springs, the property continued to decay. Occasional maintenance, like mowing around the sculptures, was still performed, but otherwise, the dinosaurs continued to flake paint, tip over, and rust. Paint faded, and the dinosaurs were becoming much closer to their original pale visages than they’d been in several decades. 

The gift shop was said to still contain neat shelves full of tchotkes and other sale items, years after the park closed. However, it wouldn’t last. The single building containing the gift shop, restaurant, and bathrooms caught fire in 2011, and was completely destroyed. Police suspected arson.

Road signs and billboards remained, advertising the park for at least a decade after it closed. Being a solid 10-15 minutes off the highway, this had to be a frustration for the tired parents who followed the billboards and not the park’s website, having to explain that no, Johnny, we can’t get out and see the dinosaurs after all.

Inside the park, decay. The photos are eerie. Overgrown foliage, with a faded dinosaur peeking out, half the tail rusting away. Cavemen missing faces or hands or arms to the rust. Round a corner, and run headlong into another strange interpretation of a dinosaur, looming. Look at the Google maps view. Your brain sees shapes, and begins picking out the image, and bam, a decrepit dinosaur resolves right in front of you. Sculpted in a form somewhere in between realism and art and scientific fossil, the dinosaurs in abandonment mostly just appear sad and forlorn.

King Kong, the massive once-namesake, stood proudly for years. He finally toppled over between March 2012 and March 2014. Whether he went down by man or nature is unclear.

The bridge out to the pavilion over the lake lasted quite a long time as well, despite how sketchy it had to be getting without maintenance. Based on satellite imagery, both bridge and pavilion were demolished between February 2017 and March 2018.  

As far as the principal players in the tale, most have passed on, leaving behind a bevy of extended family members who’ve commented online sharing fond memories of growing up and visiting the park. Sculptor Emmet Sullivan died in 1970. Original owner Ola Farwell died in 1988 and his wife Bertha Maye Shaffer Farwell in 1993. Ken Childs, who was the second owner with his wife June Davidson, died in 1984. June’s brother and presumed later owner and operator, Bob Prysock, died in 2008, with his memorial ceremony held right at the three-years-abandoned Dinosaur World. From what I can tell, June Davidson appears to still be alive, living the good life in California. And though Dinosaur World remains closed, current owner Godfrey’s other property, the Spider Creek Resort, just across the highway and down a little, is still open and doing good business for the trout fishing and nature enthusiast. As of 2009, the property was said to be intended for a golf course and sports bar; in 2020, those plans have yet to materialize.

And of course, I would be negligent in my duties as the overly-detailed tale-teller that I am, if I didn’t tell you that Dinosaur World is quite close to another abandoned place I’ve already discussed at length on this podcast. Yes, you could spend the hour and a half drive between Dinosaur World and Dogpatch USA by listening to my similarly long history on that park. (If you’re not following me on Twitter or Facebook, you’ve might’ve missed the news that Dogpatch has been foreclosed, again, and is set for public auction on March 3rd. If you have a million dollars, you too can soon purchase a theme park!) 

Visitors in the mid-20th century apparently often included both theme parks in the same road trip; today in 2020, both places are abandoned, off the beaten path, and forgotten more often than not.

The Other Dinosaur Attractions Today

The other attractions I discussed are still kicking to this day. 

Ironically, despite sculptor Emmet Sullivan’s original dispute with the WPA over the proper teeth of the dinosaurs at Dinosaur Park in South Dakota, they today have fairly sad teeth, and for a long time, had no teeth. A 1952 article “interviews” the T. rex, bemoaning the tourists who, in the late 1940s, knocked out the dino’s teeth for souveniers. In June of 1997, Dinosaur Park was officially listed on the National Register of Historic Places, and is still operational today.

Wall Drug too is still in operation today, not too far from Dinosaur Park in South Dakota. Before his death in 1999,Ted Hustead pointed to the free ice water as his greatest lesson, demonstrating that helping people would allow one success even in the middle of Godforsaken nowhere. The store today is over 75,000 square feet and can see over 20,000 tourists in a single day at the height of the season. Placards and stickers and signs for Wall Drug are all over the world, even up in Antarctica. https://www.walldrug.com/about-us/wall-drug-signs

Conclusions

Dinosaur World (and Wall Drug dino and Dinosaur Park and even Prehistoric Forest back in the Irish Hills of Michigan – listener Colleen, that’s a mention just for you!) — Dinosaur World isn’t the first time I’ve discussed dinosaurs on the podcast and it won’t be the last. There’s a plethora of dinosaur attractions out there, some still operational, but many abandoned and defunct.

What’s the fascination with dinosaurs?

That could be an entire podcast episode and research topic on its own, for sure. In my opinion, dinosaurs are so popular because of how universally beloved they are. A dinosaur can appeal to almost anyone. Today we seem to strive to absolute scientific accuracy and realism over all else (see Magic Forest’s new dinos, for instance) but especially a half century ago, amateur sculptors made dinosaurs by the cement mixer load. Precision wasn’t required, just some enthusiasm and a trowel and a plucky attitude. After all, average Joe wasn’t going to critique a dinosaur sculpture for scientific accuracy. A dinosaur was just far-enough removed from reality to be fun, and a recognizable shape could be made with little effort, pleasing to children and adults alike.

Dinosaur World or John Agar’s Land of Kong or Farwell’s Dinosaur Park – many names for this singular place. It was begun as a vibrant roadside attraction to please the children, the real ones as well as the child living inside even the crabbiest heart. It became a true star attraction for the town of Eureka Springs, close to the Missouri/Arkansas border in the northwest corner of the state near Fayetteville. Changing tourist habits and changing road preferences did the park in, but it still stands. Those faded cement and steel dinos are hard to destroy. Today, they’re sentinels from a different time, forlorn and forgotten by nearly everyone. 

Nothing, of course, is lost to us, as long as we remember it. Not even a tatty old trachodon next to an overgrown path where there used to be an amusement park.

The post Dinosaur World, or “John Agar’s Land of Kong” appeared first on The Abandoned Carousel.

January 24, 2020: I originally posted this podcast episode and accompanying blog post in September 2019. With Dogpatch USA back in the news recently, I’ve updated this post and re-published it. I’ll be back with a new episode of The Abandoned Carousel next week – see you then! –Ashley

Sadie Hawkins

This week, our story begins in perhaps a seemingly roundabout way. 

Remember Sadie Hawkins Day, that pseudo-holiday where girls ask boys to a dance? Maybe you don’t, maybe you’re a younger listener from a more enlightened era who never had this phenomenon forced on them. Let me explain. The tradition originated in the late 1930s, when culturally, men did all the inviting and women rarely were socially allowed to do the same. The Sadie Hawkins dance (and Sadie Hawkins day) became a cultural phenomenon of gender role-reversal. Women asked men out to the big dance for once!

Does it seem empowering? Does it seem enlightened? Maybe not as much as you might think.

Sadie Hawkins was not a real person. Sadie Hawkins was the “homeliest gal in all them hills”, a character from Al Capp’s Li’l Abner comic strip. She was an unmarried spinster, and when she reached the “horrifying” age of 35 years old and was still unmarried, her father came up with a plan to solve the horrifying dilemma. Depicted in the comic originally between November 13-30th, 1937, Sadie’s father set up a foot race and invited all the unmarried men from the fictional town of Dogpatch USA. Whichever one Sadie caught first at the end of the race was obligated by town law to marry her.

The idea caught fire and spread out of the newspaper comic strip and into pop culture. By 1939, two years later, Sadie Hawkins had a double-page spread in Life magazine, and Sadie Hawkins day was an annual feature of Al Capp’s Li’l Abner comic strip.

Li’l Abner

You might also be saying to yourself, who or what is Li’l Abner and why should I care?

It’s always surprising when something once so incredibly popular and well-known is in modern times an unknown, distant memory. As the wheel turns, so too go our cultural references. 

Li’l Abner was a comic strip, written and drawn by one Al Capp. It debuted in August 1934, and ran daily until November of 1977. The strip was one of, if not the first comic strips to focus on the South. Before Li’l Abner, comic strips were based around Northern experiences. (Capp, probably unsurprisingly, was not actually from the South, despite the characters in his comic.)

The strip was set in the fictional town of Dogpatch, initially located in Kentucky, but later carefully only referred to as Dogpatch USA (likely to avoid offending Kentuckians and avoid cancellations of the strip from Kentucky newspapers!). Capp described Dogpatch as “an average stone-age community nestled in a bleak valley, between two cheap and uninteresting hills somewhere.” And the plot? Not so much a plot-driven comic, this strip was about the characters and the socio-political commentary. It was loud, bawdy, detailed, sexy, and poked sharp humor at the world. 

Li’l Abner was an over-the-top stereotype of poverty and Appalachia. Residents of Dogpatch were ignorant and lazy or scoundrels and thieves. It wasn’t without purpose, though. Reportedly, the characters in Li’l Abner allowed Americans suffering through the Great Depression to laugh at someone even worse off than themselves. 

The stars of the strip were the titular Li’l Abner, his love interest and later wife Daisy Mae (their nuptials landed them a Life magazine cover in March 1952), parents Mammy and Pappy, and a host of other supporting characters. There were also a number of allegorical animals over the years, including the fabulous “shmoo”, which “bred exponentially, consumed nothing, and eagerly provided everything that humankind could wish for.” (The Wikipedia article on the characters and settings is quite detailed if you’re interested in more information.) The strip as a whole was outright misanthropic.

Reception of Li’l Abner

Li’l Abner was a cultural phenomenon. It was like nothing anyone had seen before.

At its peak, the comic reportedly reached over 70 million households, in a time when the US population was only 180 million people. That’s almost 40% of the population. 

John Steinbeck “called Capp “very possibly the best writer in the world today” in 1953, and even earnestly recommended him for the Nobel Prize in literature”. In a 1997 book, comics historian Richard Marschall said: “Capp was calling society absurd, not just silly; human nature not simply misguided, but irredeemably and irreducibly corrupt. Unlike any other strip, and indeed unlike many other pieces of literature, Li’l Abner was more than a satire of the human condition. It was a commentary on human nature itself.” 

Li’l Abner marked a change in the tone of the comics world when it was introduced in the 1930s. It introduced politics and dark social commentary into a market that was primarily filled with lighthearted amusements. As the popularity of the strip grew, the audience makeup shifted, as well, comprised mostly of adults now.

Li’l Abner was even reportedly the inspiration for MAD magazine. Both captured the satirical dark humor that was becoming more popular with American audiences.  

The comic was the subject of the first book-length scholarly critique of a comic strip, as well. “One of the few strips ever taken seriously by students of American culture,” wrote Arthur Berger. “Li’l Abner is worth studying…because of Capp’s imagination and artistry, and because of the strip’s very obvious social relevance.” (Berger shows a little bias here, since he’s the author of this first book critiquing the strip. It has exactly one review on Amazon at the time of this recording: “It wasn’t what I expected since Lil Abner doesn’t need to be psycho-analyzed.”

Li’l Abner in Pop Culture

Beyond literary criticism, Li’l Abner touched all parts of culture, particularly during the height of the comic strip’s popularity (between the 1940s-1970s). At one point, Al Capp reoprtedly convinced six of the most popular radio personalities of the mid-40s to record a song he’d written about Daisy Mae; one of these was ol’ blue eyes himself, Frank Sinatra.

There was a radio drama and a Broadway musical. There were comic book anthologies and a short-lived TV cartoon and a live-action movie. And then of course, there was licensing.

Characters from Dogpatch were licensed to dozens of popular products throughout the decades, appearing throughout the grocery store and pharmacy aisles, and on the pages of men’s and women’s magazines alike. There were toys, games, clothes, and a series of family restaurants called Li’l Abner’s. (All have gone out of business by the time of this recording in 2019; a Li’l Abner’s Steakhouse in Tucson currently operating is not related to the Al Capp comics brand.) 

And finally, beyond all of that, there was a theme park, called Dogpatch USA.

Dogpatch USA

Before it was Dogpatch USA, a now-abandoned theme park based on a once incredibly popular media property, the land in the Ozarks, Harrison and Jasper, Arkansas, was just a scenic spot off Arkansas Highway 7.

The area was called Marble Falls, Arkansas.

In the 40s, Albert Raney purchased a trout farm. The Raney family also owned the nearby Mystic Caverns, caves with beautiful natural formations that had been commercial tourist attractions since the late 1920s. A local realtor, OJ Snow, saw the potential in both the caverns and the Raney trout farm when Raney put up the trout farm for sale in 1966. 

Snow gathered a group of businessmen and formed Recreation Enterprises, Incorporated (REI) to develop the property into an amusement park. (As a sidebar, this will be our first, but not last, business acronym. Keep count.) REI approached Al Capp with their plans for the park, reportedly assuring him (somewhat ironically, we’ll find out) that the park would be quiet and dignified, and wouldn’t have any roller coasters or thrill rides that would conflict with the hillbilly themes of Li’l Abner. 

Capp consented, having turned down several theme park proposals in other areas in prior years, and the planning was on.

Groundbreaking on Dogpatch USA

Capp and his wife came to Arkansas for a groundbreaking ceremony in October of 1967. Reportedly, Dogpatch USA was the by-product of his comic strip that made him most proud, as he said in his remarks during the ceremony. “This is the one which will finally gain me some respect from my grandchildren, who until now have always thought of me as a silly man who just draws pictures.”

Local perception of the park was mixed. State officials were reportedly concerned about negative impressions of Arkansas due to the hillbilly stereotype. Attendees of the 1967 Central Arkansas Urban Policy Conference also expressed doubts about the likelihood of success for the park, as many other parks in the decade prior had tried to replicate the success of Disneyland (1955) but failed. Still, the local Chamber of Commerce approved plans for the park.

This may have been in part due to an optimistic projection report from an LA consultant firm, which projected 400,000 visitors in year one, 1M visitors by year ten, and annual revenue of $5 M by year ten. 

These projections were incredibly optimistic, in retrospect, as we’ll later see.

Albert Raney, who still maintained ties with the park, was actually the town postmaster, and the post office is and was right in the Dogpatch USA parking lot. In 1968, Raney helped the town of Marble Falls officially change their name to Dogpatch, Arkansas, to promote the park. 

Over $1.3 M was reportedly put into the park’s phase I. Construction, according to some, was rushed. Scores of workers descended on the area in March, April, and May of 1968 in order to accomodate the opening date of mid-May 1968.

REI renovated the Mystic Caverns and renamed them Dogpatch Caverns, installing lighting, handrails, and additional safety features. Authentic 19th century log cabins were found elsewhere in the Ozarks, disassembled, and painstakingly reassembled at Dogpatch USA. 

Additionally, an 1834 watermill, already on the property, by the name of Peter Beller’s Mill, was restored to working condition for the park. The mill was not only for looks – it actually operated, grinding corn into cornmeal, which was then packaged and sold to visitors.

One of the major pros of the park for the Chamber of Commerce was the Cornpine Square business region, which employed many from the local area, demonstrating and selling wares, arts, and crafts. One such building was called the Ladies Brotherhood Hand Sewing Center for all things knit, sewn, or woven. There was a diamond and stone museum, including demonstrations from artisans. There was a honey shop, a glassblowing center, a woodshop and wood carving, photo studio, pottery center, candle shop, and of course, trout fishing.

Opening day was May 17, 1968.

Dogpatch was immediately a success. Motels in the area reported hordes of tourists they couldn’t serve, even going so far as to seek private rooms in the area for the summer season in order to handle the crowds they couldn’t serve in their motels. Reportedly, there were about 8,000 visitors on opening day, with 300,000 visitors reported in the first year. They also reported a net profit of about $100,000 at the end of the year – $700,000 in today’s money. Not too shabby, but not quite the 400,000 visitors projected by that LA firm prior to the project’s start.

Early, Hazy Days of Success at Dogpatch USA

Things at Dogpatch USA looked so sweet in those early days. A local 1968 op-ed wrote that Dogpatch had “a good chance of becoming one of the nation’s biggest tourist attractions”. That same op-ed projected a gross of $12 M for the park in the first six years, adding “the rest of Northwest Arkansas had better start rounding out their own tourist facilities to take advantage of the crowd”. 

This is the point where, to be honest, I would always get bored and confused in the story of Dogpatch USA in my research. Hang in there if you feel the same way. I’ve punched it up a bit, and honestly the story of Dogpatch USA is so much wilder when all of the details are left in instead of being glossed over. 

REI, the developer group who owned the park, spent their first off-season squabbling over how to use the profits from the first year of Dogpatch USA’s operation. Many of the members wanted to divide the profits amongst themselves personally, while some members, including our realtor friend OJ Snow, wanted to reinvest the profits in the park. This dispute left an opening for an entrepreneurial spirit.

Enter businessman Jess Odom. He saw that opportunity, and purchased a controlling interest in the park from REI members in late 1968. He signed a 30-year licensing agreement with Al Capp: the park had the rights to use Capp’s Li’l Abner intellectual property from 1968 through 1998, and in return, Capp would receive 2-3% of the gross profits of the park.

Dogpatch USA: 1969

In addition to further licensing of the Li’l Abner IP, Odom had capital p Plans for Dogpatch USA. He reportedly installed $350,000 worth of rides before the park reopened for the season in May 1969. It’s likely that one of these was the “Frustratin’ Flyer”, a Monster Mouse model Allan Herschell mad mouse coaster. 

One other was the “Earthquake McGoon’s Brain Rattler”, a Chance Rides prototype Toboggan coaster. This ride was painted as a track wrapped around a metal tree – riders in a small coaster car climbed through the tree and then circled around the structure before doing a short out and back to the station. This ride bore serial number #1 from the factory in Wichita. (If you’re new to the podcast, check out the Joyland episodes, where I talk about Chance Rides, and the recent C. P. Huntington train episode). A scant 32 Toboggans were manufactured. Most were built on trailers for portability. Earthquake McGoon’s was not. Conflicting reports arise, as some places say the coaster was introduced later on (in 1981). However, this seems unlikely given the manufacturer’s date of 1969 and the manufacturing dates of other Chance Toboggans (via RCDB). 

Beyond rides, Odom hired former six-term Arkansas governor Orval Faubus as president of Dogpatch USA in early 1969. This was ultimately only a one-year position for Faubus that primarily consisted of promotional visits across the country, extolling the virtues of the theme park. 

Odom also arranged some cross-promotional opportunities. The first annual Miss Dogpatch contest was held in 1969, and the park also was a filming location for the 1969 horror flick “It’s Alive!”, which has 2.7 stars (out of 10) on IMDb. 

The park was doing well. 1969 marked a high point in rustic, hillbilly pop culture nationwide. Li’l Abner appeared in more than 700 US newspapers daily. Shows with rustic, rural themes like Green Acres, The Beverly Hillbillies, and Petticoat Junction were all massive hits on TV. And locally, another theme park with a similar country rustic theme was finding success as well: Silver Dollar City, outside of Branson MO. 

Dogpatch USA: Early 1970s

Things continued to go well for Dogpatch in its next few years. A motel made solely of mobile homes was completed in time for the 1970 opening day, as was a campsite with over a hundred spaces. A funicular tram (essentially an angled railway going up and down a slope) was nearing completion and opened midway through the 1970 season. The funicular transported guests from the parking lot down to the theme park below.  

Odom was like Uncle Scrooge seeing unlimited dollar signs. He bought out almost all of the remaining REI investors and essentially became the new owner of Dogpatch USA.

By 1972, a number of new attractions were added, including animal exhibits with sea lions and exotic birds, and a “unique boat ride”. This was simply called Boat Train Ride, and involved a cast member driving a motorboat, pulling a train of non-motorized boats behind it. The ride went up the creek to the Mill and then back again.

Marble Falls Ski Facility

1972 also saw the announcement of a new project: Marble Falls. This was to be “a highly unique snow-skiing and convention facility which will offer a variety of seasonal attractions the year round.” Odom saw this as a way of maximizing the potential of Dogpatch, continuing the profits throughout the off season. The ski center used snow machines to produce adequate ski slopes, and also featured an ice-skating rink, an inn, condos, and A-frame Alpine chalets that were sold as timeshares to help defray costs. 

Ironically, a snowstorm caused delays in the opening of Marble Falls. The snow cannons were all stuck in a major snowstorm in Denver! Not only that, but it was icy on Marble Falls’ opening day, which kept patrons away. Slopes were finally conditioned for skiing by New Years, and for a few weeks, things went great. Unfortunately, it was an early spring, and by mid-February, it was too warm for even artificial snow. This was to be the story of Marble Falls for each year of its operation.

Many people, of course, point to the Marble Falls winter resort as the tipping point for Dogpatch’s downfall.

More Additions to Dogpatch in the 1970s

Additional rides were added to Dogpatch USA in 1973, including a scrambler, go-karts, a shooting gallery, a maze, and a swinging bridge. They all have Li’l Abner-themed names which I really don’t need to go into here. Pappy Yokum’s Positively Petrifying Putt-Mobiles, indeed. 

The “famous” Kissing Rocks sculpture was also added during the 1973 season – two very large heads of characters kissing, carved out of stone. 

1974 saw additional new attractions, including a replica Native American village and Hairless Joe’s Kickapoo Barrel. This was a very memorable thrill ride of which few photos exist. It’s one of the “Rotor” type, also known as “Devil’s Hole” and “Hell Hole”. Simple in concept, these were incredibly popular around the 1950s. Riders were spun in a circle until centrifugal force pinned them to the wall of the barrel, and then the floor of the ride dropped out while the ride kept spinning. This sounds absolutely terrifying to me, but I get that I’m a chicken about these things.

Attendance estimates for this time period vary wildly, from 200,000 visitors per year to over 1 million visitors per year at its peak. 

Trouble on the Horizon for Dogpatch USA

It did seem like prospects were looking up and up and up for Dogpatch, even with the stops and starts of the Marble Falls Ski project. As with all good roller coasters, it was time to fall down. A number of factors came together at once to really seal the fate of Dogpatch.

Nationally, in the early 1970s, interest rates skyrocketed. Odom needed money for Dogpatch, so even though it was a bad time to borrow, he had no choice. He borrowed money from Union Planters Bank in Memphis – $2M in 1972 and an additional $1.5M in 1973.

An energy crisis kept travellers home due to the high cost of oil and gasoline in the oil embargo of 1973. And in pop culture, there was the “rural purge”. Network TV executives, especially those at CBS, began cancelling rural, rustic shows in favor of more urban-directed shows that were aimed at a different audience. Additionally at play here was the newly-implemented Prime Time Access Rule, which forced networks to trim seven half-hour shows (from 7:30-8:00pm) from their weekly programming and return that time to local stations. Shows had to go. Urban variety shows were the new trend, so even though shows like The Beverly Hillbillies were popular, they had to go from the POV of a network executive.

Li’l Abner was still a daily comic strip in a declining number of papers, but the extensions of the property never happened given the changing cultural climate. No Li’l Abner restaurant chain, and no Li’l Abner TV series. Al Capp was facing sexual assault charges. Capp’s politics in his comic strip were changing. 

And back in the Ozarks, attendance numbers for Dogpatch USA in the 1970s were nowhere near expectations.

Weather and Money Troubles in the Late 70s

Mild weather was spelling trouble – this was awful news for the ski lodge of Marble Falls. You can’t have a ski lodge in warm weather, even if you can make artificial snow. Marble Falls sat empty and grassy and idle. Dogpatch USA made a moderate profit, but couldn’t make up for the resulting lack of income from the Marble Falls side of things.

Jess Odom was sitting at around $3.5 million dollars in debt at this point. He tried some business maneuvers, but ultimately failed. Banks began seeking their money back from Odom in the late 70s. In 1976 and 1977, two different banks sued Odom and his company, Marble Falls Estates.

And then in 1977, Al Capp retired, ending the Li’l Abner strip. This was a huge blow to the park, as the strip had essentially provided a constant, wide-spread advertising for the park. All together, expenses were up, and profits were down.

That same year of 1977, Odom made the decision to permanently close the Marble Falls ski slopes, citing the fact that the attraction had lost $50,000 to $100,000 a year since its opening in 1972. 

Despite all this, 1977 was reportedly the most profitable year yet, with the highest attendance numbers in the park’s history.

Odom tried to add some new attractions to stem the tide: the Slobbovian sled run, a puppet theater, a space flight simulator. It wasn’t enough. 

In 1979, Odom announced that he was in talks to sell Dogpatch to a nonprofit Christian group called God’s Patch, Inc, and reportedly had been negotiating the deal privately for several years. Should the deal go through, Dogpatch would be converted into a biblically themed entertainment and convention center. The deal never went forward, however, as God’s Patch, Inc. couldn’t find sufficient matching investment funds before their allotted time ran out.

Odom tried another tact, feeling himself sinking under the weight of the high interest rates on his loans. He went to the Harrison City Council. He tried to get their help in essentially refinancing all of his loans and extending their life while lowering the interest rates, through the issuing of tourism bonds. Ultimately, he was asking them for all of his personal money back out of the park, for Harrison to assume all the debts, and for the park to be run by this God’s Patch group. 

Harrison City Council wasn’t particularly excited by the proposal, and asked to see his books for the last five years. 

Within a week of the meeting, two lawsuits were filed. The previous year, in 1978, a child fell over 20 feet after slipping between a ride and its loading platform; a woman slipped and fell trying to catch the child. Both suffered spinal injuries and permanent disabilities. They sought over $200k in compensation, alleging in the suit that Dogpatch had been negligent in ride design, safety, and employee training. The lawsuits took two years to settle, and they left a bad taste in the mouth of the Harrison City Council. 

The Harrison City Council rejected Odom’s bond proposal, and they rejected his subsequent followup bond proposal. Councilmembers reportedly went on record at the time to say that the entire community was against any bonds relating to Dogpatch. The general sense was that the community knew the shape of it, and didn’t want any part in the bad deal Odom was trying to pass off on someone else.

Some new attractions materialized again at the park, doing little to improve attendance: a trained bear act, and the first appearance of a costumed Shmoo character.

In 1980, a new business entity was formed, this time called Ozark Family Entertainment (OFE). OFE stated that they had no connection with Dogpatch, although later records reportedly indicated that multiple people associated with OFE had been in management positions at Dogpatch USA or had been involved in other business dealings with Odom.

