Cedar Point - Part 3: Happy Trails.

December 23, 2018 by Dave Gottwald

Frontier Town was a huge success when it opened at the remote north end of the Cedar Point property for the 1967 season. So popular, in fact, that the Frontier Lift Von Roll gondola was added to increase access to the area the following year, and in 1969 the land was enlarged and the Cedar Creek Mine Ride and Antique Cars attractions were added.

Frontier Trail area, satellite view. Map data: Ⓒ Google. — *Frontier Trail* area, satellite view. Map data: Ⓒ Google.

The next logical step was carving out a path which guests could walk (at a leisurely pace) to the rear of the park—and this was Frontier Trail, which opened for the 1971 season.

Cedar Point park map showing Fronter Trail, 1974. — Cedar Point park map showing *Fronter Trail*, 1974.

Unlike today’s park guide maps for Cedar Point, this kind of artful rendering pictured above—somewhat abstracted in a cartoonish way—was very popular at the time (every park from Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom to Six Flags Over Texas had maps drawn with this same particular look). I suspect the style was influenced by the design and illustration of Push Pin Studios in New York City, co-founded by the famed Milton Glaser. That shop’s approach to drawing and lettering reached an apex as the 1960s turned to the 70s, and was found everywhere from advertising to animation on Sesame Street.

The highlights of Frontier Trail weren’t flashy midway rides or the roller coasters which Cedar Fair is (still) famous for. Actually, taking a cue from places like Silver Dollar City (Branson, Missouri; opened 1960) and Goldrush Junction (Pigeon Forge, Tennessee; originally opened in 1961 as Rebel Railroad, now Dollywood) the focus was on something with an even a stronger pull than the Old West—Simpler Times, Pioneer Living, and the Arts & Crafts of America’s forefathers.

What’s so strong about this approach is that it spans multiple regions of the country; basically, anywhere Americans once lived in log cabins. From the forests of Upstate New York to the woods of the Midwest all the way down into Appalachia and the Southeast, the setting is not so much geography as it is simply past times; a former way of life.

Frontier Trail brochure, 1971. — *Frontier Trail* brochure, 1971.

The headline “Authentic Log Cabins become Theatres of Pioneer Crafts” from this opening season brochure is incredibly, impossibly precinct. Become theatre. Joseph Pine and James H. Gilmore’s The Experience Economy (1999, updated in 2011) is a groundbreaking text in which the authors describe the evolution of late capitalism from extracting resources, to manufacturing goods, to offering services, and finally to—in this, our present state—staging experiences. In their own words, “Theatre is not a metaphor. Theatre is real.” Here on the Frontier Trail, the various experiences staged—making candles, blowing glass, weaving, whatever—are signifiers of pre-industrial society, but they also represent the staging of the production of the goods to be consumed. It’s very much like the current trend in open kitchens at restaurants.

Here’s something I did not expect to see—steampunk theming. The typography again appears to be from the Letterhead Font Foundry. As usual with such geek subcultures, by the time they’ve made their way beyond the Comic-Cons and WonderCons to mainstream recreation venues like a Cedar Fair or Six Flags park, they’re well past their street-cred expiration date.

The same goes for Voyage to the Iron Reef at Knott’s Berry Farm (2014) or the new mini-land around Twisted Colossus at Six Flags Magic Mountain (2015) . But at least those designs are appropriately set off in their own areas. Here on the Frontier Trail—amid actual historic, relocated pioneer cabins that wildly predate the Victorian Era—it’s totally out of place.

“Authentic Log Cabins” is a bit misleading, because just like at Greenfield Village at the Henry Ford, there is a mixture of the historic / relocated / restored, newly built to look old, and everything in between. Not to mention the props, artifacts, and graphics and signage. Here on the Frontier Trail we have the REAL fake, the FAKE real, the REAL REAL, and the FAKE FAKE.

What on earth do I mean by that? Well, REAL REAL means the design is not trying to fool anyone; it is what it is. And FAKE FAKE means the very same—no one is being fooled, it’s fake and it looks and feels fake too. Things get more slippery with the REAL fake and the FAKE real. Which is this building, The Candle Shop, pictured above? It doesn’t appear to be fake / newly built; it does look to be actually old. In fact, it’s the only structure on the Frontier Trail with a historic marker:

The Hessenauer Cabin
Originally Near Galion, Ohio
Built about 1835 by Early Settler Adam Remsch

So here we have the REAL REAL (though the cabin has been retrofitted inside, there is electric power, there is an ADA access ramp to one side of the front porch, etc).

Another REAL REAL log cabin was originally the Trading Post when the Trail opened, but is now the Candy Shoppe. But there is a catch. If you look carefully at the front porch, it was built around the rather large tree in front of the cabin, and the tree goes through a hole in both the flooring and the roof. So was the roof original to the cabin, and altered in situ to accommodate the tree, or was it built new (to look old) meaning REAL fake? I don’t know, and that’s the conundrum with this stuff.

Across from the Candy Shoppe is the Addington Mill. This is REAL REAL, a water-powered grist mill which was relocated from Macon County in North Carolina. Adding some fakery though is the “Established 1835” when the mill was actually built in 1861. Just like other places I’ve visited like Deadwood, South Dakota, there is a layer cake effect going on—real and fake intermingle to the point where it’s impossible to peel back the onion skin layers to tell which is which.

