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    Magic Mountain
    Magic Mountain
    Magic Mountain
    Ebook147 pages47 minutes

    Magic Mountain

    By Robert McLaughlin

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Nestled in the foothills of Golden, Colorado, construction started on Magic Mountain just two years after Disneyland's opening season. Through never-before-seen photographs, Magic Mountain tells the exciting story of the first attempt in America to spread the Disneyland model. The dream of a theme park in Colorado was conceived by Walter F. Cobb and designed by Marco Engineering of Los Angeles. The park saw tens of thousands of visitors, even during the construction period. They witnessed live gunfights and playhouse melodramas and took a ride on the Magic Mountain Railroad. Unfortunately, the park closed at the end of its premier season in 1960, but it would eventually evolve into Heritage Square. For over 40 years, this venue brought fun and entertainment to the young and young at heart, following Cobb's vision of a clean, entertaining, and educational park for the whole family.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateApr 25, 2016
    ISBN9781439655948
    Magic Mountain
    Author

    Robert McLaughlin

    Robert McLaughlin has an avid interest in theme park history. He is also the author of Pleasure Island, Boston's own former Disneyland of the East. Frank R. Adamo started at Freedomland as a heavy equipment operator and moved on to management positions for the life of the park. Adamo was also in charge of dismantling Freedomland. It is Adamo's extensive photograph collection and his collective involvement with Freedomland that made this book possible.

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      Book preview

      Magic Mountain - Robert McLaughlin

      collection.

      INTRODUCTION

      Welcome to Magic Mountain. There is going to be a historical timeline running through the next five chapters. The author’s timeline started on March 24, 2000, when he purchased nine Pleasure Island postcards at a church antique show in his adopted hometown of Wakefield, Massachusetts. After having a friend enlarge the postcards, they were posted on the local town information stations along a walking path around Lake Quannapowitt. This chance encounter with nine postcards was the unofficial start of the Friends of Pleasure Island, which became a 501-C in April 2001, with a goal to document Pleasure Island’s history to share with current and future generations.

      During my very early research on Pleasure Island, three parks appeared besides it on our local library’s microfilm machines’ screen; they were Disneyland, Magic Mountain, and Freedomland. From several years of research, interviews, and site visits, Pleasure Island and Freedomland were released for the 50th anniversaries, with Pleasure Island in 2009 and Freedomland in 2010. Arcadia Publishing rolled out a new series called Images of Modern America, featuring color photographs, in January 2014. Pleasure Island 1959–1969, released on June 30, 2014, was the first book in this series to be released in New England. On March 2, 2015, Freedomland 1960–1964 was released. It is my pleasure to introduce this author’s third book in this exciting new series—Magic Mountain.

      As discussed in my previous books, amusement parks have been part of America’s culture for a very long time. Around the turn of the 19th century, parks with the title trolley parks started to appear across the American landscape. Because trolley companies paid for electricity seven days a week, they lost money on weekends when the working population was not utilizing its services. To remedy lost income, trolley companies built amusement parks so patrons would access these venues on the underserved trolley lines.

      These parks offered a variety of amusements such as carousels, boat rides and boat rentals, picnic groves, band concerts, dance halls, an assortment of dining choices, and, in some of these parks, much more. One of these trolley parks was located in Kansas City, Missouri. Its name was Electric Park, and one of its guests in the 1910s was a young boy by the name of Walt Disney. Reportedly, Disney would include aspects of his early memories of Electric Park in his vision for Disneyland. Many of these trolley parks evolved into traditional amusement parks that currently operate throughout this country.

      With the Great Depression and World War II in the rearview mirror, America was on a roll. Massive upgrades to this country’s road infrastructure connected us from the smallest villages to the largest cities. With a bumper crop of baby boomers and measurable disposable income, the 1950s were the ideal time for a new type of family entertainment. This is where Magic Mountain’s history merges with Disneyland’s beginnings.

      C.V. Wood, sometimes referred to as C.V. Wood Jr., Cornelius Vanderbilt Wood, or just Woody, was born in Wood County, Oklahoma, in 1920 and raised in Amarillo, Texas. By 1950, he became director of the Los Angeles division of the Stanford Research Institute. In 1953, Walt Disney Productions commissioned the institute to create a comprehensive feasibility study to determine the location for Disneyland from a number of options. This study, by all accounts, was revolutionary for the leisure industry, where it not only looked at travel and population trends, past weather cycles, and more, but also how many guests would come and how much they would spend. This model is used for every venue imaginable, including theme parks.

      Also working at the institute was Harrison Buzz Price, who was the study’s project leader. Readers interested in economic research for the leisure industry should check out Price’s book, Walt’s Revolution!: By the Numbers (Ripley Entertainment, 2004). Wood was hired by Walt and Roy Disney as Disneyland’s executive vice president and worked in that capacity organizing Disneyland’s final site selection, a collective group of 17 individual parcels known as the Ball Road Subdivision. Wood was involved with many of the aspects that created this park and was its first general manager; although, it is well known that Walt would micromanage his dream park.

      For reasons that would only be speculative, Wood was dismissed by the Disney brothers just months after Disneyland’s opening. Let us just say, Wood’s name does not appear on any Main Street windows at the Disney parks like his contemporaries who invented the theme park business. On the other hand, Harrison Buzz Price went on to consult for the Disney organization on projects such as the 1964–1965 New York World’s Fair and was involved in selecting the sites for

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