Several people were reportedly interested in moving Dogpatch to a new location, and Odom was reportedly no longer interested in being the owner of the park. The newest idea was that now they’d try getting Jasper (Newton County, where most of Dogpatch was physically located) to issue tourist bonds, with the gist of their proposal being no property taxes on almost 1000 acres of developed land, plus cheap money. 

OFE negotiated to purchase Dogpatch, which was unsurprisingly approved by the shareholders. Newton County tentatively agreed to the bond proposal only if OFE could find buyers for all the bonds AND convince Dogpatch USA’s creditors to accept the bonds in lieu of payment. OFE seemed to think they had this in place. 

In one of the many mind-numbingly complex situations involved with Dogpatch, REI maintained ownership of the park for the summer of 1980, but OFE managed it. Banks and creditors wanted to wait on the bond issue through the summer season to see how profitable Dogpatch USA was going to be without the weight of the now-closed Marble Falls ski resort.

What happened was a massive heat wave. 1980 saw what was reputedly the hottest summer in Arkansas history to date, with more triple-digit days that year than almost any prior year. Trees and plants withered, water sources dried up, and people stayed inside. They did not want to be out at a theme park in humid 100+ degree temperatures. The months rolled on, and summer at Dogpatch USA in 1980 was a bust. 

By the end of August, the creditors had seen enough. They weren’t willing to accept the bonds as payment. Additional banks sued Dogpatch and its holding companies over their unpaid, ballooning debts. The bond issue wasn’t going anywhere. Odom tried to get the banks to allow delayed payments on some of the debts, but they weren’t having any of it. And the lawsuits over the child and woman injured at the park were settled during this time as well, for an undisclosed amount of money.

In October 1980, Union Planters Bank, to which Dogpatch owed millions, filed to take possession of Dogpatch and Marble Falls. 

In November 1980, Dogpatch filed for bankruptcy. Their filing reportedly listed 90 creditors owed $3.2 M, including personal debts to Al Capp and Jess Odom himself. OFE would not be able to buy the park unless these creditors were all paid off. The bank, Union Planters, took possession of Dogpatch USA, including most of the associated business as well: hotels, chalets, post office, restaurant, and service station. Despite their ownership on paper, Union Planters was reportedly ready to sell quickly, as they were located in Memphis, almost 300 miles from Dogpatch USA. 

Here we go through yet more confusing legal ownership.

Union Planters expected that Dogpatch USA wouldn’t open during the 1981 season, but it ended up doing so after all. Enter Wayne Thompson, one of the former members of OFE and a former general manager at Dogpatch USA (during 1974-1975 season). He formed a new company called Ozark’s Entertainment, Inc (OEI), because who doesn’t love another confusing acronym? OEI purchased Dogpatch and much of its assets for an undisclosed sum early in 1981. 

The bank retained Marble Falls Ski Resort, and auctioned the property off in April of 1981 (we’ll get back to this in a minute). Also sold were the Dogpatch Caverns. The latter were purchased by Albert Raney, part of the family that owned the original trout farm property. After a rename to Mystic Caverns, they continued operating as a tourist attraction that year. 

Dogpatch USA under OEI Ownership

Wayne Thompson, as mentioned, had originally been a general manager of Dogpatch back in 1974 and 1975. In the intervening years between his management and his ownership of the park, he reportedly managed a different park down in Florida, leveling himself up on park management skills. As the 80s rolled on and Dogpatch USA began operations under Thompson and OEI, it was clear he’d learned some useful things. 

For instance, he cut staff – from 600 in 1980 down to 250 in 1981. He focused on upgrading landscaping and adding additional arts and crafts and shows. Thompson even re-invested in the park’s infrastructure, working with a local firm to rebuild the Marble Falls water wheel. They used original period wood-working techniques and the original cast iron spike, still drilled into the rock at the base of the waterfall. 

And of course, Thompson added new rides. The iconic “Wild Water Rampage” (the big waterslide still living on the property today) was installed for the 1984 operating season.

Reportedly, big name acts like Ike and Tina Turner, Hank Thompson, and Reba McEntire all performed at Dogpatch USA’s ampitheatre at this time. Denver Pyle from the popular TV show Dukes of Hazzard was signed on as the spokesman for the park. And Thompson signed licensing deals: Spiderman, Batman, and Captain America were all on hand for autographs and appearances. At the same time, Coke, Dr. Pepper, and Tyson Foods licensed their brands for amphitheatres, buildings, and season passes. 

All told, Dogpatch USA recovered from its slumps in 1979 and 1980, and made a profit. Reportedly, attendance was up by 21%, although this practically should’ve been a guarantee after the 1980 heatwave. 

More Legal Entanglements for Dogpatch

While the park seemed to be recovering, more was going on behind the scenes. The courts were structuring the debt after bankruptcy. 

Y’all, I’ve got to be honest, I’ve almost given up on this episode right here, so many times. Ugh, it is just an alphabet soup of confusion. I promise that the story is more interesting with all the details – stay with me. 

Okay. So, we have a new company. This one’s called Dogpatch Properties Inc, or DPP. Remember how I said the Marble Falls part of the property was auctioned? Well, DPP was a group of businessmen who formed this company and arranged to buy it. The plan was that secured interests in the property would be paid off first, and then unsecured interests paid off next, somehow with Jess Odom still in the mix to manage expenses only. 

Somehow too was introduced the concept of selling parts of this property as time-shares. Enter a new company: Buffalo River Resorts (BRR), still an Odom enterprise, that reportedly existed as a company only to sell timeshares for DPP. (Why all the shell companies? Perhaps to keep the name Dogpatch off sales and ad copy, and keep that associated bad taste out of people’s mouths.) 

Okay. So then, one of the Arkansas state laws get changed, and uh-oh, this one concerns time shares. This here is the most confusing part of the legal entanglements. Essentially, the Time Share Act of 1983 (Act 294) required that timeshare properties be registered with the State Real Estate Commission prior to being sold. This in turn would require that “BRR furnish the purchaser with releases from all liens or to put up a bond or buy insurance or to provide a document in which the mortgage holder subordinates his rights to those of the purchaser”.

It gets into legal spaghetti here, and to be honest, I think very few people understand what went on. You can get into the details at the website of Arkansas Road Stories, whose piece on Dogpatch is incredibly well-researched, and provides a solid backbone for my episode that you’re hearing right now. 

The long and the short of it was that there was a lot of legal mess roughly boiling down to “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” until 1984, when lawyers found a loophole. Essentially, the courts made a decision to exempt BRR from registering with the State Real Estate Commission, with one catch. Any time-share buyers had to be informed that banks had liens on the properties, and therefore that the banks could potentially re-possess timeshares if DPP and BRR didn’t pay their debts. 

Unsurprisingly, the number of timeshare sales subsequently dropped.

1987 and On: Dogpatch USA Ownership Under Telcor

After the dust from the OEI ownership and BRR timeshare kerfuffles had settled down, things were quiet at Dogpatch for a few years.

Then came 1987.

The Entertainment and Leisure Corp (Telcor) came on the scene. They purchased a controlling interest (90%) in Dogpatch USA for an undisclosed sum, leaving the remaining 10% in the hands of a few area residents.

Well, that was abrupt. How’d this all come about?

So it turns out that Telcor was a new company, formed in order to buy and manage theme parks. It was headed by a guy named Melvyn Bell, who also at the time owned Deer Forest Park in Michigan, and Magic Springs, in Arkansas. (We’ll get there, though not in this episode. Magic Springs was shuttered for five years starting in 1995 before a massive revitalization project, and Deer Forest Park is on my master abandoned park list.) Aside from theme parks, Melvyn Bell had made a name and a lot of money for himself in waste management and restaurant training (two separate businesses). 

The Dogpatch connection came from the new President of Telcor, one Wayne Thompson, who should be a familiar name by now as the general manager of Dogpatch USA for most of the 80s and current OEI owner. And funnily enough, another principle owner of OEI, Sam Southerland, became VP of Telcor, and became finance manager for all three Telcor parks. 

Corporate poaching or perhaps just some solid lateral business moves, who knows. The sense from my research is that the acquisition was well-received. After all, Melvyn Bell had deep pockets and Telcor had promised to spend at least half a million dollars on improvements to the park. 

Well, they did add a new ride called Space Shuttle, which didn’t seem to fit the rustic theming of Dogpatch USA very well. I haven’t dwelled on the theming very much with how much this story has been about ridiculous money mismanagement and legal mumbo-jumbo, but it should be very clear that by the late 80s, rustic was very out. Clean and shiny and new was in, and Dogpatch USA was never going to fit the new trends without a massive re-theming. Barring that, they just shoehorned whatever new ride or attraction felt fun into place and hoped for the best. Leave the theming to Disney, it seems. But they did take at stab at improving maintenance, at the least.

Anyhow, reportedly attendance was up 60% in the first year with Telcor compared to 1981, the first year with OEI. Okay. Odd comparison, but okay. 

If we flip back to the BRR and DPP timeshare side of things, we’ll still be mired in legal spaghetti. Three banks’ right to foreclose (on Jess Odom) were upheld by the US Eight District Court of Appeals. Summarizing and reading between the lines, it appears that the court placed the responsibility for Dogpatch USA, DPP, and BRR solely at the feet of Jess Odom. “If Dogpatch Properties, Inc. (DPP) can’t pay, the debtor will be responsible for the leins, the money will come out of the debtor’s estate, and unsecured creditors will get nothing.”

1988: Departures and Declining Cultural Relevance at Dogpatch

In 1988, Wayne Thompson parted ways with Melvyn Bell and therefore with Telcor and Dogpatch USA. Lynn Spradley became the general manager in his place, a man with fourteen years of experience already at Dogpatch USA in other positions. In his next few years at Dogpatch as general manager, he was reportedly often bemoaning the situation Dogpatch USA was in. As I said, the theming had really taken a dive, and rustic was out out out, not in. The Li’l Abner comic strip had been out of print in the papers for over a decade. Said Spradley, “A lot of kids don’t have any idea who Daisy Mae and Li’l Abner are.” Reportedly, Dogpatch had to spend more per patron than comparable parks on various promotions to attract guests.

Not only was the theming a problem, but location was always a problem, too. Dogpatch was on a side highway, a back road. As we know by know on The Abandoned Carousel, location is such a huge factor.

And as I mentioned many minutes ago, Silver Dollar City in Branson, MO was a relatively close attraction (50 miles north, just over the MO-AR border). This park is still open, spoiler alert. It is and was an 1880s-themed Ozark village. There are crafts and tradesman demonstrations, there are stages and performances, there are multiple coasters and rides, and there’s Marvel Cave, a cave that’s been open for tourists since 1894. Does it all sound like a better version of Dogpatch? Kinda. Sorry, Dogpatch stans. And if Silver Dollar City didn’t have it, Ozark Folk Center, an Arkansas state park, was a short distance due east, to meet the craftsman and Ozark heritage needs. 

As one author nicely put it, Dogpatch USA was, from the beginning, too hokey and jokey with its Li’l Abner dark satirical comic strip theme to ever successfully emulate a grander, more polished place like Silver Dollar City. And where Dogpatch does bear some resemblances to a rustic version of a Six Flags franchise park (with its mishmash of attractions and themes and licensed properties), it was located in the wrong place to ever draw enough crowds to succeed with that audience. Its location is and was one of the poorest in the state.

Dogpatch USA’s only true advantage over other local attractions was always the Li’l Abner theme. But every year past the strip’s retirement, the park declined in cultural relevance. Dogpatch was simply outdated. If you have to explain to your kids that Daisy Mae was a character in a comic strip that ended when you, the parent, were a kid, well…

You begin to see the discouragement that had to be setting in for those in ownership of Dogpatch USA. 

1991: Changes for Dogpatch USA

Melvyn Bell sat down in 1991 and began making major changes. He saw the writing on the wall, and local civic leaders in Jasper and Harrison were publically voicing their concerns about whether the park would ever be viable again. 

The Li’l Abner theming was dropped. Melvyn Bell and Telcor decided that they could save that 2-3% of gross profits for themselves instead of sending it to the Al Capp estates. The park was renamed “Dogpatch, Arkansas” and they waved goodbye to that licensing fee. 

Not only that, but the entry fee was dropped as well. What? As a cost-saving measure? Yep. They lengthened the season, charged per ride on each attraction, and reframed the park as an arts and crafts focused place. This brought more bodies in the park, potentially meaning more dollars in the pocket.

General Manager Lynn Spradley left Dogpatch in 1991, as well, in order to become a plumber. In his place, Shirley Cooper stepped in, an 11 year veteran of the Dogpatch world, serving as general manager for the park’s last two years.

Yes, there wasn’t long left for Dogpatch, even with the major changes Bell and Telcor had set in place. Visitors during these last years noted the declining maintenance around the park, the train’s PA system on the fritz, generic carnival rides like the tilt-a-whirl added to try and boost income…

Nothing helped.

Dogpatch USA’s last day of operation was October 14, 1993.

Abandoned Dogpatch USA

“There were a lot of mistakes. Bad judgement calls,” Bud Pelsor, a later owner of the park, is quoted as saying. “I don’t know that they could’ve made good ones. The United States was going through some serious transitions in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s.”

Ultimately, the park was foreclosed upon yet again. Bell and Telcor had done pretty well on taking down that pile of debt, but almost half a million was still outstanding. In December of 1994, the park was put up for auction. The new owners were C. L. and Ford Carr, also known as Leisuretek Corporation and Westek Corporation. During these transition years, many options for revitalization were floated, including converting the space into a movie ranch, an ecotourism spot, or a better version of an Ozark history spot, but nothing ever came of any of it. 

And then the park sat.

New Operations at Marble Falls

Up at Marble Falls, there was a bit of action.

In 1997, reportedly facing public pressure, the official name of the post office (and the town) was changed from Dogpatch back to Marble Falls. Despite this, however, Google still thinks the official name is Dogpatch, AR. 

Back in 1988, when DPP was divvying out shares of the Marble Falls ski resort land, a woman named Debra Nielsen began purchasing what she could, when she could. According to news reports, she eventually owned much of the Marble Falls attractions area: the ski lodge, the convention center, the roller (skating) rink, and a motel. She reportedly named it “Serenity Mountain”. The skating rink she reported leased to a nonprofit called HELP, providing therapeutic horseback riding at no cost. Additionally, she reportedly operated a B&B as well as a church on the land, although I’ve been unable to find additional information on this. 

What I did find was a few businesses clustered in the former Marble Falls buildings. I’ll get into more detail later, but there’s Marble Falls Resort and Restaurant (which advertises some incredibly tasty-looking fried catfish on its social media accounts) and a place called The HUB. Both cater to motorcycle enthusiasts. Well, one does, one did. The HUB closed in 2017 after 12 years of operation. 

Back at Dogpatch, things were still stagnant. There were rumors and reports but no activity towards revitalization of any kind.

In 2002, Ford Carr listed Dogpatch USA on eBay, at a starting minimum bid of $1 M. There were no takers. 

In 2005, things changed again. 

2005: Pruett Nance and Dogpatch USA

Enter Pruett Nance, then 16. His grandfather was one of Dogpatch’s original shareholders, and Nance had grown up going to the park. When it closed in 1993, he regularly spent time on the former park land, reportedly with permission of the property owners, C. L. and Ford Carr. 

In 2005, he was ATV riding on the property, again with permission from the Carrs, “to tour the property”. He hit a wire that had been strung between two trees, and was severely injured, nearly decapitated. His trachea was severed and his neck was broken. Doctors didn’t expect him to survive, and when he did, they didn’t expect him to ever talk again. But Nance proved them wrong again, on both counts, and he did. 

Nance and his father filed a lawsuit against the owners, alleging that they’d put the wire there on purpose, as a deterrent against vandals, with malicious intent. The case actually made it all the way up to the Arkansas Supreme Court. The court ultimately ruled in favor of Nance. Between Nance and his father, Dogpatch owners were ordered to pay $764,582 in damages, to include medical bill costs, within 45 days of the decision. 

The owners could not, would not, did not pay.

The judge gave the deed to Dogpatch to Nance, and he became the new owner of Dogpatch.

“”I do have the ability to change things for the better of course,”” he said to the local paper in 2011. He was also pragmatic in his comments to the paper, stating that he was only 23 and did not have the experience or knowledge to properly deal with the ruins of Dogpatch. It was reported that Pruett Nance and his father Stewart Nance were taking the project one day at a time.

2014: Bud Pelsor and Dogpatch USA

It took a few more years, but it turns out that they did eventually decide to sell Dogpatch. In summer 2014, it found a new owner: Bud Pelsor, inventor of the spillproof dog bowl (http://greatamericanspillproof.com/), and his business partner Jim Robertson, the CFO of Great American Spillproof Products. (Curious? Pelsor’s dog-wolf hybrid is the spokes-dog for the product. Her name is Miss Arkansas Diamond, or Dia for short, and she’s a lovely animal. The bowl is sold with the tagline “Dogs love it because water does not go up their nose. You love it because you have less mess.” I am tempted to purchase one for my own pups.)

The story goes that Pelsor had briefly visited Dogpatch in its heyday. Talking to the newspaper at the time, he said “I saw how the local residents thrived from it. … All the houses along the road had jellies, jams, quilts for sale. I was really impressed with it. I kept making trips down here, and it just kept getting worse and worse and worse.”

Pelsor’s business partner Jim made him aware that the park was up for sale in 2014, and they purchased Dogpatch to the tune of $2 M, reportedly backed by promises of additional external grant money. (As a sidebar, the property records are freely accessible by the public and tell a fascinating legal and tax version of the story I’m telling you here. Worth checking out if you’re into that.)

He wasn’t particularly interested in reopening Dogpatch as it was, however. “Resurrecting the dead is something best left for someone other than me,” he’s quoted as saying. He had plans for “The Village at Dogpatch”. It was to be an ecotourism place, for reintroducing native mussels to the creek, for restocking the famous trout pond. He wanted a more arts and crafts focused place – maybe to bring back the music, maybe a restaurant, but not a theme park.

Regardless of the ultimate theme, with Pelsor as the new owner, he had immediate plans for cleaning and maintaining the property, at the very least. Volunteers even came out for weekends on end to help him clean up the property, cutting back the massive flora that was taking over the remaining rides and buildings. 

The crowds were incredible. Traffic was reportedly backed up on Highway 7 for the December 2014 public opening, the first time the park had been open to the public for 21 years. Over 5,000 people were reported in attendance. Very impressive for a defunct theme park, abandoned for 21 years! There were several of these Riverwalk events, allowing the public to see the cleaned up Dogpatch.

Plans didn’t move very fast – unsurprising as I’ve learned from firsthand experience that construction timelines are truly something else. A few months later, in February 2015, three buildings were burned down. Arson was suspected. 

In May 2015 it was time for more Riverwalk events at Dogpatch again. This time, the framing was as an artists village event. Several musical acts performed, and artists demonstrated their craft. Many pieces were Dogpatch themed: arrowheads made out of old broken glass from the site, pictures of the abandoned site pasted onto wood, etc.

But still, things were moving slowly. It seemed like it was setback after setback. There were floods. The overgrown buildings required extensive maintenance before any new construction could be done.

And then came the news that the promises for big name support and grant money for the park were empty useless promises. Pelsor is quoted as saying that it ”left me with my pants down and exposed to chiggers”.

And Bud’s business partner wanted out, too, reportedly due to poor health. 

In March of 2016, Dogpatch USA went up for sale again – either the whole thing, or just half. Pelsor was willing to remain co-owner if someone else was interested in being his business partner. “”I don’t want to sell out, but my business associate does,” he said. “I have the option to buy him out, but I can’t.””

2018: Heritage USA (But Not That One)

It took over a year, but in late 2017, after months Pelsor announced that he’d come to an agreement with a group called Heritage USA to lease the property. 

No, not THAT Heritage USA. This was not the Christian Disneyland, Jim Bakker, pyramid scheme Heritage USA. This group was (supposedly) unrelated, operated by a guy named David Hare. 

In YouTube videos, Hare looks and speaks like a TV preacher, well, a lot like Jim Bakker, to be honest. He’s filmed wearing button-down shirts and slicking his hair back. His background is as an executive member of the Las Vegas Broadcasting Company America’s TV Network, a very small media company. Prior to that, he did musical productions in Anaheim and hosted a kids radio show in the 80s and 90s. 

For months prior to the official announcement, Hare posted vague and confusing videos about the forthcoming deal with Dogpatch. But what was eventually announced was that Heritage USA and David Hare would lease the main Dogpatch property, with a potential purchase agreement at the end of the lease period.

In addition to making a deal with Pelsor, Heritage USA also made a deal with Debra Nielsen for a similar lease-purchase agreement on the Marble Falls hotel and convention center properties. 

Hare and Heritage USA posted multiple videos about the site online, often rambling. They branded themselves as “your conservative entertainment company”. Nothing is or was ever very clear with the Heritage USA operations of Dogpatch from what I’ve been able to see, but it appears they planned to have a resort, theme park, hotel, theater, and RV park, opening in stages. Reportedly a new train was supposed to open in 2019.

Based on their social media postings, things went okay for the first few months. They were active on social media, showing the progress on the land, a full house at the hotel, tours and other special events, etc. But somewhere in June 2018, things seem to have gone awry.

On June 28, 2018, Hare published a (frankly rambling) video on his Heritage USA Youtube channel, about the “challenges” he sees facing the company and project going forward. The gist seems to be that his investors decided to bail on their support of the Heritage USA project, but that he himself was not going to bail. In his comments, he insisted that it didn’t require a lot of money to operate the site. Several times over the course of the video, he reiterated that the property owners (Pelsor and Nielsen) “deserve to get their money”. (Obviously, as this was a legal contract he’d entered into.) The overall tone was of a man rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

It’s difficult to put together the pieces from where I’m sitting in 2019, as several of Hare’s Heritage USA videos have been deleted. But Hare goes on to say in his June 28 video (“Do It Talk 3: Moving Forward.The Challenge”): “Do you realize we could start paying the bills up here if people would start really renting rooms? […] if we had a good influx of steady bookings, we could make it. That’s how reasonable it is.” 

It’s so classic, to shift the blame to others. 

He closes the video saying “Don’t count us out” and then adds “but don’t make reservations for October, either”.  

Essentially, it looks like Hare could never fulfill his end of the bargain, or perhaps never intended to. Some online speculate that the Heritage USA name was intentional, and that the only real intent behind the park plans was a church or religious cult of some kind. Hare posted on social media advertising the park, but the hotel was vacant when paid guests showed up, utilities turned off, Hare and Heritage USA vanished in the night, completely unreachable. 

The nitty gritty of what happened seems to be that Debra Nielsen had filed an eviction notice in July, requiring Heritage USA to be out within ten days as a result of non-payment of rent. (Not just a short term lack of payment – they apparently had never paid her any rent, nor had they paid rent to Pelsor.) 

Heritage USA, in turn, reportedly claimed that this eviction was a breech of their lease, and requested mediation. 

Debra Nielsen filed a lawsuit in Newton County Circuit Court in August of 2018, saying that mediation was pointless since Heritage USA hadn’t made any payments on their lease (which had reportedly begun in January 2018 on the Marble Falls portion of the land). Heritage USA had originally agreed to pay $5,500 / month just for the Marble Falls portion of the land alone (this included the old HUB motel and convention center, as well as the old skating rink). “The lease began Jan. 15 and was to continue until Jan. 14, 2020, at which time Heritage USA Ozarks Resort was to purchase the property for $750,000 if the company didn’t opt to do so sooner.”

An immediate hearing was scheduled, as the property was in a state of emergency. Apparently Hare hadn’t paid the insurance companies either, nor the water and electric companies, so all insurance and utility services had been shut off. 

Reportedly, though, Hare disappeared. According to the newspaper articles, Nielsen’s attorney had exhausted every possible resource available to him to find Hare. 

Pelsor described Hare as “larger than life” and defended his original decision to work with Hare and Heritage USA in a newspaper article in August 2018. ““He had sound investors that were contractors. He had sound financial management. He had a good team assembled, and that’s what we looked at,” says Pelsor.”

Pelsor continued in comments to the local news, saying “Now it looks almost like it did when I bought it. A wasteland. Everything’s grown up and ugly again and it happened because David Hare made promises he couldn’t keep,”. By all accounts, Hare was all talk, and burned bridges with those around him.

And once again, Dogpatch USA as a theme park was abandoned.

Dogpatch USA: the Present and Future

Of course, in Monday morning quarterbacking, people have plenty of opinions about the many ups and downs the park has gone through. “The roads to Dogpatch were so rugged, so it was never an easy destination to reach.” says one person in the comment section of a newspaper article. Many other folks remember the park with fond nostalgia from attending there in the 70s and 80s, though, and praise the inexpensive pricing. 

It does seem like the park was originally a little bit magical – like something from a simpler time, surrounded by the natural beauty of Northern Arkansas. And the theming reflected the history of the people of the area, at least at first.

But in its abandonment, it only had offerings for those interested in abandoned places and urban explorers. Residents and former visitors described the area as a hazard, rotten and falling down. Many called it a problem, and it seems like most just want the eyesore to go away. There’s nostalgia for the past, but it seems like people have been burned too many times in too many different supposed revitalizations of the place.

And Dogpatch is incredibly outdated. Al Capp, while being an excellent writer and artist, was a known womanizer, misogynist, and accused rapist (including allegations by Goldie Hawn and Grace Kelly). And his Li’l Abner comic strip has been out of publication for 42 years as of this recording. Arkansas residents didn’t want to be seen as hillbillies back then, and that theming definitely wouldn’t fly in today’s culture. 

An online commenter summed it up: “Not worth tearing down and there’s no market for it if it was restored.”

Now in 2019, the park is back in the hands of Bud Pelsor. He’s quoted in an interview with Belle Starr Antiques, saying that he simply plans to ““clean it up, turn the lights on, the music up loud and party until it says SOLD on the sign.””

Yes, Dogpatch USA is currently back up for sale. The address is 256 NC 3351, Marble Falls, AR, 72648. At the time of this recording, asking price is just under $1.5M dollars.