The Log Cabin Settlement is a grouping of four historic structures, all unique in scale and design. No specific historical markers on any of the four are present (unlike the Hessenauer Cabin) but there is a general notice about the group of cabins as a whole:

Early Ohio settlers often built their log cabins close together for protection, company and cooperative clearing and farming. The first such settlement in Sandusky began in 1790 with the Western migration of “burned out” Connecticut families occupying the new “Western Reserve” and “Firelands” later surveyed by Moses Cleaveland in 1796 and named the Ohio Territory. The cabins here are original dating back to about 1850 and were moved to this site from nearby townships.

Here in this panorama, from left to right, are Paul's Woodcarver Shop, the Fort Sandusky Mining Company, the Frontier Merchant, and Erie County Custom Jewelers.

This shop in particular reminded me of Ghost Town at Knott’s Berry Farm, and in fact Ghost Town is pretty much the same kind of thematic environment—a mixture of historic / restored / relocated and new, built-to-look-old structures with a mix of graphics and signage. Indeed I would be very surprised if the designers of Cedar Point’s Frontier Trail did not do research at Knott’s.

This sign is an example of the FAKE real. I can look at it and tell that this is not a vintage, historial piece. But, unlike the REAL fake, it’s not making any pretense of being authentic, either.

It’s a shame that Cedar Point only hocks mostly generic “Old West” souvenirs in these shops. When Frontier Trail opened, a major selling point of the area was the authentic craft demonstrations and unique wares offered. But in this current era of corporatization, uniformity is more cost-effective. The same thing has happened to DIsney’s parks over the years (and even to Knott’s Berry Farm).

Fort Sandusky is not a historic structure, rather it’s the REAL fake, a recreation of a British fort built in 1761 using period-appropriate materials. The original fort burned down some two years after its construction during the “Pontiac Conspiracy” (we love calling Native American uprisings “massacres” or “conspiracies”—how dare the original inhabitants of this land plot against their invaders!) so this ‘recreation’ can’t possibly be accurate in any real sense; at best it’s probably ‘representative’ of British forts of the era. In an appropriate twist, this fort is comprised of numerous souvenir shops.

The sign is clearly FAKE real, because although it’s designed and painted to look authentic, this recreation represents 1761, and the painted wood type lettering style is from the 1800s. Slab serif typefaces hadn’t been invented yet, but because they telegraph “Old West” to the public at large so effectively, they are employed here.

I actually took this photo from the opposite direction, facing north (back towards the way I was walking from) because I was curious how Fort Sandusky would present from that vantage; it’s a bit more stately.

This is the E.J. Hammer Blacksmith Shop, another historic building (REAL REAL). Unlike some of the other structures on the Trail which no longer feature live craft demonstrations, an actual blacksmith is often here working the bellows and hammering out metal objects (which are of course available in the adjoining shop). The PONY RIDES sign is a silly addition (FAKE FAKE), particularly with the cartoon horse head, but the painted and route-cut wood type behind it on the building is pretty nifty (REAL fake).

Just across the way, this historic log barn is really a wine and beer tasting venue called the Trail Tavern (I guess Ohio actually is a wine producing region, I had no idea). This building used to stage woodworking demonstrations back when the Trail opened, and later as the Toy Barn offered wooden toys and other trinkets for sale. In 2014 the barn was refurbished and reopened as this tavern.

Ok. Coke machines. They’ve got to go somewhere, I suppose. Although on the whole it’s a rather tacky standout given the historical recreation vibe of the rest of the Frontier Trail area, I still think the design choices here are considered (if I’m being generous). The Coca-Cola Company hails from Atlanta, and there’s an appropriate Southern plantation vibe to this small farm-esque shack.

The Frontier Town / Frontier Trail areas are essentially bookended at both the north and south ends with a entertainment venue. Here at the south end, the more higher class Red Garter Saloon has more of a Great Plains / Midwestern style than the strictly Far West / Southwest feeling of Frontier Town’s version; a sort of “Steamboat Baroque.” By that I mean, it rings more of Branson, Missouri than Tombstone, Arizona.

Small hand-painted signage details still abound though, refreshingly free of corporate logos.

On the left of the Red Garter Saloon in this step panoramic is The China Shop, which was originally a print shop years ago. To the right is one of those “Old Timey” photography studios where Western costumes and props are provided for guests to stage historical daguerreotypes in classic sepia tones. When Frontier Trail opened, this was listed as an apothecary shop on maps.

Since I only walked the trail from north to south, beginning with the Cedar Point & Lake Erie Railroad station in Frontier Town and ending here at the Red Garter, I encountered all the designs in these environments from primarily single vistas; I only saw the Town and Trail unravel in one way.

In retrospect, I wish I had taken the extra time to explore in both directions. However, in taking the railroad to Frontier Town rather than walking, I was recreating the original way guests experienced the area (1967) before the trail was added (1971), so I suppose there is some value in that.

Upon exiting Frontier Trail back out to the Millennium Midway, the last structure to the right (west) was truly jarring—a pioneer-style barn / ranch house which is home to a Panda Express Chinese fast food outlet (the building has been home to a variety of fried chicken and BBQ outfits over the years; Panda set up shop in 2007). It’s the kind of poor design thinking you see at Cedar Fair and Six Flags parks, like the Subway sandwiches outlet on the Main Midway in my first post on Cedar Point. I suppose it’s just more bizarre to see Chinese food and the Old West in the blender (sandwiches in a Victorian-inspired Midwestern setting seems like a smaller reach).

But that’s the thing with parks like Cedar Point—you take the design contractions with a grain of salt, knowing, after all, this isn’t Disney and they’re not truly in the theming business to begin with.

Continued in Part 4.

Cedar Point - Part 2: The Final Frontier.