Do you want to visit Dogpatch USA yourself? Reportedly Pelsor sometimes allows visitors, arranged ahead of time, for a modest $5/pp fee. Or you could go with a group, like this upcoming October 6, 2019 hike: https://joplinoutdoors.com/explore-dogpatch-usa-hike-october-6th-2019/?fbclid=IwAR0Zi9JnTXKcN5V4lfsZzJSzkip81Etqku4Rst2danRpN6hawLO0SsxZZZs

The Future of Dogpatch: 2019 and 2020

The writing has been on the wall for some time. But late 2019 and early 2020 have seen the wheels of bureaucracy, so familiar in this long story, back in action at Dogpatch once again.

In December 2019, Bud Pelsor announced that he was giving up on his dream of the ecotourism village at Dogpatch USA, and that he was moving back to Indiana. In a quote from the article, Pelsor said, “I’m just not able to pull it off. The stress of this place is killing me. I’ve had successes in a lot of ways, but everybody that was supposed to come on financially, well, there were just too many talkers.”

A January 2020 article fleshed out the story further: Pelsor and his business partners had missed multiple payments on the property through August 2019. The mortgage holders, the Nances, filed suit against Great American Spillproof. By late January, a decree of foreclosure was filed, giving Pelsor and his partners 10 days to pay the over $1M still owed on the property. At the time of this update (January 24, 2020), it is expected that the money will not be repaid. If so, the Dogpatch USA property will be sold at auction on March 3, 2020, there on the courthouse steps of Jasper, AR, with an expected starting bid of $1M.

Still in Operation

While The HUB has shut down, as I mentioned earlier, (that was where Heritage USA had made its base of operations, after all) things are still operation at Dogpatch and Marble Falls. There’s still the US Post Office. There’s a fairly new campground: CabinPatch USA. This is aimed at revitalizing the old campground at Dogpatch, and the views look incredible.

Marble Falls Resort and Restaurant is a recent effort from Debra Nielsen, the current landowner of most of the old Marble Falls properties. Operating in the former facilities of The HUB and Heritage USA, this place is currently operational and looks to be a very nice place to visit and stay. And, as I mentioned, delicious looking fried catfish advertised on their social media. 

Dogpatch USA Rides: Still Operating

And of course, you can still find a little bit of Dogpatch USA in one of its former rides. The waterslide (“Wild Water Rampage”), of course, still stands in state at the abandoned Dogpatch. It’s missing steps and will never be an operational ride again – an insurance nightmare. And of course, the funicular tram is still onsite, too, rusted in place. The paddleboats were left on the property after its abandonment, and are now long stolen.

Many of the other rides were sold or destroyed. Whearabouts of the carousel, the paratrooper, the Slobbovian Sled Run, the space ship, the barrel ride – all unknown.

Close to home, the Dogpatch Caverns, as mentioned earlier, were sold in 1981. They were renamed back to Mystic Caverns and are still open for curious cavers at the time of this recording.

The small coaster that was once at Dogpatch was called Frustratin’ Flyer, a Herschell wild mouse Monster Mouse model. Reportedly, the coaster was even wild during the park’s operation, with one guest commenting online that they could actually see the bolts holding the ride in place MOVING while the ride operated. While some sources state that this ride went to the Little Amerricka theme park after Dogpatch was shuttered in 1993, this would not be accurate. Little Amerricka owns a Wild Mouse model, not a Monster Mouse model – a close comparison of the track layout from photos and onride videos makes this clear. The only operational Herschell Monster Mouse coaster at this time is at Parque Acuatico Rey Park in Ecuador.

What IS at Little Amerricka is the infamous Earthquake McGoon’s Brain Rattler. If you head on over to Marshall, WI, some ten hours north of the former Dogpatch USA, you can ride the last Toboggan coaster known in operation at this time, now with a simpler name: Wild & Wooly Toboggan. Little Amerricka only runs one car on the coaster now, though, instead of the two it has the capacity for, and the ride does admittedly break down often. Spoilers.

And what about the miniature train that used to run? It was called the West Po’k Chop Speshul, and it was actually three different Chance C. P. Huntington trains, each of which had been heavily modified. On some, that lovingly ridiculous smokestack was removed and replaced with a crooked stovepipe. At the time of its construction, it was the first and only railroad in Newton County, Arkansas.

One online commenter suggested that one of the trains had been cannibalized for parts for the KC Zoo. This doesn’t fit with what’s known about the trains from the C. P. Huntington Train Project, though. 

We know that Dogpatch had CPH #64, #69, and another train. They were given the name “West Po’k Chop Spechul”. All engines were custom-themed. One was originally light green and orange; later black; the others were themed to the train from the comic strip. It pulled custom coaches with wood shingled roofs. 

Richmond Country Farms (up in British Columbia) purchased CPH #64 (Dogpatch #1) in 2013, and has been refurbishing it over the intervening years.

You see, word had been going around that the Dogpatch train was just rotting in some Kansas field somewhere. Well, this was the rumored train. Here’s a quote from Richmond Country Farms’ website: “It has been a dream of ours to have an operational railroad and miniature train for many years. We found our train tucked away on a farm in Witchita, Kansas in 2010. After many phonecalls and emails, we were able to secure a deal. Our two main farm hands, Nelson and Lucas Hogler, made the trek from Vancouver to Kansas to bring the train to its new home at Richmond Country Farms. After arriving home, we began an extensive 5 year full restoration of the locomotive and coaches. Construction of the railroad began in the summer of 2014- finishing just in time for October- for the grand opening of the train, and our annual Pumpkin Patch. Now, when you see that shiny candy-apple red train, you will know what we’re talking about!”

I’ve seen video of the coaches cleaned up and operating, sent to me by Chris Churilla, and they are looking very nice indeed. Good job on you, Richmond Country Farms.

Ultimately, Dogpatch USA was always in a state of flux, and continues to be so.

Whatever does end up happening at Dogpatch and Marble Falls, the tagline for the place will likely always hold true: “it was a heckuva day at Dogpatch USA.”

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57. THE HUB MOTEL – Updated 2019 Reviews (Marble Falls, AR). TripAdvisor. http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g31759-d1581587-Reviews-The_Hub_Motel-Marble_Falls_Arkansas.html. Accessed September 4, 2019.
58. The Rise and Fall of Dogpatch, USA. https://web.archive.org/web/20120331073138/http://arkansasmatters.com/search-fulltext?nxd_id=315391. Published March 31, 2012. Accessed September 4, 2019.
59. Kaitlyn. The slow demise (or rebirth?) of Dogpatch, U.S.A. Ozarks Alive. January 2017. https://www.ozarksalive.com/the-slow-demise-or-rebirth-of-dogpatch-u-s-a/. Accessed August 12, 2019.
60. The Strange (But True) Story Behind America’s Most Obscure Abandoned Theme Park. Theme Park Tourist. https://www.themeparktourist.com/features/20150515/30260/story-and-photos-laid-rest-dogpatch-usa. Published May 17, 2015. Accessed September 5, 2019.
61. The Village of Dogpatch. Only In Arkansas. https://onlyinark.com/places-and-travel/the-village-of-dogpatch/. Published August 5, 2015. Accessed August 12, 2019.
62. UALR Public Radio | FM 89 KUAR – New owner ponders future for former Dogpatch USA. https://web.archive.org/web/20120324030733/http://www.kuar.org/kuarnews/23466-new-owner-ponders-future-for-former-dogpatch-usa-grounds.html. Published March 24, 2012. Accessed September 4, 2019.
63. USA C. Welcome to CabinPatch USA Primitive Camping. CabinPatch USA. https://cabinpatchusa.com/. Accessed September 5, 2019.
64. Wild & Wooly Toboggan – Little Amerricka – Roller Coasters. https://www.ultimaterollercoaster.com/coasters/toboggan_littleamerrick. Accessed August 14, 2019.
65. Dogpatch dream dies: Owner of abandoned Arkansas theme park served foreclosure notice. Bill Bowde, Northwestern Arkansas Democrat Gazette. https://www.nwaonline.com/news/2019/dec/08/dogpatch-again-for-sale-owner-says-he-s/ Published December 8, 2019. Accessed January 24, 2020.
66. Dogpatch’s time’s up; auction set to sell park. Bill Bowden, Arkansas Democrat Gazette. https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2020/jan/24/dogpatch-s-time-s-up-auction-set-to-sel-1/ Published January 24, 2020. Accessed January 24, 2020.

The post Dogpatch USA appeared first on The Abandoned Carousel.

Credits: Podcast cover background photo is by 4045 on freepik.com. Image of Santa billboard from Santa Claus, AZ is public domain. Theme music is from “Aerobatics in Slow Motion” by TeknoAXE. Incidental music includes “Jingle Bells (Calm)”, “Deck the Halls (A)”, “Deck the Halls (B)” by Kevin Macleod / incompetech.com; and “We Three Kings” by Alexander Nakarada (filmmusic.io). Effects all via freesound.org: “Jingle Bells” by JarredGibb (CC0); “Jingle Bells” by nfrae (CC0); “Arizona Walking” by kvgarlic (CC0); “Howling Wind in Chimney” by Maurice JK (CC by SA); “Merry Christmas” by metaepitome (CC0); and “Merry Christmas” by maestroalf (CC0).

The First Theme Park?

When you’re researching anything, an easy question to ask is, what was the first? What was the first fast food restaurant? (White Castle, 1921) What was the first interstate highway in the US? (A complicated answer, but either a portion of what is now I-70 in Missouri, which had the first contract signed in 1956; a portion of I-70 in Kansas for being the first to actually start paving in 1956; or part of I-70 in Pennsylvania, as it was opened as a highway in 1940 and later incorporated into the interstate system.) 

To bring it around to The Abandoned Carousel, what was the first theme park? 

Not the first amusement park, to be clear. Let’s draw some lines with terminology. Amusement parks in the US go back a century and a half, at the least, with trolley parks in the middle of the 19th century considered to be some of the first true amusement parks in the US. Lake Compounce in Connecticut is said to be the oldest continuously operating park in the US, opened in 1846. The earliest amusement park in the world still in operation is called Bakken, located near Copenhagen, Denmark, and said to have opened in 1583. But these are “just” amusement parks – places where visitors are amused, with rides and leisure activities and so on.

A theme park is a horse of a slightly different color – an amusement park, but with a theme or themed area to organize it. Society in general popularly likes to point to Disneyland and the enormous influence Walt Disney’s first park had on the theme park concept, but as I mentioned in the last episode – theme parks existed before Disneyland. And that’s what I’m going to talk about today – the first theme park in the US. Coincidentally, several of the first theme parks had Santa Claus as a theme. So seasons greetings to everyone here in the end of 2019 – let’s talk about the history of Santa Claus and a few of his homes in the US.

Christmas and Santa Claus

What’s the deal with Santa Claus, after all, if we’re going to talk about him a lot today?

Santa as we know him today is an amalgamation of the 4th century saint, Saint Nicholas; the British Father Christmas; the Dutch Sinterklaas; and the Germanic god Woden, associated with Yule. He is associated with the holiday of Christmas.

Christmas as a holiday has meant a lot of different things throughout the years. I’ll only touch on this briefly here. We have the obvious association of December 25, considered the birthday of Jesus Christ in Christian religions. In the Roman calendar, December 25th was also the date of the winter solstice. The medieval calendar was dominated by Christmas-related holidays, early versions of Advent and the Twelve Days of Christmas known today. The Middle Ages saw an association of Christmas with lewdness, debauchery, and parties. The Puritans and the Pilgrims actually banned Christmas in the mid-1600s for being too strongly associated with drunkenness. In response, the churches called for the holiday to be celebrated in a more devout and religious fashion. 

From the 1800s onward, public perception of Christmas began to be re-shaped as a time for family and gift-giving. This was popularized by Charles Dickens’ 1843 A Christmas Carol, which created or combined much of what we now consider a Christmas celebration. It’s been referred to as the “carol philosophy”, promoting goodwill towards all men, values that could be espoused by both religious and secular alike. By 1870, the Puritan attitudes had shifted, and Christmas was declared an official US holiday.

Santa Claus’s Origins

Today, of course, it can be argued that Christmas, and particularly Santa Claus, are largely commercial juggernauts more than anything.

As the North American colonies developed throughout the late 1700s and early 1800s, his familiar accoutrements were established. Rivington’s Gazette was the first American paper to establish the name Santa Claus, back in 1773. Santa was immortalized in print, with poems and story books, and of course, The Night Before Christmas, published in 1823. 

Washington Irving’s 1809 parody of New York culture was the first to take the traditional bishop dress (derived from St. Nicholas) away and give Santa a pipe and a winter coat. 

Thomas Nast and Santa Claus

But it was a political cartoonist during the Civil War that gave us the modern image of Santa Claus, the man we think of today. 

Thomas Nast was a Bavarian-born immigrant who came to America as a child. He did poorly at most school subjects, but showed an early passion for drawing. By the age of 18, with several years of artistic study under his belt, his drawings first appeared in the magazine Harper’s Weekly. 

He had a long history with that magazine, and has come to be known as the “father of the American cartoon”. He advocated for the abolition of slavery and opposed racial segregation. He also created the modern political symbol for the Republican party (the elephant). His cartoons were instrumental in public sentiment for the 1860s elections of Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant, and are said to be responsible for the election of Grover Cleveland, the first Democrat elected after almost thirty years of Republicans. “In the words of the artist’s grandson, Thomas Nast St Hill, “it was generally conceded that Nast’s support won Cleveland the small margin by which he was elected. In this his last national political campaign, Nast had, in fact, ‘made a president’.””

And amongst his list of credentials, he created the modern image of Santa Claus, originally used for political commentary.

The Christmas issue of Harper’s Weekly for the 1862-1863 season was published in January of 1863. It was the middle of the Civil War, the year of the battles of Shiloh, Manassas, and Antietam; it was a year with the Union experiencing both extreme trial and intense hope. The nation was divided by Civil War, and the celebration of Christmas brought conflicting emotions. 

Nast drew several images, including the cover image. It was titled “Santa Claus at Camp”. His drawing depicted a Santa Claus figure, arriving by sleigh in a Union army camp to distribute gifts and good cheer. His Santa is shown in an American flag inspired outfit – stars on top, stripes on the bottom, everything fur trimmed, with a pointy hat. It was originally political commentary or even pro-Union propaganda. Lincoln reportedly once said that NAst’s images, politicizing Santa, were “”the best recruiting sergeant the North ever had””. Despite the political roots, Nast’s images set the seeds for today’s Santa. 

Nast was reportedly also responsible for fixing Santa’s home address as the “North Pole”. This was done after the Civil War, and was reportedly done “so no nation can claim him as their own”, for propaganda, as Nast himself had done.

He continued drawing Santa, publishing at least 33 Santa images for Harper’s Weekly over his time there. His 1881 image “Merry Old Santa Claus” is probably his most famous, showing a twinkly-eyed bearded man, dressed all in red, clutching bundles of toys. But like the Santa Claus at Camp image, this is more political commentary, actually relating to the government’s indecisiveness over raising the wages of the military. It’s odd and fascinating that political cartoons could shape our cultural images so strongly.

20th Century Santa

In the 20th century, literature and promotional images continued to shape and refine our images of the jolly old man. L. Frank Baum, the very same author who penned The Wizard of Oz series, actually wrote a book about Santa in 1902, called The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. This book established much of the Santa mythology. And as an interesting sidebar, Santa has a small cameo – he appears in The Road to Oz, one of the sequels to Wizard of Oz.

Even more influential were yet more promotional images. 

As we’ve already discussed, Santa was shaped by political commentary, so it’s not surprising he moved on to the world of commercial promotion through the late 1800s and early 1900s. His image, however, was not consistent from artist to artist. Much relied on the famous poem, the line “a little old driver, so lively and quick”, with many interpretations. Images were tweaked and edited, still not the consistent idea of Santa from our modern times. Sometimes Santa was tall and thin, sometimes he was elven, and so on. 

This time, they were the promotional campaigns of that beverage giant, Coca-Cola.  In the 1930s, they were looking for a new way to increase soda sales during the winter, with the slogan, “Thirst Knows No Season.” Enter stage left: Haddon H. Sundblom. 

Sundblom worked for Coke, and was assigned to draw a new Santa for the Coca-Cola company, then. He came up with a modern image of Santa – friendly, warm, pleasant, plump. He was a cheerful, rotund man with white hair and a red suit, red cheeks, and a jolly affect. Sundblom’s first ads with new Santa debuted in 1931.

They were a hit, to say the least. Coke still sometimes uses Sundblom’s original art in their ads to this day. And not only is it Coke. After the 1931 ads, this was the image of Santa that was codified in cultural imagination. No longer were there interpretations of Santa, tall and thin, elven, etc. No, Sundblom’s characterization of Santa became the ideal image of the legend that still carries on today. 

Charles Howard’s Santa Claus

People, of course, had dressed up as Santa as far back as the legend goes. Early costumed Santas were often used around the holiday season to ring bells and solicit monetary donations for the poor. It’s said that the first department store Santa appeared in 1890, when a man in Brockton, Massachusetts named James Edgar dressed as Thomas Nast’s jolly Santa for the delight of children in the store. 

Said a man who saw Edgar as a child: “You just can’t imagine what it was like. I remember walking down an aisle and, all of a sudden, I saw Santa Claus. I couldn’t believe my eyes, and then Santa came up and started talking to me. It was a dream come true.”

By the turn of the century, the idea had caught on and the department store Santa was a common figure, so much so that some papers of the time issued cries for “only one Santa Claus per town”.

Charles Howard

The big name in the Santa Claus field, as I’ve learned, was a guy named Charles Howard, apparently quite well known in the Albion area, some 60 miles north of Buffalo.

Charles Howard was born in Albion, NY around the turn of the century, in 1896. He was a farmer and a toymaker and a secretary for the county fair association. Some describe him as having a flair for the dramatic. As a child, his mother sewed him a suit, a Santa Claus suit, so that Howard could play the role of Santa as “a short fat boy”. He continued with the role as he got older, making new suits as he grew. 

Somewhere in the early 1930s, he suggested that a local furniture store hire him to play the role of Santa while making toys in the front window during the holiday season. Eventually, he moved to the big city, 35 miles from Albion in Rochester, NY, where the owner reportedly took one look at Howard dressed in his suit and asked him “when can you start?” 

The popular story of Howard realizing the importance of Santa, immortalized by Howard himself, goes as follows. “One morning a little girl came in and watched him work. She stood there for some time before she ventured closer. Then a step at a time she walked up to him and very timidly asked, ‘Santa, will you promise me something?’ Santa looked at the child and said, ‘What is it you want me to promise?’ He had already learned that promises sometimes meant heartaches. He did not want to make any mistakes. However this child seemed so sincere, so earnest, he took her little hand in his. The child drew closer, looked up into his face with all the love and trust that a five year old could and whispered, ‘Will you promise me you will never shave?’”  

This triggered a curiosity for Howard – if Santa meant so much to one, he must mean so much to many. “Who was this old fellow who meant so much to the children? Where did he come from? What did he stand for? Why did he wear that red suit? Why was it trimmed with white fur? Why this? And why that?”

At the same time, in his regular life, Howard was a traveling toy salesman. He saw many Santas throughout his travels, and reportedly “frowned on the unkempt costumes and lack of child psychology displayed by many department store Santas”. So in 1937, Howard established the Santa Claus School.

Santa Claus School

Charles Howard’s first class was a single student, but as he raised tuition, attendance grew at his Santa Claus school. He held classes on his farm, offering lessons on “psychology, costuming, make-up, whisker grooming, voice modulation, the history and legend of St. Nicholas and learning the correct way to “ho-ho-ho.””. It was Howard’s opinion that being Santa was about what was in your heart and head, not about the girth of your belly. 

He also developed a line of Santa Claus suits. They were fancier than the standard costume at the time, but as Howard said, “worthy of the character as we knew him”. Students at his school flocked to the suits, and took in the lessons. The details of being Santa were important, and Howard was reportedly a stickler for them. “How the suit should lay on you. How your beard should be; it had to be the right shape and the right length. And how your glasses should look … everything had to be perfect. He wanted every [Santa] to be as close as possible to each other.”

Santa Claus, Indiana

We’ll get back to Charles Howard and Albion in a little while. 

For now, let’s turn our attention away from New York and look down south some, to a small town in Indiana. We’ve got to turn our clocks back, too.

The year, as it goes, was 1855. 

A small town in Indiana was working on establishing a post office. They were already known as Santa Fe (pronounced ‘fee’, apparently). The trouble was, there was already another town in Indiana by that name. A meeting was held to pick a new name. Legend has many versions of the story after that point. Some say the wind blew the door open and with it a Santa Claus, barging into the meeting. Some say a child heard a passing sound of jingle bells and exclaimed “Santa Claus!”. Some say it was the fact that the meeting was held on Christmas Eve.

Whichever story you believe, all are certain to be fanciful versions of the true story, which we’ll never know. What we can know is that in 1856, the post office granted the town the official name of Santa Claus, Indiana. 

Well, this was the first time that there was a town by this name in the US. So the post office started sending some of the children’s letters there, the ones addressed to Santa Claus. It became this huge barrage of mail in the holiday season. Since at least 1914, various groups of people began answering the children’s letters that were sent to Santa, both nationally and locally. 

The town began to attract national attention in 1929, when the post office in Santa Claus was featured in Ripley’s Believe It or Not! cartoon strip. And then we enter the 1930s.

1930s: A Big Decade in Santa Claus Operations

The 1930s were a big decade in Santa Claus operations here in the US, away from the North Pole, with a lot of Santa-related things happening simultaneously. On a socio-political front, the recovery from the Great Depression was beginning, with FDR’s First New Deal alphabet soup agencies being put into place. And big changes were happening all over – Route 66 was being built, among many other events not relevant to the show. Perhaps the attitude was one looking for hope and light. 

Santa Claus, IN in the 1930s

The 30s were a big time for the small town of Santa Claus, IN. 

Santa’s Candy Castle

We start with an entrepreneur by the name of Milt Harris. The tale goes that he looked around the town of Santa Claus and saw no Santa. The big guy wasn’t anywhere to be found. So Harris began creating the first true tourist attraction in Santa Claus, apparently in conjunction with the town postmaster James Martin. First, though, he leased nearly all of the land in and around the town – something like 1000 acres. And he began securing sponsorships from various business entities.

His attraction, Santa’s Candy Castle, was dedicated in December of 1935. It was sponsored by Curtiss Candy Company, the inventor of the Butterfinger and the Baby Ruth candy bars. Today,  they’re unsurprisingly a Nestle subsidiary. Sandy’s Candy Castle was the first tourist attraction in the town of Santa Claus, and by some accounts, the first themed attraction in the US, although that seems an unlikely claim, hard to prove.

Santa’s Candy Castle was a red brick building shaped like an actual castle, with a crenellated tower, turret, and rotunda. The next year, new attractions were added, and collectively, they were called Santa Claus Town. The Toy Village was incredibly popular, with multiple fairytale-themed buildings, each sponsored by a national toy manufacturer. This was reportedly quite popular, with children able to play with all of the hot new toys they’d heard about, for free. As the years rolled on, Harris reportedly managed to negotiate a sweet deal. For a period of time, retailers (including Marshall Fields) would arrange for toys purchased in Chicago to be shipped from the Santa Claus post office in Indiana, with that official Santa Claus postmark. 

Santa’s Workshop was also added, where children could watch a Santa Claus making wooden toys. (Though our friend Charles Howard was a Santa who could actually make wooden toys, it doesn’t appear that he performed the role at the Candy Castle, though that parallel would’ve been delightful.)

The Candy Castle was a success, in no small part because it was a free or cheap attraction to provide entertainment for kids during and after the Great Depression. 

Martin and Yellig: Making Dreams Come True

Now, as I mentioned earlier, the town postmaster, James Martin, was pretty heavily involved in all of this, because as town postmaster, he had his finger in the pie, so to speak. He noted the increased volume of letters being sent by children to “Santa Claus” around the holidays, and he took it upon himself to begin answering the letters. (This was a not insignificant amount of mail. In the 1940s, the post office reportedly handled 1.5 million pieces of mail, and in the 1950s, a newspaper article noted that the park handled over 4 million pieces of mail during the Christmas season each year. A 2014 article, though, has revised this number down to half a million pieces per year, and a 2017 article indicates the number is down around 200,000.)

Martin had a friend, a guy named Jim Yellig. Born Raymond Joseph, but known to his friends as Jim, Yellig was another guy with a Santa association from early on. While he was serving in the Navy during the first World War, his ship was docked in Brooklyn, NY, and the crew was throwing a Christmas party for underprivileged children. Yellig was chosen to play Santa Claus. The story goes that he was apparently so touched by the children’s happiness at seeing “Santa” that he prayed “If you get me through this war, Lord, I will forever be Santa Claus.”

Yellig opened a restaurant called The Chateau in Mariah Hill, Indiana, a few miles north of Santa Claus, Indiana. He began driving to Santa Claus to visit his friend Martin, the postmaster, and soon after, Martin enlisted Yellig’s help in responding to the children’s Christmas letters. By 1935, Yellig formed the Santa Claus American Legion Post in order to assist with the letters as Santa’s helpers, and he began dressing up as Santa and making appearances around the town of Santa Claus, including at Santa’s Candy Castle. He actually took a class from Charles Howard’s Santa Claus School. Held at Santa’s Candy Castle in 1938, this was the only time these two incredibly famous Santas were known to have met. (A picture of this meeting can be found here.) From this point, Yellig began being known as “The Real Santa from Santa Claus”.

A Tale of the Santa Claus Statue

At the same time that Yellig was coming onto the scene, Harris’ plans for the Candy Castle caught the attention of another entrepreneur, reportedly Harris’ arch-rival, a guy named Carl Barrett. Now, Barrett decided that he didn’t like Harris’ “materialism”, and so Barrett began planning his own attraction, called “Santa Claus Park”, in direct competition with Harris, just down the road, less than half a mile away.