December 18, 2018 by Dave Gottwald

Apart from the numerous Midway areas, the only other cohesively themed “lands” at Cedar Point are the Old West sections, sensibly named Frontier Town and Frontier Trail. Even then, various disparate elements are scattered throughout, and they all seem to be chunks of Disneyland which were beamed here by Scotty on Star Trek.

The Beginnings of Disneyfication

It was only a year or two after Disneyland opened in 1955 when Cedar Point began its great renaissance and started morphing into the “Amazement Park” that it is today. This era from the late 1950s to the mid 1970s was the product of two businessmen, George Roose and Emile Legros. Both were land developers, and once they acquired majority control of Cedar Point their plan was to raze the park and most of its historic structures, clearing the way to built luxury ranch homes with waterfront views of Lake Erie. Predictably there was widespread public outcry, so in June of 1956 Ohio’s governor stated for the record that if the men and their backers tried to close Cedar Point, the State would purchase the land to preserve its operation as a recreational facility. Roose and Emile now needed a new plan.

After purchasing the entire 364-acre, seven mile long peninsula for $350,000, during the 1957 and 1958 seasons these crafty two announced their intentions to transform Cedar Point into—their words—the “Disneyland of the Midwest.” As I detailed in my earlier post, initial changes came in 1959 and 1960 when the Main Midway was realigned with the park entrance, enlarged, and paved. A small scale Monorail ride, the kind common at state fairs, opened in 1959 (it lasted until 1966), and the Von Roll Sky Ride followed in 1961, a year in which over a million dollars had been spent on new attractions and expansions.

The Riverboat Cruises pictured above were clearly a Disneyland derivative, but in some cases Cedar Point also looked to other, newer parks for inspiration. In 1963, the park added the Mill Race (removed in 1993), only the second log flume ride built by Arrow. And where was the first built? At Six Flags Over Texas earlier that very same year, where El Aserradero “The Sawmill” is still operating. Six Flags and Cedar Point were ahead of the log flume trend here—the more elaborately themed famous Calico Log Ride at Knott’s Berry Farm didn’t open until 1969, and Disney didn’t get into the act with their even more elaborate Splash Mountain in 1989.

Not all the new additions were of the themed variety. The Blue Streak (named in honor of a local sports team) was added in 1964, and was the first roller coaster built at the park since the removal of Cyclone (1929–1951). The following season the Space Spiral, a Von Roll gyro tower (a revolving observation tower with a vertical moving platform), was added. Like their gondola rides, these towers were installed at parks all over the country in the 1960s and 70s and a few survive today, from the Sky Cabin at Knott’s Berry Farm to SeaWorld San Diego’s Sky Tower. Some of these towers were built by Von Roll, some by fellow Swiss manufacturer Intamin.

Ridin’ the Rails

When the Frontier Town area opened at the back north edge of the park for the 1967 season, the Cedar Point & Lake Erie Railroad was the only way to get there. It was a personal dream of George Roose to bring an authentic narrow gauge steam railroad to the park (again, aping a key experiential aspect of Disneyland), but his board of directors wouldn’t approve it. To his credit, Roose went rogue, gathered a separate group of investors, and opened his railroad as an independent concession for the 1963 season.

Unlike the Disney parks which feature both custom shop-made locomotives and rolling stock alongside rebuilt equipment, the trains at Cedar Point are all fully restored antiques. By the year Frontier Town opened, the railroad was carrying a million and a half passengers per season operating six coal-burning steam locomotives ; today they run four: the #44 Judy K., #22 Myron H., #4 George R., and #1 G.A. Boeckling.

One clear advantage Disney has is the innovative use of a earthen berm to surround their parks and insulate them from the outside world. A ride on the Disneyland Railroad is an appropriately immersive one because of this berm, and also because of the dense foliage along the route. Here at Cedar Point, it was super weird—nothing but a few bushes and a security fence separating park guests from a service access road and the western shores of Lake Erie.

The other reason the trains at most Disney Magic Kingdom-style parks make for a more immersive ride is that their routes completely encircle their respective properties. All except for the Western River Railroad at Tokyo Disneyland. As I observed years back, their train does not go all the way around the park because with only one stop, a train is considered a “ride” under Japanese law, so it doesn’t have to be regulated like their rail system. Also, the Japanese consider steam trains very “Western” as opposed to American, so it makes perfect sense to only circle the exotic “wilderness” areas of Tokyo Disneyland. The Cedar Point & Lake Erie Railroad functions exactly the same way; it cordons the “Western” themed area off from the rest of the park, and given that this is Ohio, the Old West is indeed an exotic environment.

Just like other examples I’ve seen around the country, the Old West theme is one of the few which can be successfully communicated to large audiences with typography. This CRYSTAL ROCK BOTTLING CO. sign is atop the queue building for the now defunct Shoot the Rapids log flume ride (2010–2015).

The train’s route is well integrated with the various lagoon waters in and around Frontier Town. In the background is the park’s runaway mine train ride, a standard Arrow model.

This is Boneville, a small diorama of settler shacks. Animatronic skeletons were added to this area in the 1990s as part of the park’s October HalloWeekends.

The Frontier Town Railroad Station takes its cues from Disneyland, and from any small town railway depot you’ve ever seen in an old movie. This design is common enough to be sort of the Western version of “Theme Park Gingerbread” Victorian stylings.

The locomotive I arrived on was the #22 Myron H. Narrow gauge trains are interesting; when you’re riding in one of the cars, it seems like a normal size railroad. But then when you see the locomotive and the engineer inside it, the whole thing feels like a toy.

I haven’t seen much evidence of forced perspective here at Cedar Point, but this railing is a good example—it appears to be about two-thirds scale.

Frontier Town area, satellite view. Map data: Ⓒ Google. — *Frontier Town* area, satellite view. Map data: Ⓒ Google.

Frontier(land) Town

George Roose and Emile Legros were clearly not dummies. They wanted to capture the same kinds of middle class families that were Disney’s bread and butter. The questions for Roose must have been, what popular elements would best translate to Cedar Point that were a.) appropriate to the natural setting of the peninsula, b.) appropriate to the long history of the resort, and c.) affordable?

Cedar Point park map showing Frontier Town and Frontier Trail, 1972. — Cedar Point park map showing *Frontier Town* and *Frontier Trail*, 1972.

The Fantasyland elements were clearly out. Castles and elaborately designed dark rides are expensive, and Cedar Point had no intellectual property like animated films to draw upon for subject matter anyway. The Sci-Fi trimmings of Tomorrowland likewise probably sounded both costly and inappropriate for the location. Main Street U.S.A. would be appropriated in bits and pieces for the Main Midway and other areas; that left the Old West of Frontierland and the exotic jungles of Adventureland. Both those latter categories would be employed; for years there were safari attractions with live animals and even a pirate-themed dark ride at Cedar Point. Yet only the Old West theme remains today.

Roose had wanted his narrow gauge railroad so badly he resorted to outside financing to open it in 1963, so it seems like a Frontier Town themed area was the natural way to go. He probably looked at Disneyland and at the other popular theme park destination in Southern California, Knott’s Berry Farm. Six Flags Over Texas had opened in 1961. Which means my impressions of Cedar Point’s Frontier Town felt exactly right—a mix of Disney’s Frontierland, the Calico Ghost Town at Knott’s, and the design of the Western areas of the Six Flags parks I have been to.

The signage varies in quality and authenticity throughout this section of the park. In some instances, such as this at the Emporium shop, the lettering is actually routed wood, which is not something even Disney does all the time. The typefaces are your classic grab bag of custom lettering and commercially available fonts. They’re usually the most obvious choices, like Adobe’s Juniper here.

Just like Hidden Mickeys and other such easter egg references at the Disney parks, the recurring “1870” (the year Cedar Point first opened) I saw on the Main Midway shows up again here in Frontier Town.

Lusty Lil’s Palace Theater is a direct lift of Disneyland’s Golden Horseshoe Saloon and perhaps the even older Calico Saloon at Knott’s Berry Farm. It’s not like Disney or Knott innovated here; they were appropriating a popular 19th century entertainment venue which had already been wrested from any historical roots as an amusement anchor for the kind of tourist Old West town like Dodge City, Kansas or Deadwood, South Dakota which I’d recently been through on my way to Ohio.

Again we see the concept of Baudrillard’s simulacra. Just like Disneyland’s Main Street U.S.A. is not a “simulation” of Marceline, Missouri where Walt Disney spent part of his childhood, Lusty Lil’s Palace Theater is not simulating a historic example of a theater revue house in any given town. Both are simulacra but there is a difference. While Main Street U.S.A. is a Hollywood art director’s half-remembered / half-imagined vision of “small town main street-ness,” the designs here at Cedar Point (coming as they were in 1967) are directly referencing the theme park representations that proceed them. We are at the levels of copies of copies, in which case any sense of original source material becomes completely obscure; the original doesn’t exist anymore.

Baudrillard found all this “problematic” which is just an academic theorist’s way of saying “this stuff is probably driving us insane” but at least in a theme park setting, it’s more charming and puzzling than anything else.

Adjacent to the theater and saloon was a restaurant serving burritos in a cafeteria line setting. The stereotypical wagon wheel chandeliers are to be expected, of course, but I found some surprises inside as well.

It would appear that Cedar Point has an appreciation for its own long history, especially it’s graphic history. Imagine my delight as a designer and typography aficionado—the entire space, floor to ceiling, was covered with vintage signage spanning over a hundred years, easy.

These are not the kind of faux antiques you find at Cost Plus World Market or Restoration Hardware. These are real artifacts. All were once used at Cedar Point to sell popcorn, or ice cream, or indicate where the changing rooms at the bathhouses were.

Here’s an interesting thought: I like theme parks that are clean and well-maintained. But at what point does this attention clash with the perceived historicity of the structures? I’m not sure there’s an answer. The generic nature of the design probably doesn’t help, though. This could be a boot store at an outlet mall outside of Las Vegas, or a fried chicken restaurant just about anywhere.

Conversely, this building is well-maintained, but has natural-looking weathering. I call this “distressed with care” and Disney are masters of it. The bits of rust, the ratty edge of the roof, the irregular contours in the wall planking, the slight water damage to the wood. All of these add to the integrity of the story. The problem with a place like Cedar Point (or any Cedar Fair or Six Flags park) is that you’re not sure if this look is intentional or a result of neglect.

As a turned the corner and continued to walk into the rest of the Frontier Town area, things started to get creepy. My initial thought was, as I said, Scotty had just beamed this stuff in. But the closer I looked, the more it reminded me of The Twilight Zone instead.

These buildings, along with their trimmings and signage, are starting to depart from the Old West and become a much more generic Small Town Americana. Very Main Street U.S.A.

I mean, look at this arcade entrance. Straight out of Disney central casting, so to speak. Complete with Independence Day bunting (though I was visiting in the middle of July). The signage is definitely newer, as it employs the very same Letterhead Font Foundry type which Disney started using about ten years ago.

This Coke sign really irks me. I’m fine with advertisements and product placement within themed environments if they are done subtly, with class, and are appropriate to the setting (time and place) of the design. The Coca-Cola script is a moderate pass here (I could see a building that old having Coke signage on it at the turn of the century), but the “freestyle” tagline in contemporary sans serif ruins it for me.