On Christmas Day 1935, just days after Harris’ Candy Castle opened, Barrett dedicated a 22-ft tall statue of Santa, erected on the highest hill in the town. He claimed it was paid for by the people, that it was built on the spot where a meteor had landed and therefore was divinely inspired, and that the statue was made out of granite. At least one of those claims later was revealed to be false.

Barrett’s plans were just as big as Harris’. Barrett wanted to make his Santa Claus Park a world shrine, a children’s dream paradise with log cabins, a giant doll house, and an ice village. It never moved forward, however, as in January, Harris sued Barrett, essentially derailing both their grand plans. 

Lawsuits went back and forth, mostly regarding land ownership, and even made it as high up as the Indiana Supreme Court. They were battling over the right to Santa. Harris and Martin were able to continue expanding Santa Claus Town due to their sponsor partnerships, but Barrett’s more principled “of the people” stance relied solely on personal donations due to his spectacular Santa.

But the thing was, people began to notice the statue didn’t look so great. In fact, it had started cracking and crumbling. And obviously, granite sculptures don’t do that. As it turns out, the statue was made out of concrete, and Barrett had lied. This obviously didn’t sit well with the townsfolk. Unfortunately, war broke out, World War II, more than just a petty squabble between business rivals. Things grew quiet in Santa Claus, IN, and the attractions there, especially Barrett’s Santa Claus Park, fell into disrepair and neglect.   

Santa Claus, AZ and Santa Claus, GA

Let’s step back in time a bit, and interrogate something I mentioned earlier. 

Now, apparently, by 1928, the US post office supposedly decided that there would be no other post office with the name of “Santa Claus” due to the influx of holiday mail and the staffing problems it caused over in Indiana. This is an unsubstantiated fact from Wikipedia, but it does appear to be technically accurate. There is only one post office in a town named Santa Claus, and that’s Santa Claus, IN. But there are two other towns by this name: one in AZ, and one in GA. 

Santa Claus, GA

I’ll discuss the latter first. Established in 1941, Santa Claus, GA is one of those cute little small American towns. Located a few miles from Vidalia (home of the onion by the same name), the town of Santa Claus, GA is tiny, with only a couple hundred people. It’s quaint, with holiday-themed street names, a Santa Claus mailbox (but not a post office!), and an oversized Santa statue that people can pose for pictures by. There’s nothing particularly noteworthy about the place for the purposes of our podcast – the town was reportedly named in an effort to drive traffic to local pecan farms. It’s too small for any fancy restaurants or attractions beyond the name, but it’s still there.

Santa Claus, AZ

Now, let’s get to Santa Claus, AZ. Santa Claus, in Arizona? Yup.

I grew up in the Arizona desert myself, and the notion of a Santa Claus town there has tickled my funny bone since I first heard about it. There’s just something so absurd about trying to focus on Santa and icicles and snow when you’re surrounded by creosote and tiny lizards and endless brown desert dirt, and don’t even own a winter coat. 

Santa Claus, AZ was the brainchild of a realtor named Ninon (sometimes spelled Nina) Talbot who was born in 1888. I can’t tell you how thrilled I am to focus on a woman for part of this podcast, finally. 

The famous sci-fi writer Robert Heinlein had nothing but praise for Talbot, describing her thusly: “In her own field, she was an artist equal to Rembrandt, Michelangelo, and Shakespeare.” No, this was not the kind of caliber of person I was expecting when I set out to shape a holiday episode of a podcast about abandoned theme parks and attractions.

Talbot promoted herself as the biggest real estate agent in California, a fun play on words since she also was apparently over 300 pounds at the time. “The Biggest in the Business!” was her slogan, and thank goodness, we’ve got a person who has a sense of humor. Talbot and her husband moved from Los Angeles to Kingman (AZ) in the late 1920s or early 1930s, with the goal of selling land or setting up a resort or otherwise making some money. Kingman was a hub of sorts, functioning as the big city to service all the small mining towns that littered the hills. Too, it attracted folks stopping off old Route 66, the Mother Road.

Talbot established herself with a hotel first, called the Kit Carson Guest House, located right in the heart of Kingman at the intersection of what is now I-40 and US 93. Here she honed her skills in charisma and cooking, enticing guests. Said a person who knew her at the time “She knew how to treat people. She could sell you anything you didn’t even want.”

After a few years, Talbot sold the Kit Carson Guest House, with a new profitable venture in mind. She purchased 80 acres of land, some 14 miles north of the town of Kingman. (That’s probably meaningless to non-locals – the town in question is in the northwest section of the state, about an hour and a half south from Las Vegas, three and a half hours north of Phoenix.) 

The town of Santa Claus, with the obvious theming implied by the name, was officially incorporated in 1937.

She called it Santa Claus as a promotion, as a way to attract folks to the town to buy the 1-acre plots of land she was selling surrounding it, called Santa Claus Acres. Spoiler alert: it never really worked, and it’s generally accepted that the only people who actually lived in the town were the workers at the various town attractions.

Hoover Dam (Boulder Dam)

You might be asking yourself, though, why someone would think it was a good or profitable idea to try and sell land up in this remote area of the state, and to have it make sense, I need to tell you about what else was going on in AZ at the time. 

In the early 1900s through the 1920s, it was settled that a dam on the Colorado River would provide flood control, irrigation water, and hydroelectric power generation for a growing number of people occupying these desert towns. Additionally, it would allow US 93 to connect Arizona and Las Vegas, instead of the ferry boat in use prior. President Coolidge authorized the Boulder Canyon Project Act in December of 1928, and construction began in 1931 on one of America’s “Seven Modern Engineering Wonders”. 

Suddenly, tens of thousands of workers were moving into the area to begin building the massive dam, many living in the model city of Boulder City, Nevada. Not only that, but the construction of the dam was on such a huge scale that it became a tourist attraction before it was completed in 1936, and after. Suddenly there was this huge new audience driving past to see the Hoover Dam (originally called the Boulder Dam). 

Talbot was on to something.

Santa Claus AZ as an Attraction

At the time, drivers still expected to be surprised around every bend of the road. They wanted to have a great time, and not make great time, as the saying goes. Or perhaps didn’t have a choice – this was the age before the implementation of the interstate highway system (remember the beginning of the episode? It always ties in somehow!).  Thus, the proliferation and success of roadside attractions, corridors with wild theming and over the top names to entice drivers to stop. (Remember Prehistoric Forest in Irish Hills, MI, back in episode 4 of TAC?) It didn’t matter if the attraction itself was makeshift, a bit garish, and something of a let-down. It was the idea that mattered.

Santa Claus, AZ was one of these, enticing visitors as they drove to and from Vegas, Hoover Dam, Kingman, Phoenix, and so on.

See, while people didn’t actually want to live there, Talbot managed to create a fun roadside attraction nonetheless. Everything had a Santa theme or a North Pole theme, with candy-cane striped buildings and green roofs. It kind of had a Swiss chalet feeling, which was certainly startling in the desert (especially back in the day, it was a lot of adobe and cheap wood, not Swiss chalets with gingerbread trim). 

Talbot called her town “The Pride of the Desert”, and it was said that in its heyday, Santa Claus could rival anything else along old Route 66. (Only back then, it was new: Route 66 began paving in 1931.) Talbot’s charisma and excellent home cooking were perfect bedfellows for the incongruous theming at this otherwise lonely desert gas stop.

As famed writer Robert Heinlein, known for Starship Troopers among others, wrote of the town in his 1950 story “Cliff and the Calories”, as it arose from the “grimmest desert in the world”. “You know what most desert gas stations look like — put together out of odds and ends. Here was a beautiful fairytale cottage with wavy candy stripes in the shingles. It had a broad brick chimney — and Santa Claus was about to climb down the chimney! Between the station and the cottage were two incredible little dolls’ houses. One was marked Cinderella’s House, and Mistress Mary Quite Contrary was making the garden grow. The other one needed no sign: the Three Little Pigs, and the Big Bad Wolf was stuck in its’ chimney.”

The centerpiece building was named the Santa Claus Inn. Though some retellings of the town’s story indicate this was solely a renamed Kit Carson Guest House, this was a brand new building, designed by Talbot’s husband and built by local Kingsman contractor W. J. Zinck. In addition to the holiday decoration and prominent Santa Claus, a Christmas tree too stood outside (the building was later renamed the Christmas Tree Inn). 

Inside, the restaurant was decorated with nursery rhyme paintings from a former Disney animator, Walter Winsett. Breakfast was $0.75, about $13 in today’s money; lunch $1; and dinner $1.50. The restaurant was famed for its Chicken a la North Pole and Rum Pie a la Kris Kringle. Talbot dressed as Mrs. Claus, and brought her vivacious energy to the task at hand. “Any known or asked-for dish or delicacy asked for will be served. The everyday routine provision of ordinary food is not the policy of this cage,” she once said. Year round, she served five course meals every day. A historical postcard shows a sample menu: olives, celery, iceberg; fruit or shrimp cocktail; tomato or chicken soup; chicken, lamb chops, or filet mignon; sherbet; salad; multiple desserts like ice cream, pie, or cake; and coffee and mints. All, of course, with appropriately holiday-themed names. 

Talbot’s cooking brought some modicum of fame to the attraction. Famed food critic Duncan Hines (now best known for the cake mixes bearing his name) made early Zagat-type guides of good restaurants across the country for his friends – an essential at a time prior to GPS, cell phone data, or the internet. One of his recommendations was the Santa Claus Inn, which in addition to good food offered a moderately air-conditioned space through the use of swamp coolers, a relatively new technology at the time. Hines considered the Santa Claus Inn to be one of the best places to eat in Arizona, and even included her rum pie recipe in one of his cookbooks. “Perhaps the best rum pie you ever ate, chicken a la North Pole and lots of other unusual things.”

Other “attractions” included the tram shaped into a train, called “Santa Claus Arizona Express” with the “locomotive” called Old 12-25. A donkey wandered the grounds. Inside the two small cottages, nursery rhyme dioramas amused the children.

And of course, the special postbox. Although there was never an actual post office, a mailbox was available, with a special postmark – “Santa Claus, Arizona, via Kingman”. Talbot responded to every child’s Christmas letter. They also sent postcards to every visitor who stopped, whether for gas or food, reminding them to come back. 

The 30s through 50s in Santa Claus, AZ were a magical time.

Christmas Park, NY

We return to Albion, NY after the war, where our friend, Santa legend Charles Howard, had established his Santa Claus School. It ran for two months, in October and November, of each year. Howard continued to busy himself in the Santa Claus field. He served as Macy’s Santa-in-chief and reported was Santa in the first nationally televised Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. He continued this appearance for the next 17 years, and even served as a Santa consultant for 1947’s “Miracle on 34th Street”.

Locally to Albion, Howard decided to expand his Santa Claus School with an attraction for the children, as well. It was called “Christmas Park”, and it was located right on his farm, where the school itself was located. 

In comparison with any true theme park, this is honestly closer to a playground with a theme, as honestly most summer festivals in my town have more rides and attractions today. Nonetheless, it was a draw for people of the time, when America was still recovering from the war and traveling locally. 

“Christmas Park” had a themed playground, a petting farm with goats and real reindeer, a wishing well, something called “Santa’s Gold Mine” (perhaps a pan for gold type attraction), a toy and gift shop, and a diesel-operated miniature train called “The Railmaster” that was memorable for going through a tunnel. Here’s a link to photos of the park in operation. Howard reportedly had a collection of antique sleighs placed throughout the park for theming purposes, as well. There was also a “Christmas Tree” ride, a specially made version of the classic Allan Herschell helicopter ride; instead of helicopters, the ride buggies were themed as Christmas ornaments. Inside the various barns and outbuildings, there were Christmas-themed displays, fake snow, and a constant stream of Christmas music.

The park opened in 1953, with a short 13-week summer season.

In later years, the park was open year round. According to accounts online from people who visited the park as children, there was no trouble believing in Santa Claus, because they lived in the same town and could see him anytime! 

Santa Claus Land: America’s First Theme Park

Back in Santa Claus, IN, the post-war landscape saw a lot of run-down attractions. A local businessman named Louis Koch entered the scene, looking for a retirement project. He and his wife had nine children, and loved the holidays. He thought the town of Santa Claus, with that wonderful name, needed more attractions that appealed to children, especially ones that featured Santa himself. In the early 40s, then, he purchased some lots of land in Santa Claus. The war postponed development on his attraction, and the family was able to break ground in 1945. 

The attraction was christened as “Santa Claus Land”, and it opened in August of 1946. And without much fanfare at all, I present to you the recognized first theme park in the US. That’s right, Koch’s little retirement project,“Santa Claus Land”, is considered America’s first theme park. 

It started out small, a sort of family business that Koch ran with his son Bill. Originally, the park had no entrance cost. It featured toy displays, Santa’s toy shop, a restaurant with a Bavarian village theme, and a few children’s rides, including the “Santa Claus Land Railroad”, a miniature train ride that went through Mother Goose-themed displays. And of course, there was Santa, portrayed by the legendary Jim Yellig who we talked about a little while ago, the so-called Real Santa Claus from Santa Claus.

Not only that, but the Santa Claus post office moved that same year, to a new building on the property of the Santa Claus Land park, when the former building was reported in bad condition. The original building itself was also moved and restored, renamed as House of Dolls, a doll exhibit.

Bill Koch, though initially pessimistic about the park’s chances for success, was buoyed by the first few years of operation, and he took over from his father. He expanded the park, adding a ride area (“Rudolph’s Reindeer Ranch”), the first Jeep-go-round ever manufactured (in 1947), and in 1948, a deer farm with a few of Santa’s reindeer. There were “educated animals” like the Fire Chief Rabbit and the Piano Playing Duck. There was a wax museum, called Hall of Famous Americans. 

The 1946 Christmas Room Restaurant was an incredibly popular “attraction” in the early years, like the Knotts’ serving chicken dinners that attracted long lines. Bill Koch was quoted as saying that their business in the early years was built on those chicken dinners.

In 1952, the Koch family put the park up for sale, with quite a few strings attached. The family was worried about the effect of managing the park on the Sr. Koch’s health. However, at the same time, they did not want to see the park commercialized. Reportedly, many of the townsfolk and park workers were opposed to the sale. Jim Yellig, said to have been Santa to more children than anyone else in the world, was quoted as saying “I hope it’s never sold. I’d be lost without this job. I love it so much.”

After a year on the market, the Koch family decided to retain ownership of the park. There had been several interested buyers, but none were willing to abide with the requirements on non-commercialization, so the decision was made to keep it within the family. 

By 1955, the park began charging admission: $0.50 for adults, kids free. A 1960 video is available on Youtube, showing a delightful scene of the park as it was.

In 1960, Bill Koch married Santa’s daughter, Patricia Yellig, daughter of Jim Yellig, a poetic reminder of the importance of the two families to the city of Santa Claus, IN. 

The Decline of Santa Claus, AZ

Back in Arizona, Talbot’s time at Santa Claus was coming to an end. World War II hadn’t necessarily been kind, closing US 93 road access across Hoover Dam for several years in the 1940s and slowing tourist traffic. Talbot’s husband Ed passed away in 1942, and she remarried two years later, still operating the restaurant and promoting her Santa Claus Acres lots. Several of the lots sold, but none were ever built upon, despite the proximity to the booming tourist attraction of the Hoover Dam and the location along the route to Las Vegas. Why?

Water, as always is the story in the desert. 

Santa Claus, AZ had unexpectedly been built atop land where the water table was very deep, due to a nearby geologic fault. No successful wells were dug, so water had to be hauled by tanker the 14 miles from Kingman, an expensive task. Notes on each dining table reminded guests not to waste water, signed “Mrs. Claus”. 

Talbot also began losing interest in running her tourist attraction due to her increasing gambling habit, reportedly gambling away entire days’ profits at a time. Her second husband died in 1947, and she was getting older, becoming less interested in water conservation and constant food service, especially with the lure of the gambling tables nearby. In 1950, she sold Santa Claus and moved back to Los Angeles near her children. 

The new owners, Doc and Erma Bromaghim, carried on where Ninon Talbot had left off, and for a decade, it was still a holiday at Santa Claus. However, business began to slow, and the Bromaghims began closing the attraction December through February starting in the mid-50s, in order to save money. Water again was a big issue. They were exhausted with trucking water, and reportedly drilled down a staggering 2,000 feet deep, still not finding water. This was the last straw, and they sold Santa Claus in 1965.

And from here, it was nothing but downhill for Santa Claus, with the common end-of-life tale for roadside attractions like this. At least eight different owners spun through the place, which clearly drew in those who didn’t give thought to the practicalities of water and customer service. But of course, no owner lasted long, and no one invested any money in improvements or even upkeep. Maintenance slipped, and things got shabby. The new owners stopped answering the children’s Christmas letters each year.

The holiday aesthetic of the neat and charming Santa village was lost. 

Where once there was Mrs. Santa Claus and her Rum Pie, there now was microwave sandwiches. The gas station closed, becoming a very slow moving antique and curio shop specializing in music boxes. One owner reportedly favored using mannequins in parked cars in an attempt to give the attraction an air of business. 

Author Mark Winegardner described the latter days of Santa Claus in his 1987 book “Elvis Presley Boulevard: From Sea to Shining Sea, Almost”: “Styrofoam silver bells, strands of burned-out Christmas lights and faded plastic likenesses of Old Saint Nick garnished this little village. A lopsided, artificial twenty-foot tree whistled in the wind beside a broken Coke machine and an empty ice freezer. Two of the three buildings were padlocked; through their windows, encrusted with layers of sand and decade-old aerosol snow.”

Drivers in the second half of the century weren’t looking for roadside attractions and surprises like their parents and grandparents had, either. People wanted to get where they were going, be it to the glimmers of Phoenix in one direction or Vegas in the other. 

A variety of new uses for Santa Claus were proposed throughout the years, but nothing went beyond the dreaming stage: a foster home, a trailer park, a cocktail lounge, a shopping center. Ultimately, the town was wiped from the official maps, and officially closed services in 1993 (some sources say 1995).

The entire “town” has been for sale off and on since. As of this recording, you can buy Santa Claus, Arizona for the princely sum of $440,000. The real estate listing (which you can view here) dully lists a brief history of the place, ending with the following in a scream, sans punctuation and with several typographical and grammatical errors: “4 ACRE ON MAJOR HWY BRING BACK THE ORGINAL TOWN OF SANTA CLAUSE ONCE HAD ITS ON POST OFFICE NUMBER THINK OF A GREAT SHOW CAR AND BIKE STOP MAKE A STATEMENT, REBUILD AND DRAW IN THE TOURIST AND LOCALS”. 

Route 93, where Santa Claus is located, is still the sole route between Vegas and the major Arizona cities, yet Santa Claus sits abandoned, covered in graffiti and dilapidated on the side of the road, in the middle of the harsh and unyielding Mojave Desert. 

It’s a cautionary note for the future of many desert cities, as water in the area becomes more scarce. What happens when a place is no longer habitable? Here lies Santa Claus, Arizona. 

Images of the abandoned interiors: http://www.placesthatwere.com/2015/07/christmas-tree-inn-in-abandoned-santa.html

The End of Santa Claus Land and Christmas Park and Santa Claus School? No.

It was reportedly one of Charles Howard’s great dreams, that modest little theme park called “Christmas Park”, sitting next to the school for Santa Clauses in Albion, NY. It was ultimately not a long-lived park, however. Howard became distressed with the direction the park was heading in 1964, quoted in an article at the time as saying, “They put in merry-go-rounds and ferris wheels. I have nothing against these things, but in Christmas Park a ferris wheel should be in the form of a Christmas wreath, and a merry-go-round should have reindeer to ride on.” His complaints came along with reports of financial troubles, and the next year in 1965, Christmas Park filed for bankruptcy, about ¾ of a million dollars in debt in today’s money. 

The entire operation was sold at auction; a man named Vincent Cardone purchased the school and theme park, and a woman named Elizabeth Babcock purchased the Santa suit business she’d been managing for several years. Other items and tracts of land were sold to other buyers. 

Howard died in 1966. Said by a journalist at the time, he “guided his sleigh into the limitless great beyond.”

http://nyhistoric.com/2012/12/santa-claus/ The remnants of Christmas Park were left alone, untouched by all accounts over the last 50 or so years, and still remain to this day, including the old train tunnel and the barns, some still with signs attached and Christmas wreaths decorating the insides. Today, a historical marker stands on the site. It reads: “Santa Claus. Charles W. Howard, 1896-1966. In 1937 he established here a world famous Santa Claus School, the first of its kind, and 1953 Christmas Park. Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade Santa Claus”. 

What about Santa Claus Land? 

The park continued to add new rides through the 60s, 70s and 80s, delightfully detailed on the park’s official timeline page: https://www.holidayworld.com/holiblog/2019/05/15/timeline-santa-claus-land-holiday-world-splashin-safari/  In the 1970s, the park moved its entrance, signalling a major focus change from kid-focused to whole-family entertainment. They added nine major rides over the next decade. By 1984, the park changed its name to Holiday World, expanding with two new holiday-themed areas, Halloween and 4th of July. Jim Yellig served as Santa at the park from its opening in 1946 until a few months before his death in 1984. There’s also been a couple of community housing developments from the Koch family, called Christmas Lake Village and Holiday Village.

1993 saw the addition of a major waterpark called Splashin’ Safari, and 2006 saw the addition of a Thanksgiving themed area to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the park. The park is of course, still open today, a major, award-winning theme park and waterpark, and at least four generations of the Koch family have owned the park. In 2004, it won the international Applause award, honoring “foresight, originality, and creativity, plus sound business development and profitability,” the smallest theme park at the time to ever win said award. 

Ironically, the park is once again no longer open during the Christmas season, closed mid-November through mid-May. Visitors to Santa Claus, IN can find themselves in the same situation as folks 70 years ago – not a lot of Santa Claus in Santa Claus around the holidays. 

As part of the park’s 70th anniversary celebrations, the “Freedom Train”, the miniature railroad engine that had been the last original ride removed from the park, was brought back as a stationary display, considered by the park’s president as “an important part of our history”.

As for the Santa Claus School, it too is still in operation. It operated in Albion until 1968, at which point Charles Howard’s friends, Nate and Mary Ida Doran, moved the school to Bay City, MI. Tom and Holly Valent took over operation in 1987, and the school moved to Midland, MI, where it still teaches approximately 300 Santas per year today. 

And as of 2010, professional Santa Phillip L. Wenz authored the Santa Claus Oath, a set of guiding principles for those seeking to embody Santa Claus. It was dedicated in the honor of Charles Howard and Jim Yellig, in the rotunda of Santa’s Candy Castle, there in Santa Claus, IN. https://santaclausoath.webs.com/abouttheoath.htm 

Conclusions

Now, to the pedantic out there as we get back to our question about earliest theme parks. You might also award Knott’s Berry Farm the title of the first theme park, as it had a Wild West and Ghost Town area that opened all the way back in 1941. However, it was still primarily a restaurant at the time and didn’t become an enclosed theme park officially until the 50s or 60s. But that’s really neither here nor there. And of course, if you broaden the question to include “amusement” parks and not just theme parks, you’ll have to go back to the 1500s.

Of course, there was another Christmas theme park that was also considered one of the first theme parks in the US. But we’ll have to save that one for another year.

I really liked this quote I found while researching for this episode, in an article about historical preservation and Charles Howard. Orleans County historian Matt Ballard writes in a 2018 article: “Material culture serves a valuable purpose in the process of interpreting the past. Void of any physical representation of past cultures, we would lose all ability to understand the lives of those who lived without a voice.” It’s this quote that shines a light on at least my own fascination with abandoned places and abandoned theme parks. What we leave behind helps us understand what came before, especially if they were a person of less power.

Charles Howard, one of the great Santa Clauses, himself wrote a letter in favor of historical preservation for landmark buildings in Albion in the 1960s. From a young age, too, Howard realized that teaching the role of Santa was a great task and always viewed that task as a privilege. So important was this role, that Howard remarked, “To say there is no Santa Claus is the most erroneous statement in the world. Santa Claus is a thought that is passed from generation to generation. After time this thought takes on a human form. Maybe if all children and adults understand the symbolism of this thought we can actually attain Peace on Earth and good will to men everywhere.”