Adjacent is a General Store / Trading Post building which—given its length and orientation—really seems like it used to be shooting gallery attraction (again, something Knott’s Berry Farm and Disneyland had featured prior). This pioneer fort design of roughly hewn logs feels more like Knott’s to me.

Here’s a trope which you’ll find everywhere from fast food chains to theme parks to the state and county fair—when feeding people in the Old West, do it in a setting in which you’d feed livestock. Here the queue for ordering is fenced to resemble the kind of perimeter enclosure commonly attached to a barn.

Numerous quick eatery stands around this area share the same design, and the same cute names, like “The Roundup.”

The Cedar Creek Mine Ride was the third such Arrow coaster ever built, after the model debuted at Six Flags Over Texas and Over Georgia. Several of these are still in operation around the country. Based on the innovative work the company executed for Disneyland’s Matterhorn Bobsleds in 1959 (the first roller coaster to feature tubular steel track), this Arrow model was wildly popular by the late 1960s and eventually reached a thematic ‘peak’ with the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad at Disneyland and subsequently at other Disney parks.

Cedar Point’s coaster is somewhat more unique than other similar Arrow models as it has a steel tubular track atop a wooden frame structure. To my eye this adds to the design and feels more “authentically Old West” despite the fact that there is no other theming, no rockwork, no elaborate water features, etc. The rickety old wood skeleton reminds of a railway trestle bridge and looks like it might collapse at any moment. Here very little actually goes a long way.

The Cedar Fair company is efficient at recycling material; having retrofitted, remodeled, or otherwise repurposed countless buildings on the peninsula since the 19th century. Here the original queue building for the White Water Landing log flume ride (1982–2005) has been refashioned into a queue / ride photo / retail space for the Maverick roller coaster which opened in 2007.

It’s a subtle touch, but one I really appreciated; if you look carefully on the corrugated metal roof you can see the stylish (and very 1982-esque Western) original hand-painted logo for White Water Landing. They could have removed it, but they didn’t, and this is the kind of ‘extinct attraction tribute’ I usually only see at Disney parks.

Another device commonly used extensively—but not exclusively—in Old West settings are fictional businesses. There is a mythology of The Proprietor which means that many buildings with functional amusement purposes (queue buildings for rides, for example) take on the persona of a wood products company.

Snake River Falls is a shoot-the-chutes of the classic variety, but they’ve really taken care with the theming. Along with the signage on the queue building suggesting that lumber is being processed, the industrial features are carried through the ride experience and environs. It looks, sounds, smells, and feels right.

Town Square(d)

My descent into The Twilight Zone reached its most extreme at Village Square, which is not a separate land or themed area, but considered part of Frontier Town. Except that it’s totally not, design-speaking. Wait, is that the courthouse from Back to the Future? Nope, no clock. But the Town Hall Museum features the very same Colonial Georgian / Federal-style architecture which has no place on the Western Frontier.

Frontier Town during the 2018 season. Underlay map data: Ⓒ Google. — *Frontier Town* during the 2018 season. Underlay map data: Ⓒ Google.

Village Square was at the heart of a 1969 expansion of Frontier Town which included the Cedar Creek Mine Ride as well as other attractions. While I was visiting the park, the Mean Streak wooden roller coaster was being transformed into a steel/wood hybrid of the I-Box variety, and reopened as Steel Vengeance for the 2018 season.

I do want to commend Cedar Point for this museum. It was an absolute treasure trove for a park guest like myself doing research. There are several coaster models commissioned from famed coaster miniature craftsman John A. Hunt. This is his model of the Blue Streak (1964).

And here is Hunt’s model of the original Mean Streak (1991–2016). This museum was a real treat overall, from these models to vintage park maps, antique photographs, and tons of ephemera from the park’s long history.

Here the park again demonstrates a talent for reusing structures. This sort of half-Georgian Federal / half-Old West restrooms building was actually the Frontier Town station for the Frontier Lift Von Roll gondola (1968–1985). You can clearly see the access ramps on either side, and the symmetry of the windows suggest the openings where the gondolas would come and go. I’m not sure about the clock, though. Maybe they wanted to make up for the one missing on their Back to the Future courthouse-esue Town Hall Museum?

Again, half-Georgian Federal / half-Old West architecture, with a bit of plantation style thrown in.

The Antique Cars of the Village Square Auto Livery were also added in 1969 and offer the same driving experience as the Cadillac Cars off the Main Midway. Here the design is full-on Georgian. For a moment, I thought I was back at Greenfield Village.

It’s the same old setup as the original Autopia at Disneyland, complete with the guide rail to make sure younger drivers don’t stray from the road. I do think it’s rather charming that Cedar Point is so literal with their attraction names, though. Cadillac Cars. Antique Cars. Any questions?

This is odd. Antique advertisements of a somewhat appropriate vintage for the automobiles, but with the wood type from the Emporium reproduced (unbelievably). And that Next to Train Station wavy type is something else indeed. But these touches do add to the experience of driving in the 1910s.

This grouping reminds of the thematic pockets I saw out on the Main Midway. The park guest in me goes “neat” but the designer in me goes “meh.”

However, I did stop to admire this beautiful, router-cut wood type on a hand-painted sign shingle. Again, as with Disney, Letterhead Fonts are used, so this graphic treatment is very recent.

The Engine Company No. 3 brick firehouse building is a beautiful piece of design on its own, but in the company of the rest of the mismash in this part of Frontier Town, not so much. I don’t know what the opposite of Gestalt Theory would be, but this is kind of what I mean—the whole is less than the sum of the parts, and each individual element actually detracts.

I think trying to incorporate “town square” and “main street” aspects of the Disneyland experience (not to mention the Colonial Georgian / Federal-style architecture) was a mistake at Cedar Point’s Frontier Town. Fortunately the Frontier Trail area proved to be far more cohesive.

Continued in Part 3.

Cedar Point - Part 1: From Pleasure Beach to Amusement Park.

December 04, 2018 by Dave Gottwald

The second leg of my thematic travels during the summer of 2017 began at the famed Cedar Point on the shores of Lake Erie in Sandusky, Ohio. I’d wanted to visit this “Rollercoaster Capital of the World” (a title now awarded to Six Flags Magic Mountain, which has nineteen coasters; Cedar Point has seventeen) since I saw pictures of its famous rides in a magazine when I was in the third or fourth grade. So even though my interest is now academic with regards to the park’s history and its design—obviously, I was going to ride all the rides.

Cedar Point, satellite view. Click for link. Map data: Ⓒ Google.

To really appreciate The Point you have to see it from the air, and there are numerous opportunities to do so; atop a coaster lift hill, drop ride, or aerial swing ride. The peninsula it sits on is a long narrow finger jutting out into Lake Erie, accessed today by automobile on a causeway from the mainland built in 1957.

Cedar Point is the flagship of the now quite large Cedar Fair company which owns eleven other amusement and theme parks across the United States and Canada, in addition to waterparks and hotels. One aspect all these parks have in common are ridiculously hyperbolic guide maps. All such maps, even Disney’s, distort the scale and proportion of the landscape, but for some reason the ‘playful’ style of Cedar Fair maps annoys me. This look was introduced in the late 90s (the first such map was for the 1997 season, but even then it showed more restraint than more recent versions). Cedar Fairs’ maps are even worse that the Six Flags parks, and that’s saying something.

In studying thematic design and visiting theme parks all over the world, I’ve seen many, many guide maps. The best are tasteful in their fantasy-like depictions, illustrated with care, easy to read and make sense of, and thus charming objets d'art in themselves. As you’ll see below and in future posts, some of best of these are from Cedar Point’s own rich visual history—and they also provide documentation for the intentions of the park’s planners and the ways they wish their property to be viewed by the public. I mention this because especially with regards to how Cedar Point has responded to the popularity of the Disney Model, guide maps are snapshots that chart an evolution in both placemaking design as well as marketing.

The Queen of American Watering Places

Cedar Point opened in 1870 and is thus the second oldest continuously operating amusement park in the United States (Connecticut’s Lake Compounce has been open since 1846). The park has traditionally been known as “The Queen of American Watering Places” (and if you’re interested in an excellent visual history of Cedar Point, there’s a book that goes by that very title). The text on this State of Ohio Historical marker (installed in 2001) as you enter the main Midway area is a bit hard to read in this small photo, so here it is:

Cedar Point became a popular beach resort in the late 1870s, when visitors traveled to the peninsula by steamboat from Sandusky. The Grand Pavilion (1888), the oldest building in the park, dates from this era. Promoter George Boeckling formed the Cedar Point Pleasure Resort Company in 1897 and vastly expanded the resort’s attractions. During the first decade of the 1900s, he built the lagoons, an amusement circle, and several hotels, including the landmark Breakers in 1905. The Coliseum, opened in 1906, became the centerpiece of the park and hosted many of the famous big bands through the Depression and World War II years. In the late 1950s, Cedar Point began its transformation into a modern amusement park.

That closing sentence is very telling. Disneyland played a strong motivator in changing the nature of American amusement places (indeed, popular destinations around the world) and Cedar Point began to add comparable attractions shortly after Walt’s dream opened. In the late 1960s and early 70s, this influence contributed to Cedar Point adding entire themed areas, as well as retrofitting existing buildings to tighten their visual motifs, and reorganizing offerings into “lands.”

Although it’s a long scroll, the following promotional piece from the first decade of the twentieth century (the Boeckling era) is worth it—it’s a perfect distillation of how the park saw itself during those times: a beachfront playground for the relatively well-to-do.

Some structures from this era, such as The Coliseum, still exist at Cedar Point in one form or another. But its status as a waterside resort amid natural splendour for the upper classes would evolve over the coming decades into a day trip for thrill-seeking masses.

The beginning of this transformation was the addition of rides. Here, before their introduction, the early midway structures are well compared alongside the original Hotel Breakers; note that the far west side of the peninsula is entirely undeveloped.

Into the 1910s and 20s, Cedar Point began to add the types of traditional wooden roller coasters that were popular at amusement piers like Coney Island. The vantage here of midway crowds along the shores of Lake Erie looks very much like the classic boardwalks found in New Jersey, New York, and at various spots along the New England coast during the first half of the twentieth century.

The amount of foliage has been somewhat embellished here, almost like the stylized approach used on today’s theme park guide maps—although during this time there were large parts of the peninsula which were undeveloped. The original midway attractions and boardwalk were roughly in the center portion of the land.

Midway Mania

As you enter Cedar Point today, you line up directly with the primary pedestrian artery, Main Midway.

Main Midway area, satellite view. Map data: Ⓒ Google. — *Main Midway* area, satellite view. Map data: Ⓒ Google.

The park is a collection of “lands” in a sense, but this appears to be a loose attempt to mimic the Disneyland model of spatial organization—all but two of them are “Midways” of some kind: Main Midway, Lakeside Midway, Gemini Midway, and Millenium Midway.