References

Santa Claus, AZ

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Santa Claus, IN; Charles Howard; Santa Claus Land

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33. Podcast: the Town named Santa Claus. Holiday World. https://www.holidayworld.com/holiblog/2018/12/14/podcast-the-town-named-santa-claus/. Published December 14, 2018. Accessed December 4, 2019.
34. Ballard M. Recalling Howard’s Beloved Christmas Park. Pioneer Record. December 2017. https://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/pioneer_record/51.
35. Resurrected Chateau in Mariah Hill delivers on its dry-rub ribs, fried chicken, other delights. http://www.courierpress.com/features/resurrected-chateau-in-mariah-hill-delivers-on-its-dry-rub-ribs-fried-chicken-other-delights-ep-4445-324681571.html. Accessed December 11, 2019.
36. Rich history of Santa Claus instruction traces its roots back to Albion. The Buffalo News. December 2016. https://buffalonews.com/2016/12/24/rich-history-santa-claus-instruction-traces-roots-back-albion/. Accessed December 6, 2019.
37. Foley M. Saint Mick: My Journey From Hardcore Legend to Santa’s Jolly Elf. Polis Books; 2017.
38. Koch P, Thompson EW. Santa Claus. Arcadia Publishing Library Editions; 2013.
39. Thompson PK and E. Santa Claus. Arcadia Publishing; 2013.
40. Santa Claus. New York Historic. https://nyhistoric.com/2012/12/santa-claus/. Accessed December 6, 2019.
41. Santa Claus Land and the Town Named Santa Claus. Retro Planet. https://blog.retroplanet.com/santa-claus-land/. Published January 28, 2014. Accessed December 4, 2019.
42. Santa Claus Land, Santa Claus IN: showing house of dolls. https://contentdm.acpl.lib.in.us/digital/collection/coll6/id/3220. Accessed December 4, 2019.
43. Santa Claus Land, Santa Claus, Indiana. https://vintage-ads.livejournal.com/3714917.html. Accessed December 4, 2019.
44. Santa Claus Museum and Village. In: Wikipedia. ; 2018. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Santa_Claus_Museum_and_Village&oldid=850940893. Accessed December 9, 2019.
45. Santa Claus Oath. Santa Claus Oath. https://santaclausoath.webs.com/. Accessed December 5, 2019.
46. Staff W. Santa Claus, Indiana. Moment of Indiana History – Indiana Public Media. https://indianapublicmedia.org/momentofindianahistory/santa-claus-indiana/. Accessed December 4, 2019.
47. Santa Claus, Indiana. In: Wikipedia. ; 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Santa_Claus,_Indiana&oldid=928519362. Accessed December 4, 2019.
48. Santa Claus, Indiana gets 20,000 letters a year – and “elves” reply to all of them | US news | The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/dec/09/santa-claus-indiana-gets-20000-letters-a-year-and-elves-reply-to-all-of-them. Accessed December 11, 2019.
49. Santa Clauses, Salami-Tyers and Soap-Tasters – Mechanix Illustrated (Dec, 1952). Modern Mechanix. http://blog.modernmechanix.com/santa-clauses-salami-tyers-and-soap-tasters/. Accessed December 11, 2019.
50. The Birth of the Charles W. Howard Santa Claus School | Orleans County Department of History. http://orleanscountyhistorian.org/the-birth-of-the-charles-w-howard-santa-claus-school/. Accessed December 6, 2019.
51. The Early History of Theme Parks in the United States. https://www.arcadiapublishing.com/Navigation/Community/Arcadia-and-THP-Blog/September-2017/%E2%80%8BThe-Early-History-of-Theme-Parks-in-America. Accessed December 4, 2019.
52. The History of Holiday World. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgzWYYhl4QY. Accessed December 4, 2019.
53. The History of Holiday World Theme Park. TripSavvy. https://www.tripsavvy.com/the-history-of-holiday-world-3882464. Accessed December 11, 2019.
54. The History of Santa Claus, Indiana. http://web.archive.org/web/20151103203238/http://www.hohoholdings.com/schistory.htm. Published November 3, 2015. Accessed December 4, 2019.
55. The year-round Santa. http://westsidenewsny.com/pastarchives/OldSite/westside/news/2003/1222/feature/theyearround.html. Accessed December 11, 2019.
56. Dahl DL. Those Kids Deserve Water Too: A History of the Patoka Lake Regional Water and Sewer District. Lulu Press, Inc; 2019.
57. Marimen M, Willis JA, Taylor T. Weird Indiana: Your Travel Guide to Indiana’s Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets. Sterling Publishing Company, Inc.; 2008.
58. Western New York Amusement Parks – Rose Ann Hirsch – Google Books. https://books.google.com/books?id=xtrLDCJYVsAC&pg=PA69&lpg=PA69&dq=igloo+tunnel+christmas+park&source=bl&ots=jAmCGrIUyu&sig=x3-ggbRI5W5iqooOk2SoEEZJHXg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=6bS8UP6vMvOs0AHDwoH4BA&ved=0CEUQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=igloo%20tunnel%20christmas%20park&f=false. Accessed December 6, 2019.
59. World’s Oldest Santa Statue, Santa Claus, Indiana. RoadsideAmerica.com. https://www.roadsideamerica.com/story/16624. Accessed December 9, 2019.

Other Santa Claus References

1. The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. In: Wikipedia. ; 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Life_and_Adventures_of_Santa_Claus&oldid=929426527. Accessed December 5, 2019.
2. Boissoneault L. A Civil War Cartoonist Created the Modern Image of Santa Claus as Union Propaganda. Smithsonian. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/civil-war-cartoonist-created-modern-image-santa-claus-union-propaganda-180971074/. Accessed December 5, 2019.
3. Christmas. In: Wikipedia. ; 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Christmas&oldid=928552167. Accessed December 5, 2019.
4. Copyrigit Messages. http://smib.tripod.com/copyrght.htm. Accessed December 5, 2019.
5. How Coca-Cola invented Christmas as we know it. Salon. https://www.salon.com/2017/12/16/how-coca-cola-invented-christmas-as-we-know-it_partner/. Published December 16, 2017. Accessed December 9, 2019.
6. How Santa brought Coca-Cola in from the cold. National Museum of American History. https://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/santa-coca-cola. Published December 17, 2014. Accessed December 5, 2019.
7. Ought it not be a Merry Christmas? https://www.alexandriava.gov/historic/fortward/default.aspx?id=39996. Accessed December 6, 2019.
8. Santa Claus. In: Wikipedia. ; 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Santa_Claus&oldid=928457109. Accessed December 5, 2019.
9. Santa Claus, Georgia. In: Wikipedia. ; 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Santa_Claus,_Georgia&oldid=926675816. Accessed December 8, 2019.
10. The True History of the Modern Day Santa Claus. The Coca-Cola Company. https://www.coca-colacompany.com/stories/coke-lore-santa-claus. Accessed December 5, 2019.
11. Thomas Nast | Santa Claus in Camp (published in Harper’s Weekly, January 3, 1863) | The Met. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/427502. Accessed December 5, 2019.
12. Trolley park. In: Wikipedia. ; 2019. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Trolley_park&oldid=919839820. Accessed December 4, 2019.
13. Solutions UCC-O. USPS Operation Santa. http://about.usps.com/holidaynews/operation-santa.htm. Accessed December 9, 2019.
14. Where Was the First Department Store Santa Claus? New England Today. December 2018. https://newengland.com/today/living/new-england-history/first-department-store-santa-claus/. Accessed December 6, 2019.

Remember that what you’ve read is a podcast! A link is included at the top of the page. Listen to more episodes of The Abandoned Carousel on your favorite platform: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | RadioPublic | TuneIn | Overcast | Pocket Casts | Castro. Support the podcast on Patreon for extra content! Comment below to share your thoughts – as Lucy Maud Montgomery once said, nothing is ever really lost to us, as long as we remember it.

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Podcast credits: Podcast cover background photo is by 4045 on freepik.com. Episode cover image: Sam Horwitz, CCby2.0. Theme music is from “Aerobatics in Slow Motion” by TeknoAXE. Incidental music includes “Virtutes Instrumenti” and “Myst” by Kevin Macleod / incompetech.com; “Sheltered Swan” and “image film 043” by Sascha Ende via filmmusic.io. Sound effects via freesound.org: Sparrows by Otad; Chipping Sparrow by jpbillingsleyjr; Tropical Island by richwise; Hades and Thunder by roadie; oiseaux vautour by roubignolle; Myst Book Homage by cosmicembers; “Construction, Jackhammer, Manual, A” and “Roller Coaster Screams A” (Expedition Everest) by InspectorJ (www.jshaw.co.uk).

Intro

I thought I’d take a bit lighter topic this time after two episodes involving significant unknowns and Google Translate. This week, I’m going to tell you about an abandoned theme park that’s in plain sight of the 57 thousand people that visit Walt Disney World in Florida each day. As with my early episode on the history of Disney’s Skyway, it’s absolutely wild to think about an abandoned park at a Disney property. But it’s more likely than you might think, especially in Florida, where Disney owns such large swaths of land.

I’ll tell you right off the bat that I’m not breaking any significant new ground in this episode. You know that if it’s Disney, it’s been incredibly well-documented, and that’s the case too with the history of Discovery Island. As always, though, you know that I like to go down a rabbithole or two, so hopefully you’ll learn a new tidbit even if you are already familiar with the story of Discovery Island. 

So let’s get into it, and go over the curious case of an abandoned part of Walt Disney World.

A Brief History of the Origins of Walt Disney World

Much ink, digital and analog, has been spilled on the topic of Walt Disney, Disneyland, and Walt Disney World. In general, Disney parks are the most-visited in the world in terms of attendance numbers, and individual Disney parks consistently occupy the majority of the top 10 most visited parks, worldwide. Taking all the individual parks and properties together, Walt Disney World in Orlando FL would be considered the largest in the world. Numbers vary by source, but WDW is said to be about 39 square miles. This is the size of San Francisco, or slightly less than twice the size of Manhattan. 

The genesis of Walt Disney World is generally considered to be the opening of Disneyland itself, over in Anaheim, CA, in July of 1955. Soon after the success of the park’s opening, Walt Disney was confronted with the physical limitations of the urban area of Anaheim surrounding his new park. His magical themed paradise was surrounded by a berm of land to keep out reality, but guests faced an abrupt transition entering and exiting the park. The businesses that sprang up around Disneyland made no effort to replicate the theming or experience that made Walt’s park so magical, much to his dismay. 

 Walt Disney and his business associates began scouting for locations for a new Disney property, the heir apparent to the success of Disneyland, as early as 1961, six years after Disneyland opened. They wanted that perfect combination of things, a perfect combination that so few of the parks here on TAC actually have: a temperate and desirable climate, and a location near a major population center. In addition, Walt was looking for something Disneyland didn’t have: a large quantity of land for Walt to purchase, to avoid the creep and blight that could be seen on the edges of Disneyland’s tight boundaries. 

 In early 1965, rumors began appearing in the Orlando Sentinel, the local paper for what was then a small farming community. A number of large transactions had been recorded in the area. Over the next few months, many large and small land transactions were recorded, to and from a variety of mysterious buyers. There was much speculation about who the purchaser was, with aerospace industry being considered most likely, given the proximity to Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center. 

By October of 1965, hardworking journalist Emily Bavar published an article in the Orlando Sentinel deducing that the buyer was, of course, Walt Disney. The official announcement had been scheduled for November, but the governor was forced to confirm the newspaper reporting early. 

A video was made in 1966 specifically for Disney employees and Florida legislators and locals. It is an incredible piece of Disney history, shot just two months before Walt died. It’s only recently been made available to the public, and you can watch it for free online.

It was a long process. Before any earth could be moved or buildings built, there was the question of local government and legislation. Remember, this is an area comparable to a large city. Between 1966 and 1967, legislation regarding the “Reedy Creek Improvement District” was put into place by the Florida government regarding municipal concerns like drainage, waste management, pest control, utilities, roads, etc. Essentially, based on my understanding, Disney was given a large degree of self-sufficiency, and only one governing body was required to oversee the varied and constantly changing nature of the project. It also meant Florida taxpayer money didn’t contribute to the project, and that Disney didn’t have to rely on state agencies for project approval. 

Site preparation began a few weeks after the legislation went through, and the actual construction began in spring of 1969. 

Walt Disney World is big on a whole different scale, which you might not realize if you’re a person like me who’s never been. In general parlance, “Walt Disney World” is synonymous with the flagship Magic Kingdom theme park, but technically of course, the WDW Resort is the entire property. What’s called Bay Lake was the largest natural body of water on Disney’s property, adjacent to what is now the site of the Magic Kingdom. The lake had to be drained and drudged as part of the construction process.

Here, then, is where we tie in the focus of today’s story, Discovery Island.

Discovery Island Before Disney

Bay Lake, the natural lake on the WDW property, originally had one island, the future Discovery Island. Of course, before it was Discovery Island or even Disney property, it had a long history.

Much of this section of the story owes to a delightful and recent article by user Gulopine over at RetroWDW. Their article traces the known history of the island prior to becoming Discovery Island, and they do this in a nice way, by following the land records and paper trail. I encourage you to read the article, as they link to all the property records and newspaper articles, going into much greater depth than I do here.

The island has had a paper trail of named owners dating back to a railway development company in the 1880s. Of course, a railway doesn’t have any use for an island, so after a few years, Plant Investment Company sold just the island. The land went through several owners before being sold to one Joel Riles in 1906. It’s believed that this is the Riles for whom the island was originally named, for of course, it was originally known as Riles Island. 

There does seem to be some confusion about the name, as Kurtti’s seminal history Since the World Began refers to the name as “Raz Island” during this period, named after the family that supposedly farmed on the island back then. The RetroWDW article stated that they could find no evidence of a property record by this name, however.

In the early 1910s, Riles let the act of paying his taxes slip his mind. As such, the property just slipped back to the state of Florida, entering a period of what must have been some debate. The state appears to have sold the property to a prominent local businessman W. H. Reams. While Reams was waiting for his official deed, Riles sold the property to a man named Jim Greer, despite having no legal claim to the property. It seems likely that Greer got his money back from Riles, as a few years later, Reams, the actual owner, sold the property back to Greer, making a tidy profit in the process. 

This wasn’t the end of the drama for the island. Greer deeded the island to a presumed relation, F. H. Greer, who only owned the island for a few years before selling it to another party, F. A. Rollins. RetroWDW speculates that this likely sparked some family drama, selling the island so soon after his presumed parents had gone through so much to purchase it for him in the first place. Even worse, Rollins fell into the trap of failing to pay his taxes! The state took possession of the island, and Jim Greer’s widow, Susan Greer, purchased the island yet again! 

After nearly another decade, Susan Greer sold the island. With all the hassle surrounding her family’s land ownership over the years, she made the sensible legal decision to obtain a quitclaim from the family of the tax delinquent Rollins, ending any further confusion or entanglements in the history of the island.

Idyl Bay Isle and Radio Nick

From here, the ownership of the island is more well-documented in common history. Susan Greer sold the island to Delmar Nicholson in 1937, for the princely sum of $800. He was a popular local guy, known as Radio Nick – he was the first radio DJ in Florida and was considered a radio pioneer. He lived on the island with his wife Alice, and apparently with a pet sandhill crane. When he wasn’t running for local political office or talking on the radio, he was a botanist and outdoorsman, growing a variety of orchids on his private island, among other things. 

Radio Nick renamed the island from Raz Island (or Riles Island) to Idyl Bay Isle. He set up the first Idemoor lime grove in Florida there, and apparently also grew mangoes and avocados on the island’s 11 acres.

Radio Nick owned the island for a good while, but ill health forced him to dial back the farming trade. Though the unsourced histories of the island describe Nicholson as living on the island for 20 years, he actually sold the island after only 12 years, to the Thomasons, a couple living in Oklahoma. It’s speculated that they may have continued to live in Oklahoma while allowing Nicholson to continue living on Idyl Bay Isle, as they also granted him power of attorney over the island for three years. 

By the mid-1950s, the Thomasons sold the island to a group called the Bay Isle Club for $55,000. The paper described the island at this time as “the most beautiful spot of its kind in Central Florida”. The Bay Isle Club was helmed by three businessmen who apparently used the island as a hunting preserve. Occasional trips out to the island were still publicized in the paper throughout the 50s. As I mentioned at the top of the segment, RetroWDW goes into more detail on all of the property transactions than I have time for, especially in this section, so please check out their article.

Bay Isle Club Sold to Disney 

Of course, as I’ve already told you, Disney snapped up a bunch of property in Orlando in the mid-60s as they were developing the future Walt Disney World Resort. This included the large Bay Lake, and its island, Idyl Bay Isle. Rumor, from the well-known story about the island, is that the sight of Idyl Bay Isle as seen from a helicopter was what sold Walt himself on the Orlando property.

Disney, under one of their many local shell companies at the time, purchased the island from the Bay Isle Club. They also followed good sense and got a quit claim from Radio Nick, to ensure that all their i’s were dotted and t’s crossed, that he wouldn’t come back and disrupt the big theme park plans. 

And that was that – Disney now owned the land for Walt Disney World Resort, including this single natural island.

Disney’s Treasure Island

So, site prep: 1967. Construction: 1969. Opening: 1971. 

Our island was not initially touched. It sat as scenery in the middle of Bay Lake, along with the other manmade islands made from the excavation work on the theme parks. On park maps, the island was named Blackbeard Island, but no development had occurred.

It took until 1974 for work to actually begin on the island. Initial development involved transporting over 50,000 cubic yards of dirt to the island in order to build up its acreage. Boulders and trees were reportedly imported, as well. A name change was in order too, from Blackbeard’s Island to Treasure Island. The nominal theme was a pirate’s hideaway, with shipwrecks and buried treasure throughout. By April of 1974, Treasure Island was open. The main draw was the quiet nature preserve, with a variety of exotic plants and colorful birds. 

The copy on the guide map read: “Look closely, mateys, as you visit Treasure Island today. For the memories still linger here of Long John Silver and Jim Hawkins, of Black Dog and Ismael Hands, of Dr. Livesey and Capt’n Flint. And the voice of ol Ben Gunn still haunts these woods and paths – still laughing, mocking. Listen closely, as Ben Gunn’s words may be the clue to where the treasure hides to this day.”

Of course, the theme was based on the 1950 Disney movie of the same name, of course itself based on the classic 1883 novel by Robert Louis Stevenson. The Disney movie was re-released in 1975, coincidentally, a year after the island opened to the public, which I’m sure helped promo for the WDW attraction. 

Despite the copy, the pirate theme was fairly light. The main focus were the birds and the plants. This is a link to a FB album showing original guest maps. The earliest maps advertised four types of cranes (sandhill, demoiselle, african crowned crane, and sarus cranes) as well as flamingos, macaws, cocktaoos, bald eagles, and blue peafowl. 

The only real remnant of the pirate theme besides the names, even at these early days, was the single beached wooden ship. On the north side of the island, there lay the “remains of the Walrus”. The wooden ship was beached on the shimmering white sands, and kids were encouraged to climb on it and jump off it. Yes, it was nine feet high at points. No, there were no safety regulations. This was the 70s. 

And funnily enough, though it’s hard to think of it this way now, in the 70s, there were glimmering sandy beaches around most of the island. Jet skiiers were even able to pull up to the shores and hop off.

There were plans for additional grand pirate-themed adventures, as seen in a 1975 visitor map: Billy Bones’ Dilemma, the Blockhouse, Spy Glass Hill, Ben Gunn’s Cave, and Wreck of the Hispanola. But none of these came to pass, as the number of birds and plants quickly began to outpace the amount of visitors on the island.

Disney’s Discovery Island

By 1978, the pirate theme was fully abandoned, and the name of the island was changed, from Treasure Island to Discovery Island. Discovery Island was fully entrenched as a bird sanctuary, as an educational paradise. The emphasis was truly on the island’s conservational and environmental efforts, on animal care, etc. The focus was also expanded beyond birds, with new alligator and Galapagos tortoise exhibits.

At one time, Discovery Island was the US’ most extensive breeding colony for scarlet ibises. The island won several different awards, and was noted for being the first zoo to breed a Toco toucan in captivity. 

By 1981, Discovery Island was officially recognized as an accredited zoological park by the American Association of Zoological Parks and Aquariums. To put this into context, we can turn to the ever-accurate Wikipedia. There are some 2800 different animal exhibitors as of 2019, and only about 10% (280) are accredited. So this does actually appear to be a big deal, speaking to the company’s serious intents in this area as more than just an entertainment facility. 

Reportedly, at one point the island was home to over 140 different types of animals and over 250 species of plants. 

Dusky Seaside Sparrow at Discovery Island

One of the well-known stories about Discovery Island is how it was home to the last ever dusky seaside sparrow. Yes, tragically, a species went extinct on this little island, despite efforts at breeding and preservation by the caretakers. 

This sparrow was identified, localized to Florida’s Merritt Island on the Atlantic Coast, near Cape Canaveral. Their downfall, of course, was all manmade, and much related to the space race. DDT used to kill mosquitoes in the area in the 1940s and 1950s did the birds no favors. In the 1960s, Merritt Island and its surrounding marshes were flooded to help control mosquitoes around Kennedy Space Center. Later that decade, the Beeline Expressway, making commuting easier for space center workers, was built right through one of the birds’ marshes. And then there was pollution and wildfires. Each offense destroyed the birds’ very specific habitat, and this highly localized species simply was not genetically programmed to move elsewhere.

Reportedly, environmentalists tried to rally support around 1969, but government agencies weren’t interested – this wasn’t something big and flashy like a bald eagle, it was just a little sparrow. There was no political support.

In 1973, Congress passed the Endangered Species Act, and finally, finally money became available to buy a dusky seaside sparrow wildlife refuge. But it was too late. 

The last known female of the species was seen in 1975. 

By the end of the decade, biologists led by Herb Kale were forced to comb the wetlands for any remaining sparrows. Five males were taken into the care of Kale to begin hybridization breeding. Government funding began to dry up. In 1983, Kale found private support: the few remaining males were moved to Disney’s Discovery Island. In his excellent essay in the book Wild Echoes, Charles Bergman writes: “The idea of a small brown sparrow, increasingly an anachronism in its own life, spending its final years amid all the bright and exotic birds on the island, was a wrenching anachronism.”

The breeding efforts were not successful, however, particularly because the federal government refused to support the effort, claiming that even an eventual 99% cross would never be considered a true dusky seaside sparrow. The last male of the species, named Orange Band, died in 1987, marking the extinction of the species. Listen to the sounds of the dusky seaside sparrow: https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/birds/florida-bird-sounds/ 

The hybrid crosses were all also lost. Two years later, in 1989, a windstorm knocked a tree into the roof of the hybrid sparrows’ compound. One was killed and the remaining birds vanished, and with them, the species. In 1990, the dusky seaside sparrow was officially labeled extinct.

Charles Cook, in an interview with the NY Times, said at the time that the mood, while serious, wasn’t all negative. “”People here feel that […] the program gave the bird a chance to tell its story,” Cook said. “That bird could have become extinct seven years ago and gone entirely unnoticed. Its story gave everyone a chance to reflect on our own mortality and our effect on the environment.””

Life at Discovery Island

The years rolled on. A decade after converting to the Discovery Island branding, the island seemed to be doing well. After landing at the dock, guests walked along a winding path that made a loop through the island. The only real decision guests could make was about whether they’d take the path past the Toucan Corner that became the boardwalk along the beach near the old shipwreck, or whether instead they would go through Avian Way (a large enclosed aviary where guests walked through an elevated boardwalk), the Crane’s Roost, and Pelican Bay, where the two paths joined up again. There was, of course, the Thirsty Perch, a stand for light refreshments. According to rumor, the birds learned about the stand and took great pleasure in stealing condiment packets, particularly mayo packets, until they were forced to be covered. 

Other animals roamed free, if not tame, like the multiple varieties of flamingoes in the Flamingo Lagoon. A bald eagle, on loan from the US Department of Interior, was displayed at the Mizzen Mast. In the Buccaneer’s Roost, most of the island’s crane species resided. There were deer and swans, tamarin and kookaburra, lemurs and egrets. The island served as a home for permanently disabled animals, and worked to rehabilitate and release other native Florida species. Zookeepers and workers hosted informational meet and greets to introduce the animals to the island’s guests.

Lawsuit at Discovery Island

But life was not perfect on the island. In 1989, a lawsuit was filed against Cook and several of his employees. The allegations were many, and all revolved around alleged mishandling of birds, destruction of nests, and shooting of birds; most of the charges were related to the vultures.

Disney reportedly called it a misunderstanding. Reportedly, the company claimed that the vultures, hawks, falcons, and owls all attacked other animals on the island, and that the vultures were pecking at other animals and guests. The nest destruction and shootings were reportedly accidental in the course of attempting to move and control the animals, which the island had a permit to do so. Investigators reportedly found inhospitable conditions, with an unreasonable number of vultures being confined to a windowless, featureless shed. 

In early 1990, the company settled the suit, paying $95,000 to avoid going to court. Reportedly, this sum was three times the amount they’d have paid had they been convicted of all the charges in court. According to the spokesperson quoted in the paper at the time, they wanted “”to avoid a costly, protracted court proceeding,””. The subtext too is that Disney seemed to want to avoid the negative press that would’ve been associated with such a proceeding. 

The curator was replaced, and a committee reviewed the island on a regular basis for a year to ensure that no further violations were occuring. Reportedly, this didn’t affect the island’s zoo accrediation. And from the general sense of my research, public impression doesn’t appear to have suffered significantly either.

Audience Perspectives on Discovery Island

It may be evident by this point, but despite the exceptional focus on nature, Discovery Island was still a part of the WDW Resort. And it wasn’t an attraction drawing in huge crowds. The island required its own special entrance ticket – $5 for kids 3-9, and $10 for ages 10 and up. By the nature of being an island, too, the only access was by boat, leaving from one of the resorts across the lake. Consensus is that the island was considered at least a half-day adventure, so some planning was definitely required. Additionally, the island was polarizing for its slow-paced educational nature. Guests either thought the area was calm and peaceful, or dull and boring. Yes, there was a bird show held at the “Parrots Perch”, and yes, you could walk around and look at all the birds and animals. But, it was essentially a zoo in the center of an amusement park…was this what people were going to do with their precious Disney vacation time?

Closure of Discovery Island

In 1989, Disney began planning a new theme park at WDW Resort: Disney’s Animal Kingdom. 

Of course, the world around Discovery Island had not been stagnant. Magic Kingdom, the flagship theme park, as we’ve already discussed, opened in 1971. EPCOT opened just over a decade later, in 1982. And in 1989, the third major theme park, MGM Studios opened. Of course, there were water parks (like River Country and Typhoon Lagoon) as well as multiple hotel resorts and shopping destinations. 

The plans for Animal Kingdom reportedly began soon after the opening of MGM Studios (now called Disney’s Hollywood Studios). Five years later in 1995, Michael Eisner officially announced the project, now well underway. A board of advisors reportedly helped develop the project from the beginning, with a goal of emphasizing wildlife conservation. Despite public criticism calling the future park a glorified zoo, consultants for the advisory panel saw only a positive outlook for the park, saying “”We’re at a time when population is growing so rapidly that the only wildlife we’ll be able to save is the one we care about,”” Construction proceed quickly, and Animal Kingdom officially opened on Earth Day, April 22, 1998. 

In practice, Animal Kingdom drew significantly on the experiences with Discovery Island. With an area between 5 and 6 times that of Magic Kingdom, the new park had plenty of space for animal conservation – much more than just birds. Reportedly, some 1700 animals of over 250 different species currently reside at the park, with breeding programs even allowing restoration of species from Animal Kingdom back into the wild, such as with the white rhinos reintroduced to Uganda.

It wasn’t all just another glorified zoo, though. Animal Kingdom is the home to all the trappings of a regular theme park, too, including restaurants and dozens of rides. Even a full-fledged coaster was there – Expedition Everest, a Vekoma steel coaster featuring the tallest artificial mountain on any Disney property.