The Midway Plaisance as drawn by cartographer Hermann Heinze in 1892 for a souvenir map of the exposition. Library of Congress. — The Midway Plaisance as drawn by cartographer Hermann Heinze in 1892 for a souvenir map of the exposition. *Library of Congress*.

The 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago on the waters of Lake Michigan greatly affected American architecture in the twentieth century, American amusement parks and boardwalk piers, and indeed the entire genre of thematic design.

It’s at this exposition where the concept of (and term for) the Midway originated, in the Midway Plaisance. Today the word means any long boulevard at an amusement park, state fair, or exposition where rides, games, food and beverages, and other entertainments are found.

Few parks in the world still feature a Von Roll gondola ride, so I was very excited to spend some time on Cedar Point’s Sky Ride (several trips in fact). Von Roll is a Swiss industrial firm which once manufactured over a hundred ‘Type 101’ gondola rides based on existing ski lift technology. The first such ride installed in the United States was at Disneyland in 1956 (closed in 1994) and after many were demolished in the 1980s and 90s due to safety concerns, operational costs, and low ridership, today only eleven of these gondolas are left operating in the country, and not that many more around the world.

The Sky Ride opened for the 1961 season, and only six years later was carrying over 1.5 million passengers per summer. Cedar Point used to feature two separate Von Roll 101s—this one spanning the Main Midway and another which opened in 1968 that transported guests back to the Frontier Town area at the far back edge of the park. When that Frontier Lift closed in 1985, its cars were transferred to the midway Sky Ride and eventually repainted.

Owing to their rarity and to a nostalgia for childhood rides, there are some very serious fans of these Von Roll gondolas. A guy even built a miniature one in his backyard once. Actually, he’s built more than one at all kinds of scales.

For the design researcher, it’s terrific to be able to experience structures from a bird’s eye view. There are many structures along this midway which are difficult to date according to the available sources, but the Disneyland-esque style of some of them makes me think the 1960s and early 70s based on other changes that occured at Cedar Point during that time.

As I’ve seen elsewhere around the country, the Old West is a common motif in American thematic design. Here the structures are plopped down without context, much like the relocated structures at Greenfield Village at the Henry Ford.

The contrast is even more striking here on Cedar Point’s Main Midway, as the surfacescape is simply modern concrete. This “block” of Old West reminds of the concept of the pocket universe as used in comic book stories—taken in context, these structures are almost “pocket theming.”

One thing that’s cool about Cedar Point is that there are several restored historic buildings on the property. The Coliseum pictured here was originally built in 1906, and at that time more than 10,000 people could assemble under its roof. In its time the building has housed restaurants, beer gardens, and a skating rink. Beginning in the 1960s it has served as a pinball and video game gallery, a role the first floor of The Coliseum plays to this day.

The exterior spans 300 feet by 150 feet, and the interior of The Coliseum has been remodeled many times, most notably during 1939 when the second floor ballroom was redone in the Art Deco style which was so popular at the time. Today this ballroom is only open a few times a year for private events. The Coliseum also houses various administrative offices.

1935 map of amusements over a current satellite image. Underlay map data: Ⓒ Google.

Using the footprint of The Coliseum as a registration point, I was able to overlay a 1935 map from Cedar Point: the Queen of American Watering Places to compare the layout of the various amusements to the present. During that era two roller coasters named High Frolics (east, at the top) and Leap the Dips (west, below) stretched out towards what is now the main park entrance and parking lot.

The Main Midway today is actually perpendicular to how the park was orientated before World War II, as shown in the both the map overlay and the vintage postcards above.

Original orientation. Underlay map data: Ⓒ Google.

The original ‘spine’ of pedestrian access ran roughly west to east, as that’s where visitors disembarked ferry boats which came from the mainland.

Current Main Midway. Underlay map data: Ⓒ Google. — Current *Main Midway*. Underlay map data: Ⓒ Google.

Present access runs roughly south to north, as most visitors now arrive by automobile from the causeway (completed in 1957, linked to State Route 2 two years later) and park in the main parking lot. This new Main Midway was cleared and enlarged in 1959 and paved in 1960.

Another historic structure on the Main Midway is the Pagoda Gift Shop. It was built during the Boeckling era sometime between 1907 and 1914 (one of several such pagodas, according to some accounts) and once served as post office, rental lockers, and (later) restrooms.

In the 1960s, Ellie Roose—wife of land developer George Roose, who had bought Cedar Point with his partner Emile Legros in 1956—converted the somewhat tacky “pop-Asian” temple to the park’s first major souvenir pavillion.

The Pagoda still serves as Cedar Point’s most well-known gift shop today. The Wonton lettering (also called “chopstick” or “chop suey” type) definitely dates this signage to the 1960s.

Today, the design of The Pagoda is more than tacky; some might call the architecture and the signage in particular offensive (or the softer accusation, “culturally insensitive”). There’s a long tradition of this kind of stuff over the past 150 years, going back to the presentation of non-Western cultures as exotic ‘product’ at World’s Fairs and Expositions—but it does beg the question, why does Panda Express, for example, still get a pass?

In any case, the question of whether thematic design can be racist is a notion I’ll return to in future posts as I look at other parks.

One style that no one seems to have a problem with is the generic Victorian look which I’ve seen elsewhere on my travels; I call it “Theme Park Gingerbread.” Unfortunately, the obnoxious SUBWAY sign is a very Six Flags / Cedar Fair approach to corporate sponsors and vendors—this is something you won’t find at a Disney park, at least not today.

Walt Disney was indeed once desperate for paying “participants” to provide much-needed capital to open his park (and provide the very attractions to populate Tomorrowland), so in the early days signage was more garish. These days, vendors like Starbucks sport signage and graphics that are period-accurate and highly detailed.