All of this detouring is of course to say that Animal Kingdom nicely filled the space that Discovery Island occupied. And the cons of Discovery Island, it’s small size and physical boundaries due to being an island, were absent in Animal Kingdom. Plus, Animal Kingdom was an actual theme park. 

The writing was on the wall for Discovery Island, as the guests who would’ve visited there instead chose to go to Animal Kingdom. Attendance reportedly declined, while maintenance costs remained high.

The official closing date for Discovery Island was April 8, 1999, marking a clean 25 years in operation. Wikipedia claims without source that the island was operational for several more months, through July of 1999, as the animals were transferred to Animal Kingdom. At Animal Kingdom, the main hub was renamed to Discovery Island in tribute to the park’s roots. A charming version of the island’s “last day” is available online, including plenty of pictures. “It’s a little bit sad when we say goodbye to an old favorite, but change is part of the process.” said the Disney spokesperson in a statement at the time.

Abandoned Discovery Island

After Discovery Island closed, nothing obvious changed. Buildings were still there, the dock was still there, the lights were still on. Yes, for at least a decade after the island was shuttered, the lights still went on at night throughout the island in an eerie display. This included lights on the interior of the island, as if someone or something were still traversing it at night. Between August and October of 2006, the island’s main dock was removed, leaving only pylons. By this point, the only access to the island was the small employee service dock.

Water travel is a regular way to get around Walt Disney World, so none of this went unnoticed. Guests documented the foliage growing up on the island’s white sand beaches, hiding the sand and completely engulfing the former “shipwrecked” boat formerly called The Walrus. It’s still there, but it’s no longer visible, completely covered over at this point by green.

Of course, as this is a podcast about abandoned and defunct theme parks, of course we ask what kind of abandoned imagery is out there. Well, Discovery Island is a well-kept secret. Access to Disney property, especially on an island in gator-infested waters, is definitely not an easy explore. Between 1999 and 2017, there were only two known urban explorations of the island. One was by “Nomius” and the other was by a guy named Shane Perez. Shane’s name is the more notable, as he used his real name and sat on the images for over four years in order to sit out the statute of limitations on being charged for trespassing. He was banned from Disney properties for his troubles, but his images are still some of the most well-known of the abandoned property. 

The images reveal eerie sights, like a dry erase board last written on in 1999, a snake preserved in formaldehyde inside a soda bottle, animal cages with doors hanging open, soda machines covered in dust and grime, and an empty -80 freezer, once used for biological samples, long since thawed. 

In 2017 and 2018, a guy named Matt Sonswa posted two different videos, showcasing in delightfully high quality video with over an hour of footage from exploring the island. A 2018 video from “Standard Stealth” similarly documents the abandoned state of the island in high definition. I strongly encourage you to check them out – literally a 90s abandoned Jurassic Park kind of deal. Hurricanes and storms have taken their toll, knocking trees into buildings. And the unchecked vegetation growth over 20 years has led to nature more or less taking it all back. It’s so eerie to think about everything just sitting and waiting and rotting away, since 1999, in plain view of the thousands who visit the park each day. Just sends shivers up your spine.

Rumors About Discovery Island

Rumors about the future of Discovery Island have persisted since the island closed in 1999. There were discussions about making the land a spot for some very exclusive, very expensive villas, like those suitable for honeymooners. 

Other rumors swirled that the land could become a haven for nighttime entertainment, a Pleasure Island type thing. 

Some even say that the island is left in its abandoned and dilapidated state as it is still a protected bird habitat. 

Rumors about Myst and Discovery Island

One of the most prominent rumors was that Disney had been in talks with Robyn and Rand Miller, the creators of the infamous Myst series of PC games. Of course, Myst was the bestselling PC game for several years, and was notable for driving the adoption of the new CD-ROM technology as a standard feature on computers. I’d love to spend an hour talking about the development of Myst, its technological and design breakthroughs, and its legacy as a gaming series, but alas, there’s definitely not time in this episode. Should I decide to establish a Patreon, this might be a topic that I’d post there. Think about it.

So. Late 90s, Myst was huge. Myst had come out in 1993, and the sequel, Riven, came out in 1997. It was popular. Reportedly, Myst developers were in talks with Disney about making the island into some sort of Myst-like experience. For quite some time, these were just rumors. Jim Hill over at Jim Hill Media wrote a great article back in 2004 about this. Reportely, Disney was in talks with both Robyn and Rand Miller, as well as Richard Vander Wende, who’d been their collaborator on the Myst sequel Riven. 

The rumors is that they would create Myst Island, where a limited number of guests would spend a day on the island, solving Myst-style puzzles on a day-long adventure unlike anything else at Disney. Theoretically, no two guests could’ve had the same experience. This was considered a test project for a new type of immersive theme park experience, an antidote to the “wait three hours in line for a three minute ride”, and was spurred by Disney’s own guest surveys.

This sounds incredible and amazing, so why did it never go anywhere?

Robyn Miller spoke with The AV Club in 2016, confirming the long-held rumors about the interaction of Myst and Disney, saying “That was absolutely true.” He elaborates: “we went down and looked at it and walked around it, and it was incredibly Myst-like. It was perfect for Myst. So we were all excited”, he said. 

Not even Miller is clear about why the project never went forward, but there’s plenty of speculation. The first is the common explanation for many of Disney’s possible projects on Discovery Island. Any project on the island would first require demolition, not only for the structures, but for all of the islands utility and infrastructure. All of it was rapidly aging, and not sufficient to handle the demands of modern visitors. But to demo it all would require heavy equipment to be ferried over: an expensive prospect. 

More specific to the Myst project, any “Myst Island” would require a significant amount of cutting-edge technology. In 2019, this maybe would be doable at a reasonable cost, but 20 years ago in 1999, the technology picture was very different. (Reminder: Google started in 1998, the Nokia brick cellphone was the hip thing, and the original iMac with its candy colors was shipped in late 1998.) 

Ultimately, it’s the nature of the island that truly sinks any future for the project. It’s logistical: any supplies have to be ferried over by boat. If the only access for either guests or supplies is by boat, then Florida’s sudden storms, which shutter the boat service, could wreak havoc and trap guests. And then there’s the simple fact that Disney owns boatloads of land in the “Florida Project”. There’s plenty of space elsewhere where Disney can build at a cheaper cost with less maintenance and logistical requirements. At this time, there’s no motivational reason for them to do anything with Discovery Island, no attraction that could outweigh the building and maintenance costs.

Conclusions

So for twenty years, Discovery Island has sat abandoned, weathering hurricanes and storms, without any maintenance. There are no current plans for the island. It’s simply another inaccessible part of the background scenery, a story that folks can tell on the various behind the scenes Disney boat tours one can rent at the park. 

It’s lost in plain sight now, but back in the day, Discovery Island was said to be the very reason that Walt Disney himself was interested in choosing the Orlando property for his new theme park. It’s said that upon flying over Bay Lake and seeing then Idyl Bay Isle, he said something to the effect of “This is it.”

As the Disney rep said on the closure of the island, though, change is part of the process, not only at Walt Disney World but in our everyday lives, as well. Discovery Island has changed from natural landscape to fruit farm to hunting preserve to theme park back to natural landscape again. The circle of life, so it goes.

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The Human C. P. Huntington

The roots for this episode began growing a long time ago. I was looking at pictures of miniature theme park trains on Google. I started seeing these trains that looked really similar, except for the numbers on the sides, and started casually making A List. I later learned they were called C. P. Huntingtons, but I still had that question: what was the deal with all these trains?

The story of the C. P. Huntington trains begins with a member of “The Big Four”, the four tycoons who built the Central Pacific Railroad. We start our story with a great man from the 1800s: robber baron Collis Potter Huntington.

Collis had a nose for buying and selling. If you’re at all a fan of Star Trek, he would’ve made a fine Ferengi – very concerned with profit. Born in 1821 on the East Coast, Collis came westward in his late twenties, making money by selling supplies during the California gold rush. He was an entrepreneurial man, making his way up in the world by moving on to hardware store ownership before setting his sights on the “railroad issue”.

Collis invested in the new Central Pacific Railroad Company, along with the other members of the Big Four: Mark Hopkins, Leland Stanford, and Charles Crocker. Ultimately, their railroad in California connected with railroads from the east to finally make transcontinental travel possible.

Starting in 1861 in Sacramento, CA, the Central Pacific railroad began building eastwards until it met the Union Pacific Railroad at Promontory, Utah, in 1869. This was accomplished with the driving of a ceremonial “golden spike” which is now on display at Stanford University.

This was a huge deal – coast to coast train travel was finally possible, allowing for people to reach the opposite coast in about eight days. This replaced months-long sea voyages around South America’s Cape Horn, or rickety and dangerous wagon rides across the United States.

Huntington continued on throughout the rest of his life as a railroad tycoon, getting involved in the Southern Pacific Railroad line, too. He became a lobbyist, bribing politicians and Congressmen. He was reportedly one of the most hated railwaymen in the country by the end of his life, due to his preference for profit over people. According to his contemporaries, he was “possessed of the morals of a shark.” 

The CP Huntington Locomotive

Now that we’ve talked about the man, let’s get into the story of the locomotive that bore his name: the C. P. Huntington. 

“In the early days of locomotive building, it was considered a great achievement when that pygmy engine with a flaring superfluity of a smokestack, the C. P. Huntington, was put on the road,” wrote a 1926 newspaper op-ed.

Stories from a century ago often seem to bring up the wild adventures of these “Monarchs of the West” as the early Iron Horse engines were called. Apparently, all of these vintage engines were known for having interesting stories or thrilling escapes. 

The CPH was one of these. 

Origin of the CPH

Collis Potter Huntington needed some engines for his transcontinental line, but nothing else was available due to the Civil War – only these two small identical engines. Both engines had originally been built for a different railway back East, but were never delivered as the original purchaser did not pay for them. Collis Porter Huntington went ahead and purchased the CPH and her sister.

The engines shipped from Cooke Locomotive Works (also known as Danforth-Cooke) in New Jersey, all the way to San Francisco in a journey of 131 days around Cape Horn. CPH was #277 out of the locomotive works, and given the #3. The identical sister engine was #325 out of the factory, less popular in cultural references, was named the #4 T. D. Judah, in honor of the CP railroad’s first chief engineer who surveyed a passable route over the Sierra Nevada mountains. The CPH engine was put to use to help build Huntington’s transcontinental railway. 

The CPH: 4-2-4T

In technical details, the CPH is a 4-2-4T. I’ll give a layman’s definition of what this means, but I’m not a true train junkie (yet?), just a research nerd, so please forgive any errors. (I already know I’ll get letters about calling it a “train” and not a “locomotive”. Be kind, my train-friends.) 4-2-4T is train shorthand for the configuration of the wheels on the locomotive. A 4-2-4T has four leading wheels on two axles, two powered driving wheels on one axle (on the CPH, the big wheels) and four trailing wheels on two axles that support the tank (here, a “side tank” is noted with the T-suffix). There were other trains beyond the CPH that also bore this configuration, but a 4-2-4T is apparently colloquially known as a Huntington.

Working History of the CPH

The CPH did good work on the Central Pacific Railway, used in construction as well as pulling some passenger cars. Notably, she pulled the first passenger cars over the newly completed Western Pacific Railway from Sacramento to Stockton in August of 1869. In 1871, Southern Pacific purchased the engine and re-numbered it the #1. 

Under Southern Pacific operation, things were not as rosy for the CPH. In 1872, the train suffered a massive collision with a larger train. The engineer in the CPH was killed. Quote: “The San Jose Mercury of June 7, 1872, noted: “the construction locomotive is small, and when the collision occurred the larger engine went completely through the smaller, taking in steam boxes, cylinders, smoke stack, driving wheels, boilers, etc., and leaving it a mass of ruins.”” 

It took several years before the engine was rebuilt. Quote from “May 1, 1875, the following account appeared in the Minor Scientific Press of Nevada – most likely taken from an article originally appearing in a San Francisco newspaper. “Certainly a peculiar looking craft it is [the CPH]. The engine is of a most unique pattern, there being but one or two others like it on the coast. ”” 

However, the CPH was only put to limited use once she was rebuilt.

Around the turn of the century, the engine spent some time in storage before being rebuilt as a weed burner (someone’s got to clear the tracks, after all). Reportedly this didn’t last long either. The engine was rebuilt again back to her original configuration, and bounced back and forth out of storage in Sacramento at Southern Pacific’s machine shops, where it was put on a platform to display at the shops. She was pushed into official service retirement around 1900.

Disuse of the CPH

Why all this bouncing around instead of actually using the engines? Well, apparently this 4-2-4 locomotive design had significant issues. The single driving axle was too light and did not carry the full weight of the engine’s trailing rear end. The engine couldn’t reliably pull trains, particularly not on gradients. And the Forney-style water tank was too small, so the trains would consume all their water (necessary to make the steam) if they went any moderate distance. 

Something that’s hard to convey from all of this discussion so far is how small the CPH is. Technical schematics indicate she is 7 ¾ ft wide, 12 ½ ft tall, and 29 ½ ft long. This is incredibly small compared to many other locomotives. Indeed, some of my favorite pictures of the CPH I’ve found during my research are those where she is posed next to a larger engine.

The CPH Out of Working Service

As the years went on, loads grew larger, and the small CPH just couldn’t handle the requirements for larger modern loads of the times. With a need for bigger locomotives, the small 4-2-4s were left in storage, on back spurs at the train yard, or up on high trestles in the paint shops, for longer and longer, until they were scrapped.

The T. D. Judah, C. P. Huntington’s sister engine, was rebuilt into a 4-2-2 configuration at some point in the late 1800s. Some reports indicate that the Judah worked at a sugar plantation in the Hawaiian islands (“Sandwich Islands”); others say she was sold to the Wellington Colliery Company in British Columbia, sometime around 1889. Ultimately, the Judah was scrapped in between 1912 and 1914. (Though several of the 1922 texts I found indicated she was still in active service, nothing else I could find to substantiate this. Another 1899 text indicated she had been scrapped several years earlier. Central Pacific #93 was also converted to a 4-2-2 configuration, so it’s likely that the confusing reports is a result of mixing up the two. Big mystery, our T. D. Judah.)

Why the Poor Railroad Records?

As an interesting sidebar, you might be wondering why the stories of the CPH and the Judah are relatively light with details and mixed in with a bit of confusion. Well, as so often happens, this is a tale of fire damage. The 1906 San Francisco fires, the result of a devastating earthquake, destroyed nearly 80% of the city. Among the losses were those of the railroad: records, drawings, and photographs. A decade later in 1917, another fire in the Sacramento train shops destroyed more railway documentation. What we have available to us now from the time of the Iron Horses is what was saved by families of employees and the occasional state library record – the tip of the iceberg compared to what had been.

Back to the end of the working service record, we’d been talking about the scrapping of the T. D. Judah.

The C. P. Huntington was nearly scrapped in 1914 as well, but was saved this fate by the decision to have her put on display for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition. This was a World’s Fair, meant to celebrate the completion of the Panama Canal and showcase San Francisco’s recovery after the 1906 earthquake. 

At the World’s Fair, the C. P. Huntington was displayed alongside a much larger loco, a 2-4-4-2 Mallet. This was meant to drive home to the visiting audience the massive changes in railway needs over the prior 50 years, and it did so very well. The 1840s CPH looked practically like a child’s toy next to the large and modern 1900s locos.

The Original CPH on Display

Thus began the history of the original C. P. Huntington engine as a display piece and a showcase from a different era. 

In January of 1920, national papers reported the CPH being put on display in a place of honor outside Sacramento’s train shops. They called her “California’s oldest locomotive”, and in a bit of revisionist history, the papers declared that she had been the first loco to ever operate in California, a claim which certainly cannot be true. Tall tale or not, the CPH was getting a rest, and getting the due come to her.

She next went on major display at the “Days of ‘49” celebrating the 1849 Gold Rush. Not just a poem by Joaquin Miller that was turned into a song by Bob Dylan…no, in this context, I’m talking about the May 1922 celebrations in California to commemorate the Gold Rush. Old #1 was cleaned up and hooked up to a flat car with seats. She pulled passengers around the city for a modest fare of 49 cents. 

After this, she was kept in better repair, and participated in other displays and showcases, such as being part of the filming for the 1924 movie “The Iron Horse”, the highest grossing movie of that year.

The Iron Horse movie (click for more information).

Grauman’s Egyptian Theatre, a lavish movie palace in downtown Hollywood that opened in 1922, held the premiere of “The Iron Horse”. During the movie’s run there, the little CPH was parked in the forecourt of the theater, facing the street, in order to help promote the film. 

She went to state fairs, dedicated bridges and railroad depots, and so on. When she was not out on display, she sat in front of the railyard there in Sacramento, under a small pavilion.

On December 16, 1935, she was even driven on a flat car down to New Orleans, where she was the first train to cross the new Huey P. Long Bridge. 

1939 Opening Ceremonies

In 1939, the engine participated in the opening ceremonies for the Los Angeles Union Station. 

The occasion was observed by Ward Kimball. If this name sounds familiar to you, that’s because he was one of Walt Disney’s “Nine Old Men”. Kimball was an animator, responsible for the creation of Jiminy Cricket (Pinocchio), Jaq and Gus (Cinderella), and the Cheshire Cat (Alice in Wonderland) among many many others. 

Kimball was also a railway fan. He had his own narrow-gauge railway collection which he ran in his 3 acre backyard. Reportedly, Kimball’s train enthusiasm bumped up against Walt Disney’s, and Kimball helped encourage Disney to install the iconic railroad at Disneyland when it opened in 1955. 

Well, don’t mind me, going down a Ward Kimball rabbithole. He was a very interesting man, particularly if you’re into Disney. 

Why did I bring him up? 

Oh yes. Kimball was on hand to observe the opening ceremonies for the Los Angeles Union Station in 1939 because he was a train buff. Not only did he see the ceremonies, he filmed them on 16mm color film video, incredibly expensive in 1939. 

Kimball captured the only known footage of the opening. Decked out in brilliant red and green paint, Southern Pacific’s engine #1 was a relic from a different time, even in 1939 – the little engine was 76 years old at that point! It can be seen puffing smoke, wheels churning, steaming down Alameda Street in downtown Los Angeles.

It’s an incredible sight.

This was likely one of, if not THE, last time the boiler of the venerable CPH was fired and moved under her own steam.

Later Years of the CPH

The CPH was towed out for a few more railway events in the late 50s and 60s, but primarily sat on static display in the Sacramento park in front of the trainyard.

The railway donated the CPH to the state of California in 1964. It was displayed at the Stockton fairgrounds for years. After refurbishment at the Southern Pacific’s Sacramento train shops, the CPH was moved to an exterior display at the Central Pacific Railroad Passenger Station.

C. P. Huntington on display. Click for more information.

In 1981, the CPH moved into the newly-opened California State Railroad Museum, where it is still on display in 2019. 

She was restored to her 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition appearance, covered in complicated and artistic gold leaf highlights. A 1930s newspaper article on California railroad history devoted several newspaper inches to descriptions of the paint schemes of the old wood-burning locomotives – what a luxurious, different time it was to see a newspaper devote column inches to such a thing.

The engine is reportedly the only surviving standard steam engine of its type. Danforth-Cooke’s factory produced well over 3000 engines in the Iron Horse era between 1852 and 1926. Of these, only 11 reportedly remain in existence now in 2019, one of which is the CPH; she is the only 4-2-4 remaining.

Reportedly, this locomotive will never operate under its own steam again. The California State Railroad Museum made investigations as to the state of the CPH in 1998. Reportedly “the boiler shell is too worn out to be safely steamed again without major repairs and replacements that would compromise the state of the otherwise intact artifact.”

The C. P. Huntington is the second oldest locomotive owned by the California State Railroad Museum, and one of the older surviving locomotives worldwide. (The oldest known locomotive is the 1813 “Puffing Billy” at London’s Science Museum, an engine some fifty years older than our heroine the CPH.) The CSRM currently owns eight of the 45 pre-1880s locomotives still extant in the US, inclduing the CPH. The CPH silhouette even serves as the logo for the museum.

The Chance CPH

Now, if you’ve sat through this episode in confusion so far about how all this locomotive talk ties into the theme of the podcast, get ready to have a galaxy brain moment. You might think back to the Joyland episodes, for a bit of a clue to the rest of the story. 

In the mid-twentieth century in Wichita, Kansas, a man by the name of Harold Chance was building miniature steam trains. First under the Ottaway Amusement Company name, Chance incorporated his own company as Chance Manufacturing in 1961. A year earlier, in 1960, Chance had begun production on the first version of a new miniature train.

It was the beginning of something magical.

According to the CSRM, the C. P. Huntington had been displayed at at least two occasions: the Southern Pacific Centennial Celebration in 1955, and the Salute to Steam Age in 1958. (The latter event was a good-bye ceremony marking the last run of the last steam engine of SP, #4294. The engines were placed side-by-side in the park in Sacramento to mark the beginning and end of the steam era in Southern Pacific’s history). 

Additionally, scale models of the train were reported nationally around this time in the papers, including a 1951 half-size model by a man named Jack Collier, and much smaller 1.5” scale rideable models by a man named Bob Harpur. Oh, and a very large model made entirely out of fruit by an enterprising Lions Club. 

Being a person interested in trains, it’s highly likely that Harold Chance saw news reports of these events, at the very least, particularly the reports on the end of the steam era for the Southern Pacific in 1958. And like a train at a switch, we can see the leap Harold Chance might have taken.

He began building a miniature C. P. Huntington train for use in amusement parks.

Chance’s CPH was a one-third scale model of the original. His miniature version was faithful to the original as far as looks – handmade, and incredibly detailed. The littler steam engine had the unique design of the original, with the iconic stack and wheel arrangement. 

From a mechanical perspective, his models made some changes. Apparently the big “drive” wheels are false (they can even be removed without affecting the locomotive’s operation, which many operations do to ease maintenance) and the engine powers drive shafts on the front and rear trucks of the locomotive. Gone too was steam power: Chance’s model used gasoline for fuel.

He delivered his first engine to Joyland Park, there in Wichita, Kansas, in 1961.

Joyland’s iconic train served that park from 1961 until 2006. “Joyland’s train really launched Chance Rides,” said Larry Breitenstein, National Sales Director at Chance Rides, some time later. The train was last seen publicly when the park closed in 2006. Reportedly, it is in the hands of a private collector local to Wichita.

Other Chance CPHs

Joyland’s CPH wasn’t Chance’s last miniature CPH, though.

The company has produced over 400 miniature CP Huntington rides as of the time of this recording – 400+ trains over about 60 years. 

Some basic stats: engines run about $200k, and coaches run around $60k (prices from Wikipedia, date unclear). The trains are a narrow gauge. Most CPHs are 24” gauge. However, some of the early CPH models were 20” gauge. Chance still provides individual parts for the CPH in their sales inventory. This is unsurprising, as the CPH is reportedly Chance’s most popular ride.

To some in the amusement park world, the train is frowned upon – considered a cookie cutter train, which is both sad and inaccurate. Each engine has its own modifications and personality, and each engine runs differently. But to a general audience, the CPH is an incredibly popular thing – because it’s a train! Who doesn’t love to go on a train ride?

CPH #1-400+

I’m not going to talk about every single engine on this podcast – that would be a wild, very long episode and I’ll tell you right now that this will already be a long one as it is. But I will hit a few highlights. 

Why should you care, and what is the reason for me even doing this episode in the first place? 

Rabbitholes and those giant numbers on the side of the locomotive.

The best and worst thing about these trains is that they often (but not always) have the engine number visible on the side. This number is usually (but not always) the loco number from Chance. This is the reason I got into the topic in the first place – I got sucked down into a Google image search, wondering why there were similar-looking trains all around parks and zoos, and why they had the numbers they did.

A minute ago, I said “usually” the numbers reflect the manufacturing number from the factory. It’s not always true. Some park remove the numbers, some parks never have the numbers installed, and some parks change the numbers to reflect internal numbering schemes, confusing us all. The only way to accurately know which number CPH a particular train is would be to look at the builder’s plate, attached to each loco, which contains the engine’s serial number. But sometimes these too have been removed, or have become illegible.

Additionally, they are usually robust little trains. (Engine #2 has been in operation for almost 60 years at the time of this recording!) Given their hardy nature, the trains are often sold from park to park. This often leads to confusion about the trains, as when they are in storage or in the hands of private owners, their locations are unknown or unclear. Some engines have also been scrapped, such as the #29, formerly of the St. Louis Zoo, where it was involved in an accident that more or less destroyed the entire engine. Others are nearly so, such as the #8, which currently sits without wheels on the dirt at New Orleans City Park.

Should this podcast ever make money (lol) it would be fantastic to do a history on each of the parks associated with a CPH. I cannot count the number of times during my research for this topic that I would get stuck down a rabbithole for a particular train.

I’m not even going to include a list of the CPHs in my shownotes, the List being the holy grail of CPH research. For that, I’m going to direct you to the incredible Facebook group “C. P. Huntington Train Project”, where you can find an incredible Excel spreadsheet and some very smart people and a lot of cool photos.

Anyhow, let’s talk about some of the engines. Every engine has a story, and here are a few.

#2 – “Robert D. Morrell” at Story Land (Glen, NH)

The #2 is the oldest train currently in public operation, as the #1 from Joyland is in storage or private ownership. It lives at Story Land in Glen, NH, a small family amusement park aimed at the under-teen set. They have five CPHs: #2 (red), #4 (blue), #14 (in storage), #18 (used as a backup), and #47 (green).

There are a lot of interesting things about the Story Land engines that we could get into at another time. For today, we’ll talk about the number on the front. Every CPH has the year 1863 on the front of the engine – that was the year the original CPH was manufactured. There’s only one exception: CPH #2, the red engine from Story Land named “Robert D. Morrell”. It says 1861 on the front. It’s a bit of a mystery why this is. One possibility is that this is a reference to the incorporation date for the Central Pacific Railroad, which of course was where the original CPH first operated as engine #3. It’s not clear why only one engine has this plate, however (and only #2, not #1!). 

#34 – Coney Island and Lake Como Railroad

The trains with the smallest numbers are the oldest, and some of these have been through multiple hands. Let’s take the case of #34, and I’ll illustrate how you might go down a rabbithole of fascination with just a single engine. 

This engine #34 was a 1964 model, part of the “Coney Island and Lake Como Railroad” in Cincinnati. It was painted light blue and red, the “standard” color scheme, and was called “Mad Anthony Wayne.” Coney Island in Cincinnati is a park with an incredibly long history, which we may get to one day. For now, we’ll just talk about the train,where engine #34 operated with engine #35 (“George Rogers Clark”). The train and amusement park delighted guests there at the site of a former apple orchard until 1971, when Coney Island moved to Kings Island. This was a larger site, further away from the river floods that had constantly plagued Coney Island throughout its history, and most of the rides from Coney Island were moved over to Kings Island. However, Kings Island already had trains – larger Crown models, so the small CPH engines were no longer needed. 

CPH #34 was sold to the World of Golf in 1971, reportedly along with the former station which had been cut into sections. Unfortunately, shortly after it was all installed, the nearby Florence KY sewer treatment plant overflowed in 1976 into the area, and the park, including railroad, was shut down. The train was reportedly stored in the deteriorating station for most of the next 20 years. 

In the early 1990s, it was sold to the Oil Ranch in Hockley TX. It has been repainted black and red and lost its number but still operates there as of this recording in 2019.

#235 – Michael Jackson’s Neverland

Other notable trains belonged to public figures. Take #235. Michael Jackson was a hugely influential public figure, of course, no matter what your stance on his personal life and the decades of abuse allegations against him. 

His private ranch, Neverland Ranch, was over five times the size of Disneyland. It had a zoo, a movie theater, an amusement park, and two different trains. One was a CPH – #235, a 1990 model. It was customized for Michael Jackson, and had extra twinkle lights around the coach canopies, extra decorations, and a high end sound system installed. When Jackson died, David Helm (of Helm and Sons Amusements based in CA) purchased the CPH as well as other amusement rides. The engine hasn’t been seen in public since then.

#195, 196, 178, and 89 – Heritage USA

Other problematic public figures had CPHs, too, like Jim Bakker over at his Heritage USA “Christian Disneyland”. (Don’t worry, Heritage USA is a whole, giant episode for the future. The story of Heritage USA is absolutely wild.) Although general public reporting only refers to one train at Heritage USA, it turns out that there were actually FOUR. 

Two trains were delivered new to Heritage USA in 1979, funded by the many private donors who believed in Jim Bakker’s televangelism – these were #195 and #196. One of these was featured on the Tammy Faye Bakker album cover for “Movin’ On To Victory”. The other two trains were purchased used (one was described as a “shell” and the other barely ran), one of which was #178. 

When the park went under in the late 80s as Bakker’s pyramid scheme collapsed, the amusement park assets were liquidated. #195 had been involved in a minor collision with a gate during Heritage USA’s operation, and suffered cosmetic damage. It also was reportedly cannibalized for parts to keep #196 running. As such, #195 was reportedly traded back to Chance Rides during the liquidation of the park in the late 80s (1987/1988). Chance rebuilt the loco, and sold it. This engine is currently in operation at Lakemont Park in Altoona, PA, home of Leap-the-Dips, the world’s oldest surviving, still operational rollercoaster. 

#196, the loco in better shape, was purchased by private collector Mokey Choate, who owned 13+ CPH locos under the business name Big Mokey Trains, Inc. While Mokey passed away in 2016, the business is still in operation. Big Mokey Trains leases out its fleet of trains to parks. Perhaps someone needs short-term extra capacity for an event, or perhaps a park finds it cost-effective to have the trains only during the season and outsource any maintenance costs. This of course adds an extra level of confusion for any CPH hunters, as trains are rotated in and out for maintenance and may not always be at the same park. #196, then, is one of the Mokey trains, and was last seen operating at the Jackson Zoo in Mississippi.  

The other two locomotives, #178 and the unknown loco, have not been seen since.

Electric #400 and it’s Electric Brother, #402

If you’re in Houston and you’re hearing this, I hope you’ve visited the Houston Downtown Aquarium. That’s the home of the groundbreaking landmark CPH #400, the first electric CPH train from Chance. It was named “Electric Eel”. CPH #402, also an electric CPH but this time with a blue color scheme, went to the aquarium just recently, in July of 2019. 

Both trains run through an incredible exhibit called the Shark Voyage, where the trains travel through a completely see-through tunnel with a unique view on a massive shark aquarium exhibit.

Chance Rides spent quite some time perfecting their electric train. One of the few train videos they’ve posted on YouTube is from fall of 2017, showing the electric prototype in a stripped down state, taking some test laps in the Chance lot there in Wichita. 

It is likely not surprising considered today’s environmentally conscious consumers, but it appears that Chance will be making a big push for electric trains as the main CPH going forward. Reportedly, many places looking to make a new train purchase have inquired about electric models. It wouldn’t be surprising to see the next trains be predominantly electric over gasoline models, particularly for more environmentally-minded zoos.

The St. Louis Zoo’s Many CPHs

Finally, the last in the case studies I’ll cover today…the St. Louis Zoo. If there were a record for the place that has had the most CPH engines pass through it, that place might be the St. Louis Zoo.

The zoo has a long history with the engines. They started with engines #27, 28, and 29 in 1963 and 1964. The Zoo caught the CPH bug, and began purchasing additional trains for what became known as “The Emerson Zooline Railroad”. They are reportedly the business that has purchased the most trains direct from Chance, and in the early years, replaced their trains after 10 years of service. 

So when it came time to purchase the next engine, we reach the slight snag in the story. Remember how I mentioned that sometimes, the big numbers on the side of the tender don’t always reflect the manufacturer’s number? This is one of those times. The St. Louis Zoo wanted the numbers of the new trains to be consecutive. So St. Louis Zoo #30 was not CPH #30, muddling the issue of The List significantly. And, as noted, they’ve moved through a number of different trains, with their old trains being sold across the country, continuing to muddle the history of the individual trains. 

All told, St. Louis Zoo has owned a total of 23 different CPH trains to date. The current trains in operation are St. Louis Zoo #45 “Daniel Boone” (CPH #247), #46 “Pierre LaClede” (CPH #263), #47 “Lewis and Clark” (CPH #289), #48 “Ulysses S Grant” (CPH #300), #49 “Charlton Tandy” (CPH #303), and #100 “Emerson” (CPH #362, purchased during the zoo’s centennial). 

Reportedly, the Zooline Railroad is in the preliminary steps of exploring an electric locomotive purchase. Apparently the Zooline Railroad is reputedly the steepest of any CPH railroad, and there is some question as to whether the electric version could handle fully loaded trains on that grade. 

And if you’ve got a child who’s a train lover, you’ll love the St. Louis Zoo – they’ve got a program where kids can shadow an engineer for part of the day.

Other Variations on the CPH

Of course, Chance isn’t the only game in town when it comes to the CP Huntington. 

Western Train Co CPH

Western Train Co, in California, builds its own variation of the 24” miniature engine, suitable for theme parks and zoos as well. There are subtle differences between the WTC versions and the Chance version, but both are beautiful miniature trains.

Little Engines and Bob Harpur

Or, if an even smaller version is your speed, Little Engines makes a 1.5” scale model. Yep, still to this day! These can hold 2-4 people, perched on top of the cars like giants. Remember the 1950s model written up in the newspaper by Bob Harpur that I mentioned, oh, thirty minutes ago? Yep, that was these. Bob’s miniature CPH can actually be seen onscreen in the 1956 film “The King and I” starring Yul Brenner and Deborah Kerr. http://www.trainweb.org/jeffhartmann/CPH_models.html 

The episode is running long, so we probably don’t have time to get too in-depth here. However, the short version is that Bob Harpur was a fascinating man. He was incredibly involved with the live steam engine scene through his work with the Little Engines company after his discharge from the Army. He met Walt Disney in 1949 when Walt and his daughter came to the shop to look at the trains. Bob ultimately joined the Walt Disney company as an Imagineer twenty years later, in 1969. He had his hands in a number of different projects, notably including the trains at Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, Disney Paris, and WDW Animal Kingdom. 

So there you go, information on two different Disney Imagineers in an episode that has little at all to do with Disney. Isn’t life grand?

CPH in Pop Culture

Elsewhere in pop culture, the CPH (or T. D. Judah, depending on your perspective) are iconic, providing inspiration for books, film, etc. The most well-known of these is the design for the Little Engine That Could – think on that friendly blue engine in your mind, and you might immediately see the parallels. Of course, as I’ve already mentioned, the logo for the California Railway Museum is a silhouette of the CPH. And the engine was featured on the cover of the Nostalgia version of Monopoly.

#44, #55, the Pittsburgh Zoo, and Chris Churilla

It’s not just the classic Little Engine That Could, though. There’s a whole series out there in recent days, aimed at the elementary school and younger audience, starring zoo trains Zippy and Guido. 

The best part is that Zippy and Guido aren’t fictional. The series is based on author Chris Churilla’s experiences with the real trains, CPH #44 and CPH #55, both from from the Pittsburgh Zoo. I know I said I was done with case studies of individual trains, but let’s get into just one more.

Churilla actually spent several years as engineer for the #44 and #55, there at the Pittsburgh Zoo. At the age of 14, he began spending summers as “host” of the trains (since he wasn’t allowed to engineer/drive them until age 18). At that time, the Pittsburgh Zoo train ride was dilapidated, giving out a lot of problems for the zoo and receiving very little love in return. After all, the trains had been there since 1965. Chris was instrumental in restoring the trains. He gathered together a group of train lovers, and together they cleaned up the trains, performed regular maintenance, and began raising funding from donors to keep the trains running. 

Eventually, Chris became the primary engineer, in charge of the whole train operation. “Engineering them was a dream come true!” he told me. In 2010, he upgraded the train exhibit (along the train route) to tell the history of the Pittsburgh Zoo and breathe new life into the ride. 

Unfortunately, despite a new paint job for the trains in 2011, the entire train ride was shut down indefinitely in 2013. Although the trains themselves were in good shape, the tracks weren’t. The zoo didn’t see sufficient value in the train ride. They were unable to find funds to repair the tracks, and were looking instead for a place to locate a new dinosaur exhibit. 

To honor Zippy (#55) and Guido (#44), Chris honored them by writing and illustrating first one, and now four, books about them. “There were so many people who loved riding the zoo trains so I wanted them to be able to continue to bring smiles to families for years to come!” If you follow him on social media, he’s recently been showcasing delightful hidden details from each book, such as the real-life counterparts to the cats, coaches, and other engines in the book. 

He still loves trains today. The CPH Facebook group I referred you to is a project Chris moderates, along with several other train-minded folks. There, they collect information on each of the C. P. Huntington trains. Chris now travels the world to ride CPHs, especially those where he can participate in “engineer for a day” programs to get his engineering fix. He also consults with zoos and parks on all things train: finding used trains, operations, and historical information. 

As of the time of this recording, a private train collector has purchased the real #44, Guido, and the real #55, Zippy, and is in the process of slowly restoring them.

No End to the CPH Rabbithole

There’s something about the CPH, that quirky little engine and her 400+ quirky little Chance copies. The CPH gets in your head, gets her hooks in you, and you can’t stop falling down the rabbithole. Maybe it’s something in the steam?

I don’t quite understand it, myself. I’ve reiterated this a few times on the podcast so far, but I’m not really a train buff, not particularly interested in the technical specs and all that. But this episode on the C. P. Huntington train is the one I’ve been working on the longest. If you’d told me ten years ago that I’d spend fifteen single-spaced pages writing an essay about theme park train history, I’d have called you mad. But there’s just something about the diminutive overall size, the comically large smokestack, the proportions of the wheels…the CPH just such a classic-looking train, and she really gets in your head.

There’s so much interesting information out there, not only about the 400+ Chance trains but about the namesake engine herself. Someday I hope to visit many of the places I’ve covered on the podcast and visiting the original CPH on display in northern California is definitely high on my bucket list.

Chances are (see what I did there?) that there’s a CPH at a zoo or theme park near you. Maybe get out there and ride one soon. 

All aboard!

Acknowledgements

I’d like to particularly thank Chris Churilla for patiently answering my many questions on the C. P. Huntington trains. You should check out his Facebook group “C. P. Huntington Train Project”, an exhaustive resource and archive for the person interested in compiling a more complete history of each Chance C. P. Huntington. And check out his books about Zippy and Guido – ask your local bookstore, or find them at a major online retailer. 

I also recommend the 1943 article by D. L. Joslyn, “The Life Story of the Locomotive C.P. Huntington As Told By Itself”, available for free online. It’s a charming chatty first-person history of the original locomotive, and I think you’ll enjoy it.

Podcast cover background photo is by 4045 on freepik.com. C. P. Huntington photo is by Chris Churilla, used with permission. Theme music is from “Aerobatics in Slow Motion” by TeknoAXE. Incidental sounds and ambience: FreeSound.org (Dungeness miniature railway – jjbulley; old railway station – YleArkisto; Jacksonville Zoo Ambience – inspectorJ; Amusement Park – _alvaro_; Steam Train Interior – allh; Brighton carousel – onetwo-ber) and freesfx.co.uk (Blacksmith Working on Anvil With Hammer).

If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show on your podcast app. You might also leave a review, or share an episode on social media. Your word of mouth brings new listeners to the Abandoned Carousel fold.

I’ll be back soon with another great episode, so I’ll see you then. As Lucy Maud Montgomery once said, nothing is ever really lost to us, as long as we remember it.

Remember that what you’ve read is a podcast! A link is included at the top of the page. Listen to more episodes of The Abandoned Carousel on your favorite platform: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | RadioPublic | TuneIn | Overcast | Pocket Casts | Castro. Support the podcast on Patreon for extra content! Comment below to share your thoughts – as Lucy Maud Montgomery once said, nothing is ever really lost to us, as long as we remember it.

References

I’ve included a complete list of references used while researching this topic. It’s hidden under the link for brevity.

The post C. P. Huntington appeared first on The Abandoned Carousel.

Podcast cover background photo is by 4045 on freepik.com. Joyland photo is by newsplusnotes. Theme music is from “Aerobatics in Slow Motion” by TechnoAXE. Incidental music all by Kevin MacLeod / incompetech.com: “Midnight Tale”, “Plucky Daisy”, “Constance”, “Relent”, and “Simple Duet”. Images, audio, and video are all the property of their respective owners, as credited.

Joyland: beginnings

Joyland was an incredible place. More than just a theme park, for most of a century, the park has served as a community connection, a home for those seeking light and joy in their lives.

Joyland was the creation of the Ottaways: Lester Ottaway and his sons Harold and Herb, of Wichita, Kansas. In particular, Herb was interested in motorcycle racing, winning several big races in the 1930s. Through racing, he met the Chance family, including Gerald and his son Harold. 

Both families had an interest in steam-powered vehicles. The Ottaways purchased a miniature steam-powered train, and the Chances built a set of steam-powered kiddie cars. Together, the families spent summers throughout the 1930s hosting a small carnival for residents of Wichita, Kansas and Manitou Springs, Colorado.

As World War II began, the carnivals stopped. The population of Wichita and the surrounding areas was booming, literally doubling between 1940 and 1943, due to the aviation industry and companies like Cessna, Beech, and Boeing. The population was in need of diversion and recreation. 

The Ottaways opened up Ottaway Amusement Company and hired Harold Chance to start producing miniature steam trains based on their original train. By 1945, they’d sold seven trains. At the same time, Herb and Harold set up a small amusement park in Planeview, Kansas, a Wichita suburb built for aviation factory workers. The park had a few rides, and was hugely popular with its local audience.

Inspired by the success of the Planeview park, the Ottaways purchased land in the heart of Wichita, and opened Joyland Central around 1946. The original Ottaway steam train ran there, as well as a Ferris wheel, dodgem bumper cars, a carousel, a roll-o-plane, and other small midway rides.

The park was a success for a population still looking for lightness and leisure after the war, and the Ottaways began eyeing improvements for Joyland. They realized that they needed more space, so they purchased land on Hillside, further out in Wichita.

Joyland

With Joyland Central still operating, Joyland Hillside opened on June 12, 1949 – the biggest amusement park in the area, with the shiny new rollercoaster being quote “A huge deal. It was amazing”. The coaster was simply called Roller Coaster, and was designed by Herbert Paul Schmeck, and built by the Philadelphia Toboggan Company. Entirely wood, Roller Coaster was one of the last all-wood coasters, and was designated an ACE coaster classic. It was said to have the steepest drop of any in the country at the time. 

The coaster originally cost $0.25 per ride and operated with a full ridership from morning until night.

Besides the star attraction, there were many other popular rides at Joyland Hillside. There was a custom-built Allan Herschell carousel, with distinctive hand-carved wooden-and-aluminium horses. 

The park had a number of classic flat rides, including a paratrooper, Dodgem bumper cars, and an Eli Bridge Ferris wheel. And, of course, the miniature steam train. 

When Joyland Central closed, its assets were merged with Joyland Hillside. One of the two Dodgem buildings was repurposed as a simple dark ride. 

Another iconic feature of Joyland, there from opening day, was the Wurlitzer Mammoth 160 Organ. This was the largest of the early Wurlitzer models, and had been built around 1905. The organ had been sitting abandoned in a Coffeyville mansion for two decades. The Ottaways purchased the organ, had it refurbished, and gave it a position of honor in their newest theme park. They added the piece de resistance: an animatronic clown called Louie, who sat in front of the organ and “played”. 

In 1948, the Ottaways chose to focus on their amusement park business, and sold their miniature train business, Ottaway Amusement Company, to Harold Chance. As part of the deal, Joyland received a set of miniature ABA Santa Fe steamliners in 1951, increasing the size of the Joyland fleet.

In the 1950s, a pool was added to Joyland, featuring a slide and a very tall high dive. This was incredibly popular during the days when air-conditioning wasn’t widespread in the average home. The park even sold swimtrunks for those who forgot their own. Quote: “ That pool seemed so big, and the slide was so tall. The diving boards were really high up. There were always a lot of people in and around the pool.”

The park expanded, with a Frontier Town section as part of the celebration of Kansas’ centennial in 1961. There were several buildings, a stage for performances, and of course, a classic fake Old Western gunfight staged daily. 

In the mid-1960s, the Ottaways retired from Joyland, and took their original miniature steam train with them. A new train joined the park in its place, direct from Harold Chance and his newly-incorporated Chance Rides. It was a miniature C. P. Huntington steam train, with serial #1. 

Quote: “Joyland’s train really launched Chance Rides.” To date, Chance Rides has produced over 400 of these miniature trains, and the company reportedly became the largest amusement ride manufacturer in the world.

Joyland’s New Ownership

Under new ownership (Jerry Ottaway and Stanley Nelson, and later Stanley and Margaret Nelson) the park continued to prosper and grow through the 60s and 70s. 

The park’s original dark ride was rebuilt into something new by noted dark ride designer Bill Tracy. The Joyland “Whacky Shack” was the last dark ride to receive Tracy’s personal touch. Riders entered through a spooky facade and rode through the dark haunted house, with glow in the dark scenes and spooky lighting used to great affect. The facade of the Whacky Shacky has been one of the most iconic images from Joyland since the shack opened in 1974.

Joyland continued to thrive. It participated in numerous local cross-promotions like the Good Grades program, where good report cards earned ride tickets. A movie (King Kung Fu) and a commercial (Kellog’s Mini-Wheats) were filmed at Joyland. 

There were ups and downs as competition from larger parks like Six Flags became more intense and guests began to desire more thrills. Quote: “Joyland doesn’t pretend to be the park to end all parks,” Nelson said. “It’s simply a hometown recreational facility that draws from a radius of about 100 miles.” 

In 1985, the Log Jam was added, a classic log flume ride designed by O. D. Hopkins. The Joyland pool had closed some years earlier, and the Log Jam became the new hit during hot summer days and nights. Guests were guaranteed to get wet. 

And in 1996, the last new ride in the park: the Skycoaster, where guests were hoisted to the top of a tower and then allowed to free-fall swing from a giant arch. The ride was located where the pool originally had been, and cost an extra fee to ride.

Despite guests’ current-day fond memories, Joyland began to stagnate. There had been several deaths at the park. The neighborhood was taking on a rougher vibe. Attendance was down. In the modern day, theme park tourism is primarily driven by location: on large highways near major population centers. This is not Wichita. When Joyland was built (before the rise of the insterstate), theme parks were a much more regional situation.

A flood in 1997 closed the park for 11 critical days in the middle of the summer season, leaving behind damage to the Roller Coaster and half an inch of sludgey mud. 

The park was leased to new owners, and the formerly-pristine maintenance park began to look shabby. The Frontier Town section of the park was abandoned and closed off. And still attendance was low.

Finally, in Spring of 2004, a guest fell out of the Ferris Wheel. She was massively injured but fortunately didn’t die. Still, this was the last straw as the Consumer Product Safety Commission got involved to investigate the accident, and the park abruptly closed in July 2004. 

A series of lawsuits followed, with the new owner missing payments on both property loan and property taxes. The park sat in uncertainty, empty of guests. By December of 2004, the sheriff’s office owned the park, and the Nelsons were able to buy back the property.  

For all of 2005, the park sat empty, all rides still in place, its future uncertain.

In early 2006, the park was leased to a new group. They began investing money in Joyland. The park did open Easter weekend, but without any rides. A contemporaneous park visitor posted about the reopening, saying it was “worse off than it was before. The roller coaster was closed, Whacky Shack was closed, go-karts closed, sky-coaster closed, the Log Jam was open but did not work properly; the Slide did not have wax so you could not slide. This image of Joyland was one that people did not like to see.” 

The park closed for some legal squabbles and additional renovations, mostly cosmetic. They reopened in May 2006 with a blue and pink paint scheme. The Roller Coaster was given a new name (Nightmare) and a new coat of paint. 

Despite all this, the troubles continued. Neighbors continued to file noise complaints, and there were constant squabbles with the city about permits. Attendance didn’t improve.

In fall 2006, the park closed for the season, and never reopened.

Abandoned

“The unfortunate thing is that a lot of times, what we’d hear from people is ‘Oh, you’re closing Joyland down? Gosh, I haven’t been out there in 20 years,’ and we’d go ‘Yeah, we know,’” Nelson, the former owner of the park, was quoted as saying. 

The park sat, abandoned. Weeds began to grow.

Rides were either sold or stored.

The Nelsons held out for a few years, reportedly only interested in buyers who would keep the property as an amusement park. A deal never went through.

By 2008, they were resigned, and listed the property for sale for $2 million dollars, open to any buyer. The local paper described the state of the park at the time:  “Weeds have grown up in concrete cracks. The wind whistles through buildings with no windows and through the ghostly skeleton of the roller coaster, now silent.”

While wheels spun on the business front, vandals and thieves made merry at the abandoned Joyland park.

Nelson remembered one weekend in particular: quote “they [vandals] came in and just ripped the guts out of the electrical system and that left us absolutely unable to defend the place because we couldn’t leave any lights on.” end quote.

With the constant vandalism at the park, it was difficult to keep a basic level of maintenance at the abandoned Joyland park, much less to sell it. This in turn made the banks reluctant to invest in either the refurbishment or the sale of the park. The city did their part to make the process even more difficult, declaring the Joyland property a flood zone.

In 2010 and 2011, an ambitious group of high school students organized the “Joyland Restoration Project”. The Joyland Restoration Project had ambitious goals for buying, restoring, and expanding the park, and was looking to run the park as a non-profit. Their plans included expanded concessions, a second roller coaster, and a water park after ten years. However, their plans did not ever come to fruition.

It seemed as though any and every possible idea to save the park was tried. The park was even listed for sale on eBay for a time. Everyone speculated about the reason the park wasn’t moving.

A member of the Joyland Restoration Project said in a website interview, “Joyland is not on the best side of town and that is why nobody has purchased the land and torn it down already; the only things that the land could really serve as is something unique like Joyland.”

Vandalism continued to rise at the abandoned Joyland park. 

Later that year, the Opera House at Joyland, known for its picnics, puppet shows, movies, and corporate retreats, was completely burned down by fire. Police suspected arson.

In 2011, the bathrooms were destroyed in a fire. Police suspected arson.

In 2012, a storage building was partially damaged by fire. Three teenagers were seen fleeing the park, and police suspected arson. 

By 2014, the city of Wichita stepped in. They claimed that the Nelsons had failed to properly maintain and secure the premises. Joyland had become an attractive nuisance, and it needed to be demolished. Plagued by constant vandalism, the park was simply beyond repair.

What was once a vibrant, thriving family theme park was now a hazardous wasteland, covered in graffiti and weeds, ruinous and sad. One urban explorer commented in 2017: “There are heaps of debris everywhere and evidence of fires and graffiti at every turn. It is eerie and sad to remember having fun there and now it’s just an abandoned ruin.”

A windstorm swept through Wichita in April of 2015, massively damaging Joyland’s Roller Coaster. Portions of the track collapsed, and the entire coaster structure was visibly structurally unsound. 

On July 23, 2015, the remainder of the historic Philadelphia Toboggan Company wooden Roller Coaster was demolished.

The final insult to the once-thriving Joyland park came on August 8, 2018. The iconic Whacky Shack building was completely destroyed by fire.

Police suspected arson.

In November of 2018, the land where Joyland once sat was purchased at auction by a private buyer for $198,000, ten percent of its asking price ten years earlier.

After my original episodes on Joyland were released, it was announced that these new owners, Gregory and Tina Dunnegan, have plans to transform the eyesore into a new attraction. They intend to use part of the property for tent rentals, private events, outdoor festivals, and a paintball range. The plans come before the city council this summer, and it’s wonderful to hear plans about the property’s revitalization.

Remnants

Remnants of Joyland are still present in the community and in private collections. 

Local shops have some items, including the lion drinking fountain at the Donut Whole, and the original Joyland Arcade sign at the Churn & Burn. The original Ottaway train is in a private collection, and can be seen on occasion during Ottaway or Chance events.

The Historic Preservation Alliance of Wichita and Sedgewick County has a number of artifacts, such as the large caboose that formerly resided in Frontier Town. The original neon animated sign that once lived at Joyland Central was also purchased and saved, featuring an animation of two clowns. Along with the stagecoach, the Old Woman’s Shoe, and the original Roller Coaster ticket booth, these artifacts were reportedly purchased in 2010 for $22,000. These larger items sit dismantled in storage, waiting for eventual restoration.

The biggest remnant of them all, the 1949 Herschell carousel, was donated in 2014 to the local Botanica, a community garden in Wichita. The entire carousel is in the process of being restored, including a complete rewiring, a new paint scheme, and new LED. Each of the carousel’s original horses have been hand-restored by local carousel restoration artist Marlene Irvin. “This one is special to me because it is the carousel of my youth, in my town,” Irvin is quoted as saying. “I imagine I have ridden every horse several times during my lifetime.” Each horse takes at least one hundred hours or more to restore. Botanica is building a brand new pavilion complex to house the Herschell carousel, where it will reportedly be one of only five remaining Herschell carousels in the world. Irvin completed the restoration of the carousel horses in April 2019, and the expected opening date for the restored carousel in Botanica’s Carousel Gardens is fall 2019.

Memories

Joyland still inspires fond memories today. Everyone who talks about Joyland remembers it in the context of family and community. First coasters, first kisses, first dates: all that happened at the park. The rides were the icing on the cake. It was all about the people you met and the connections you made.

Yes, the park is iconic in its abandonment and became a haven for vandals and urban explorers. But the park remains far more than that.

True to its name from the beginning, the amusement park brought joy to Wichita for decades, and it will forever hold a special place in the hearts of those who visited.

“It was a place where you could take your kids,” Nelson is quoted as saying. “It was just a nice, pleasant uncrowded place.”

Remember that what you’ve read is a podcast! A link is included at the top of the page. Listen to more episodes of The Abandoned Carousel on your favorite platform: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | RadioPublic | TuneIn | Overcast | Pocket Casts | Castro. Support the podcast on Patreon for extra content! Comment below to share your thoughts – as Lucy Maud Montgomery once said, nothing is ever really lost to us, as long as we remember it.

References

I’ve included a complete list of references used while researching this topic. It’s hidden under the link for brevity.

The post Joyland (a condensed history) appeared first on The Abandoned Carousel.

Experience the full story by listening to this podcast episode.

Devil’s Backbone

To talk about Rose Island, we have to go back. Way back. The story of Rose Island begins as the story of a geological structure. The “island” is actually a peninsula, known as “Devil’s Backbone”, located between the Ohio River and Fourteen Mile Creek, east of Charlestown, IN.

A number of stories exist about the early history of the area, centuries ago, all based around the supposed existence of a (reportedly) man-made stone wall around the actual Devil’s Backbone rock outcropping. Some say that a Welsh prince called Madoc and his men occupied the island in the 1170s. Others say that the Aztecs (located down in central Mexico) actually had a northern outpost in IN, right on Rose Island.

No evidence for either legend exists.

In 1902, one of the most well-traveled archaeologists at the time, Gerard Fowke, visited the site. His verdict about the supposedly man-made stone wall? “Both the plan and the description of this so-called fort are entirely imaginary…” He went on to say “It seems incredible that a person connected in any capacity with a geological survey, even as a cook or mule-driver, could ever have made such a ridiculous blunder as to suppose them artificial.”

Thus is the beginning of the history of Rose Island.

Fern Grove

In the 1880s, the area began being called “Fern Grove”, an obvious name choice due to the massive amount of ferns growing in the area. People came to Fern Grove to picnic and relax on Sundays after church. Churches also ran religious camps on the site.

The location was calm and peaceful, full of natural beauty along the Ohio River. Quote: “This was the summertime treat looked forward to all year long. Fern Grove was large, pleasant picnic ground.” People came to Fern Grove to get out of the sooty city and into the fresh clean natural air.

A hotel was built on the site, called Fern Cliff Hotel. This was a spectacular place, particularly for the time. The building was three stories, done in the Victorian style. It had latticed front porches along the entire from of the building, surrounded by trees and climbing flowers. Promotional literature of the time proclaimed Fern Grove as THE place to get away from the heat and humidity in Louisville. This was a time long before air conditioning.

A 1917 newspaper ad calls it “the beauty spot of the Ohio Valley”, describing the area as “gorgeously bedecked in beautifully tinged wildflowers”.

Changes at Fern Grove

The Louisville and Jeffersonville Ferry Company purchased the land in 1881 from its Ohio owners to serve as a stop for leisure passengers on its ferries. The cost was $1300 ($32,500 in 2019 money). Fern Grove became a spot for day trips. Travelers would disembark from the ferry in the morning and spend the entire day picnicking, exploring the ferns, and relaxing amongst the natural beauty.

All was calm until one year: “All Sunday-school picnics were pretty much identical until that famous summer when the Episcopalians introduced dancing on their boat rides. To say there was a sensation is gross understatement. But while the older members of the somewhat sterner sects clucked and shook their heads in disapproval, their young flocked to join the outings of Calvary, St. Andrews and Christ Church.”

David Rose

David Rose was born in Nicholasville, Kentucky, with not much to his name. As an 8-year-old, he took a paper route. As he grew, his businesses grew as well. He purchased a newspaper agency at the age of 11 and managed it for a few years. He then moved to Louisville. There, he worked his way up the ladder of the Louisville Post. He was associated with over 26 corporations during his life. One of the most notable was the Standard Printing Company, which he founded in 1901 using $75. It was built into a multi-million-dollar printing company over the next 20 years, becoming the largest in the South.

He established a number of different businesses and organizations, including a recreational home for newsboys, the International Circulation Managers Association, the Riverside Park, the first public swimming pool (at Shelby Park), and the Southeastern School of Printing in Nashville. He is often remembered for offering the city of Louisville 10 city blocks’ worth of electric lights, hoping to set an example for others of his wealth.

David Rose Purchases Rose Island

In the 1920s, Rose was well aware of local Fern Grove, and was interested in the Falls Cities Ferry & Transportation Company. He had big ideas and big dreams, and he wanted to give the area a boost.

In 1923, the Courier-Journal proclaimed that David Rose had purchased the Fern Grove property, with plans for an amusement park. Cost of the purchase was not mentioned, but is estimated at $50,000.

Rose reportedly invested over $250,000 into developing Rose Island into a tourist property. He had plans including augmented water supplies, a beach for bathing, restaurants, tennis courts, and rental cottages. Rose apparently even planned to whitewash the trees that faced the river. He repaired the old road on the Kentucky side leading to the ferry dock, and created a manned parking lot for visitors to park in.

And of course, he changed the name of the peninsula: Rose Island.

Getting to Rose Island

There were two ways to get to the new Rose Island Amusement Park: bridge, or steamboat.

Footbridge to Rose Island

From the Indiana side, visitors could drive, park, and walk on the swinging bridge. The bridge was 50 feet in length over the creek. A visitor at the time recalls: “the boys used to get on an shake that thing, and it would scare us girls to death”. Visitors arriving by suspension bridge still had to pay to enter the park at a ticket booth once they’d crossed the bridge. The bridge itself had tree limbs interwoven as part of the side railing. In high water, the slats almost touched the water; in low water, the bridge was far above the surface.

Steamboats to Rose Island

From the Kentucky side, three ferry trips a day by steamers and paddleboats would serve the island. These steamboats included Steamer America, City of Cincinnati, Columbia, and Idlewild, which later became the more famous Belle of Louisville.

Steamer America carried up to 4000 passengers per day, and was one of the largest river steamers in the country. It was often chartered for clubs and churches planning their annual picnics at Fern Grove and Rose Island.

Idlewild is still in operation today as Belle of Louisville. It was built in 1914 with a very modern design for the time – all steel construction. She is reportedly the record holder in her class for years of operation, miles traveled, and places visited.

Rides on the steamboat from Louisville would take around 1.5-2 hours, and cost about 50 cents per rider. Riders would wake up early to catch the steamer. The boats had music and were considered part of the fun of the day trip.

The river landing featured the iconic Rose Island arched sign. The sign was mounted on three stone pillars for visitors to walk under and flanked with gothic-style iron lamps and lighted walkways. The sign was electric, and could be seen for miles up and down the river.

Rose Island Amusement Park

Rose Island Amusement Park covered 118 acres on the peninsula, and was located about 14 miles from Louisville. Reportedly, the park attracted 135,000 visitors annually in its heyday.

Rose Island Amenities

It had the capacity to handle about 4,000 guests per day! The park had its own electrical power-generating station, its own mineral water well and water supply, its own sanitation system, and its own ice plant. Waterworks (drinking fountains) were promoted by temperance movements at the time as an alcohol alternative, and these were part of the ad copy for the park.

At night, the entire park was well-lit to allow for night-time walks by patrons. One historical path is now called “Walkway of Roses”. Other sources at the time refer to this as “the great white way” due to the white stones lining the path and white pillars with white rose bushes, with roses twining overhead on arches over the path. Either way, the park’s natural beauty would’ve been a pleasure to walk around and enjoy.

Rules of Rose Island

A sign on the wall of the dance hall provided the rules for the park:

“Rose Island was purchased for the purpose of making it a public playground and summer resort for the pleasure of the people of the Falls Cities. To insure the success of the enterprise, the management has adopted certain definite rules which all patrons are expected to respect:

No gambling will be allowed

No drinking permitted

Animals must not be molested

All other property fully protected

“Under no circumstances will unbecoming conduct be permitted on the island. The cooperation of the public is not only requested but insisted upon. If Louisville and the Falls Cities are to have a model resort, all who wish to enjoy its many advantages must do their part.”

“Rose Island Company, Inc” David B. G. Rose, 220 S. First St, Louisville KY

Rose Island Hotel

The hotel on Rose Island was originally built in 1886, during the Fern Grove days, and back then, it was called the Fern Cliff Hotel. Stories diverge about whether David Rose simply modernized and renamed the Fern Cliff Hotel, or whether he painted it and made it a home for the park employees, building a separate Rose Island Hotel.

The hotel stood at the base of the cliff, just north of the Ohio River Gateway. The rooms featured verandas, and offered breezy river views. There were 12 rooms, which were reportedly remodeled by David Rose to include a private bathroom in each room.

Rose Island Cottages

Suitable for short-term or all-season rentals, the Rose Island Cottages were completely furnished and could accommodate 4-8 people. Twenty cottages were available for rental as summer homes, and were located just 100 feet from the river. Each cottage had four rooms, with the most modern of finishings. Room service was available, and cost an extra 20 cents per person.

Residents who elected to rent a cottage for the entire summer were able to take a boat to and from Louisville at a lower charge.

Rose Island Dining Hall

With the capacity for 4,000 guests per day came food infrastructure. The Rose Island Restaurant was able to seat 500 guests at a time indoors. Outdoors and in the adjacent dance hall were also available for additional seating, bring the total capacity to over 1600 people per meal.

The menu featured fresh-caught fish from the adjacent Ohio River. The on-site Rose Island Company had its own farm: fresh eggs, milk, butter, and cream came from the local hens, Jersey cows and onsite dairy owned by Rose Island Company. These items were delivered three times a day. Remember the time period: these were considered luxury for the city-dwellers who visited Rose Island.

Advertisements called the food “excellent cuisine”. One visitor remembers that the cooking was amazing, with “the best onion rings around”.

Amusements at Rose Island Amusement Park

Though the park’s offerings may seem paltry to modern standards, it is best to recall the time period. In popular memory, you might think of the glitter of the oldest Coney Island parks, like the original Dreamland (1904), Luna Park (1903), and Steeplechase Park (1897). Rose Island, though, was primarily a resort that also had amusements, and it wouldn’t be fair to stack it up against these places. It was a more local amusement park and its offerings were still a huge draw.

Rose Island Carousel and Roller Coaster

Rose Island had a wooden carousel, which possibly was left over from the Fern Grove days. A grainy image from a 1930s promotional pamphlet shows a classic carousel and an array of riders. Painted birds and shiny mirrors decorate the structure.

Unlike with most abandoned parks, very little is known about the former Rose Island rollercoaster. It was a wooden coaster, and likely was built after 1929, since no images of it appear in the 1930 promotional pamphlet. In fact, we have no images of the coaster from the park’s operational days. There is little else known about it, though some suggest the coaster was called “Devil’s Backbone” after the famous geographical structure nearby.

Pony Rides and Steamboat Races

The park advertised rides on Shetland ponies for those who thought the carousel was too staid.

If mechanical items were of more interest, the park offered excellent views of steamboat races as part of its regular schedule of events. The hilly shore on the Ohio River allowed a perfect spot for viewing the regular steamboat races. A 1928 event included one such race, with the City of Cincinnati and Steamer America racing from Louisville to Rose Island. City of Cincinnati won.

The beautiful nature scenery was an incredible draw at the time, with visitors enjoying the variety of abundance, from the “Lovers’ Lane” path along the top of the “Devil’s Backbone” ridge to rocks, wildflowers, and river scenery. The “Rose Island Lagoon” allowed a calm area for paddleboats, and a waterfall also existed: Cascade Falls.

Sports and Animals

As the park was often very popular among church outings and large groups of people, sports provided a popular amusement at Rose Island. The park had baseball fields, tennis courts, and was in the process of building a miniature golf course. There was also reported to be a shooting gallery.

Rose Island Zoo

Zoos of course have been popular for much of human history, so it is no surprise that Rose Island also had a zoo. The Rose Island Amusement Park Zoo featured groundhogs, wolves, twelve exotic monkeys from the West Indies, and alligators. The alligators famously lived in a moat around a decorative fountain.

That park’s zoo is best known for its small black bear named Teddy Roosevelt. By modern standards the zoo is very unsafe. The bear was separated from people by nothing more than metal bars. A small sign is affixed reading “Beware of animals, don’t put your hands in cages.”

If you’re wondering about the name, remember that Teddy Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States, gave rise to our modern “teddy bear”. In 1902, he refused to shoot a chained black bear on a hunting trip, and toy plush bears were created to celebrate the event.

Rose Island Dance Hall

Dancing was a huge part of the amusement scene at this time period. Rose Island’s Dance Hall was constructed adjacent to the dining hall, with exposed beams on the ceiling. Inside, there was seating along one side.

The dance hall doubled as a roller-skating rink during the day. An organ would play for the skaters. In the evening, the roller floor would be removed and the dance floor set up.

Visitors from the time recall dances to end each evening at the park: waltzes and tangoes in the 1920s, and new dance crazes like the Lindy Hop and the Charleston in the 1930s. Orchestras were great draws for the park and were featured on handbills promoting the park at the time.

Rose Island Swimming Pool

Built in 1934, the swimming pool is the most memorable park of Rose Island Amusement Park, due to its visibility in the modern time as an abandoned park. When the park was open, the pool was a huge crowd-pleaser for guests in the humid summer days before air conditioning. The park offered bathings suits for rental.

A lifeguard at the time remembered that the biggest problem was preventing guests from climbing the trees to dive in.

The pool itself was said to be the first of its kind: the first Olympic-sized swimming pool in Indiana, and the first filtered-water pool in the Midwest, with an integrated system for skimming off oils and keeping the water fresh. It was essentially a double-wall around the pool, which is very unique.

In the center of the pool stood a large top-like structure: a circular platform with a handle, where guests could stand and work to spin one another around. The pool was incredibly popular for guests during the short time it was in existence.

The Great Depression

As with all theme parks and all areas of daily life at the time, the Great Depression hit Rose Island hard, causing it to have its first ever operating loss in 1931. It’s said that David Rose kept the park open during the Great Depression only by paying bills out of his own personal accounts.

The Great Ohio Flood of 1937

In January and February of 1937, a devastating flood swept through the South.

Water levels began to rise at the beginning of January. In the middle of the month, near record rainfalls were recorded for days on end. By January 18, the Ohio River began to overflow its banks. On January 27, the river was marked at 57 ft in Louisville near the Rose Island, setting a new record for the area. 70% of the city was under water.

It took until the first week of February 1937 for water levels to fall beneath flood stage.

The flood was considered one of the most powerful of the 20th century.

The government responded by sending out a fleet from the US Army Corps. Bridges were too flooded to allow the boats to go under, so relief vessels were forced to steam around them, going over farmland and dodging telephone and powerlines. FDR was president at the time (though only just, having been inaugurated on January 20, 1937), and sent in thousands of workers to provide aid with food and temporary housing.

The scale of the flood was incredibly unprecedented. Groups lobbied to create comprehensive flood plans afterwards, ultimately involving the creation of more than 70 storage reservoirs to reduce the river’s flood height. This took 5-10 years but has drastically reduced flood damage in the years since. Not only relevant for the Ohio River, the aftermath of the 1937 Ohio River flood also affected how local governments planned for future floods on the Tennessee and Mississippi Rivers.

Local Effects of the 1937 Flood

Locally in Louisville, hundreds of thousands of people were left homeless as a result of the flood. This was during the height of the Depression and times were incredibly hard. Louisville directed future development towards the east, away from the flood plain.

A local who experienced the floods recalls: “It is impossible to describe the difficulties in rebuilding and restoring residences, barns, business places, and fences. The mud was deep everywhere, even in buildings that did not wash away. Since most places did not have running water systems, there were not hoses to use for washing out the buildings. Cleaning up was a laborious process by hand. Many cattle and horses were drowned, to say nothing of poultry.”

At the time, damages for Kentucky in general were estimated at $250 M, an incredible number in 1937. In 2019 dollars, this would be $4.4 BILLION dollars.

Rose Island: Devastated

Rose Island was hit incredibly hard by the flood. The entire property was submerged, in places under 10-15 feet of water. The bridge was washed away completely, with only the support pylons remaining. Trees fell and most of the buildings were irreparably damaged.

The park, though closed at the time of the flood, couldn’t be rebuilt for the 1937 season, and it turned out to be too expensive to repair the damages for any future seasons. (Remember, this was still in the Depression.)

David Rose walked away from Rose Island, leaving it essentially abandoned, and pursued other business ventures instead. He died 21 years later, in 1958.

The local paper, the Courier-Journal, visited the now abandoned Rose Island Amusement Park  in 1939 to survey the damage. The nickelodeon (playing music off punched rolls of paper) was ruined, spilling its music rolls across the floor.

Most of the structure were present but deteriorating. Inside buildings, typical office debris was strewn across floors, sodden and ruined.

In the only extant picture of the roller coaster, a pile of wooden debris can be seen, one with a roller coaster chain partially attached. It is barely recognizable as a coaster.

Indiana Army Ammunition Plant and Rose Island

Thus devastated and mostly inaccessible, Rose Island was left to be taken back by nature. The army bought the property in 1940 for its Indiana Army Ammunition Plant, prior to the second World War, as it needed water from the river for the production of ammunition. Land in the area was cheap as it was unsuitable for farming. The first plant here was completed by 1941. The land formerly used for Rose Island went unused in the army days, serving as a buffer between the ammunition plant and the river during WWII.

At its peak, the Indiana Army Ammunition Plant plant employed 27,000 locals. The plant produced smokeless powder, rocket propellant, and propellant charge bags. Most commuted up from Louisville by train. The plant was active through the Korean and Vietnam wars.

Again, the Rose Island Amusement Park was left abandoned. A few visitors occasionally made it over to the park by boat, but the bridge was long gone and the property was under private ownership.

Abandoned in the 1950s and 1960s

A 1958 expedition by the local paper saw decayed fragments of a rowboat that had previous been rented by patrons, a small shelter, and little else. Broken parts of a picnic table and the wasted suspension bridge were the only other recognizable pieces.

In 1963, Jefferson County Judge Marlow Cook had a proposal. He’d been instrumental in purchasing the Belle of Louisville for the community and wanted to revive Rose Island as an amusement park. However, investigation of the site found the costs to do so would be prohibitive. They also stated that due to erosion, a boat the size of the Belle could no longer dock at Rose Island.

1980 Expedition to Abandoned Rose Island Amusement Park

An expedition by the state in 1980 found few remnants of the park left. None of the park’s original signs or buildings remained, only a few posts and beams from the suspension bridge.

The swimming pool was still in excellent shape, with grass growing inside and the metal water toy there like a discarded child’s top. The ladder to the side of the pool belies the scale of the image. Where there once was a clearing and a fence around the area, trees now encroached on the pool.

The structures all disappeared, for the most part, by the 1980 visit. Foundations were really all that was left.

The shoreline path, so well-kept back in the 20s and 30s for walking at night, was now tangling with roots, much closer to the water as erosion occurred.

At the former steamboat landing, only the pillars for the sign remained.

Charlestown State Park

In 1995, the land from the former Rose Island Amusement Park was officially donated to the state, becoming part of Charlestown State Park which covers 15,000 acres. Plans began to be made for the restoration of the Rose Island Amusement Park. As we mentioned earlier, the only access to the Rose Island Amusement Park was by boat. Restoration began in 2011 with the construction of a bridge to the Island.

Portersville Bridge

The bridge that now crosses Fourteen Mile Creek is the Portersville Bridge. It originally crossed the White River at Portersville in 1912. Shortly after its completion, it was submerged in a 1912 flood, and had to be rebuilt three feet higher the next year. It is a truss bridge, which replace wooden covered bridges in popularity around the turn of the 20th century. This bridge is a steel “pinned camelback through truss” style.

In 1999, the bridge was closed to car traffic at Portersville, and in 2008 it was closed for restoration and relocation. Pieces were numbered as the bridge was disassembled, and then completely cleaned, inspected, and painted. Only 5% of the pieces had to be replaced when the bridge was re-installed at Charlestown State Park near Rose Island.

Rose Island Abandoned Theme Park

Today, the former Rose Island Amusement Park is open as a public hiking trail, part of the Charlestown State Park. Trail #3 connects hikers to Trail #7, which runs through the historic site. There is a 70 ft elevation change over ¾ of a mile to get to the site, very steep on the way back up. Guided tours do provide a van. Visitors describe the drop as ear-popping, a dip down to where civilization falls away and the woods reign.

The entrance to the park from this direction features a small modern replica of the original entrance, with informational displays. The original “Rose Island” sign that attracted visitors for miles up the river is long gone and presumed stolen. However, the three concrete-and-stone pillars that once held the sign do still remain, amidst a pile of concrete and vines looking out across the river.

Displays at Rose Island

Throughout the site, poles stand with signs, labeling the locations for the original buildings. The state has set up informational displays, complete with vintage pictures. Boxes with hand cranks stand adjacent, where visitors can listen to audio about the park’s remnants. Interestingly, there are blue rings around each of the labeled poles to indicate the height of the river’s crest in 1937.

The area where small motorboats once landed is now dry; visitors can see concrete pylons where boats were tied up, but the water no longer reaches these moorings.

No foundations from the hotel remained as of the archaeological survey in 2012. The only remnants of the hotel now are part of a retaining wall and a few steps. A rusting metal piano support leans against a tree near the site of the former dance hall, a reminder of the music that must have echoed through the forest every summer night almost a century ago.

Remnants of Rose Island

An original picnic table does still remain at the park. There’s also a crumbling pile of bricks with a fence around it to protect from ambitious guests. It’s the remnants of the fountain that once held small alligators in its moat.

Occasionally, one can find bricks and metal rods and other small reminders of civilization. But overall, the park is very much becoming taken back by nature. Hidden amongst the vines, one can find small remnants: broken pieces of pottery, rusted cast iron handles, broken drinking glasses and bottles.

The largest remaining visual of the abandoned park is the swimming pool. This pool, as late as 2015, was filled with murky green water, downed trees, and the original floating disc that attracted so many swimmers in the 30s. It was filled in with gravel and concrete in the late 2010s, for safety reasons. Nearby, a broken foundation remains, marking the site of the swimsuit rental station. The ladder for pool access still arches over the sides, a ghost-like reminder of this site’s once-grand past.

Memories of Rose Island Amusement Park

The abandoned Rose Island Amusement Park is sparsely populated still today. The site is a difficult hike. The area is quiet, filled with the sounds of nature: leaves in the wind, birds, waves on the water. An occasional tourist winds a hand-crank to hear a story about Rose Island’s history.

Despite the few visible pieces of the park remaining, the serene environment makes it easy to picture how the amusement park might have once been. Neatly maintained, with luxurious appointments. Mineral wells. The quiet buzz of conversation, the echoing sounds of laughter from the ball fields and tennis courts. The organ playing as the carousel whirled.

And of course, the riotous music and laughter and light spilling out from the dance hall as night fell, inviting ladies in dresses and men in suits inside. “Almost like a dream,” a guest at the time remembers it. And it truly must have been.

Remember that what you’ve read is a podcast! A link is included at the top of the page. Listen to more episodes of The Abandoned Carousel on your favorite platform: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | RadioPublic | TuneIn | Overcast | Pocket Casts | Castro. Support the podcast on Patreon for extra content! Comment below to share your thoughts – as Lucy Maud Montgomery once said, nothing is ever really lost to us, as long as we remember it.

References

Many acknowledgements to the Indiana Memory Digital Collections this week, for their in-depth online collections on Rose Island. All images are used here for educational purposes only.

I’ve included a complete list of references used while researching this topic. It’s hidden under the link for brevity.

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East

Abandoned places located in the East.

• Carousel #15
• A Town Called Santa Claus
• Gaslight Village
• Floyd Moreland Dentzel/Looff Carousel
• C. P. Huntington
• Magic Forest
• Time Town
• Presidents Park

Midwest

Abandoned places located in the Midwest.

• Racism, Riots, and Euclid Beach Park
• The First Ferris Wheel
• Carousel #15
• A Town Called Santa Claus
• Little Amerricka
• C. P. Huntington
• Joyland Park, Part Two
• Joyland, Part One
• Prehistoric Forest

South

Abandoned places located in the South.

• Royal Land
• Dinosaur World, or “John Agar’s Land of Kong”
• Dogpatch USA
• A Town Called Santa Claus
• Discovery Island
• C. P. Huntington
• Joyland (a condensed history)
• Rose Island Amusement Park

West

Abandoned places located in the West.

• Carousel #15
• A Town Called Santa Claus
• C. P. Huntington
• Lake Dolores Waterpark
• Skyway at Disneyland

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