But perhaps I spoke too soon, because right next door to the Subway outlet is a classy, historic-looking, hand painted Cadillac sign for a motor car attraction.

The Sky Ride gondola was again very useful for examining the interconnected nature of the various themed facades. The collaged nature is tied to the actual development of small town Main Streets across the country, yet the contemporary nature of their common roofs and back of house areas was begun at Disneyland in 1955.

Things get even more mixed up, or amalgamated in my phrase, elsewhere along the midway. The Jack Aldrich Theatre appears to be from a nondescript small town, maybe Midwestern, maybe Old Western. Originally named the Centennial Theater, in 2006 it was renamed in tribute to Jack Aldrich, the father of the modern era of live entertainment at Cedar Point. In the Disney fashion, the street numbers also have meaning; Cedar Point opened in 1870.

This is a step panoramic that I assembled of this particular “block” on the west side of the midway. There’s some French chateau rooflines which then connect to a New Orleans French Quarter Creole townhouse, and then connect to the small town theater. You won’t find a block like this anywhere in the United States except at a theme park—architectural amalgamation beyond imagination.

Some areas lack not only this sort of conflict, but also any design sense at all. These midway games feel like an afterthought.

On the return trip towards the main entrance gondola station, you can see two distinct thematic croppings to the left and the right; a farmhouse and some kind of warehouse / farmer’s market space. I’ll elaborate on this “pocket theming” in a future post.

But it’s not all Six Flags garish grossness, and that’s due to the number of historic structures on the park grounds. This step panoramic depicts the west-facing portion of the The Grand Pavilion (1888), now part of the Cedar Point Convention Center. By the late 1960s it appears to have been rebuilt in the Georgian Colonial style seen today.

Hotel Breakers

The Bay Shore Hotel (1899) was the first, and the fifty-five rooms of the White House were next (1901), which were eventually all absorbed by the larger Cedars Hotel (1915). But the grandest was surely the Hotel Breakers, which opened in June of 1905 and was perhaps Broeckling’s greatest structural triumph at Cedar Point. Here were six hundred rooms which, by resort standards of the early twentieth century, were pure luxury; most had running (hot) water, and some even had private baths.

The hotel faces the east shores of Lake Erie, and for its time was quite extravagant. Services included the usual barber, beautician, and manicurist; also a doctor, stenographer, and tailor. Concessions were also state of the art—not just a newsstand and souvenir stand, but also an ice cream parlor and even photographic dark room.

By the Roaring Twenties a wing had been added to both the north and the south.

The hotel has undergone numerous renovations and expansions over the decades, and its grandeur still impresses (even if hot running water is no big deal these days). The design of the Breakers is very typical of resorts of the Victorian era built all along the Eastern United States (especially seaside in places like Atlantic City and South Florida). Notable examples in great condition today are the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, and the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego, California.

The central rotunda is the heart of the hotel, and very much of style of the times in which it was constructed. I’ve read that President William Taft took his dinner here in 1913.

I have to commend the Cedar Fair organization for the incredible shape that they keep this hotel in. Others from the same era have fallen into disrepair and out of landmark status. Unfortunately, these renovations have not come without a cost; more recent work had been extensive enough to cost the Hotel Breakers its designated status with the National Register of Historic Places in 2001.

When Cedar Fair has added on to the complex, they have done their best to keep the architecture and associated trimmings at least ‘feeling’ authentic. These are the 300 rooms of the $10 million Breakers East wing addition which opened for the 1995 season.

At a glance, it works. And really, that’s what theming is all about. A trained eye can definitely spot the “nineties-ness” of the construction and especially the materials usage.

The resort area also attempts to keep the setting of pre-World War II “Queen of American Watering Places” intact via graphics and signage. Although I can’t claim this is a great example of period-accurate graphic design, they’re at least trying.

This billboard from just inside Cedar Point’s side entrance which connects to the Hotel Breakers resort property is much, much better. The illustration style and color pallete are correct for the early 1900s, and even the typeface choices are appropriate (the work of the Letterhead Font Foundry, which Disney also employs throughout their parks).

Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa, 2007. — *Disney's Grand Floridian Resort & Spa*, 2007.

The Disney Version

As I wandered around the Hotel Breakers and back into the Cedar Point park proper, I was reminded of this genre of Victorian era resort which Disney has replicated all over the world (some call it “Micktorian”).

The first was the Grand Floridian (1988) which was designed largely in-house by the company’s imagineers and then executed by the firm Wimberly, Allison, Tong & Goo. It’s probably the most “authentic” representation of this resort style, based on the aforementioned Mount Washington Hotel and Hotel del Coronado, with inspiration also taken from the (now sadly demolished) Belleview-Biltmore Hotel in Belleair, Florida.

Disneyland Paris Hotel, 2008. — *Disneyland Paris Hotel*, 2008.

The second iteration of the Disney Victorian Grand style is the Disneyland Paris Hotel (1992). Again, the design leadership was in-house, in this case Wing Chao (Executive Vice-President, Master Planning, Architecture, and Design) and imagineer Tony Baxter, and again execution was by the Wimberly, Allison, Tong & Goo.

This hotel is a much more fanciful, storybook interpretation of the Victorian style, owing to the fact that it serves as the entrance to Disneyland Paris and thus needed to visually rhyme with both the Main Street U.S.A. and the Sleeping Beauty’s Castle of that park. In addition, the hotel is painted in bright pink and red hues which are far more saturated than even Disney usually dares attempt (in order to contrast the oft-dreary gray French skies).

Hong Kong Disneyland Hotel, 2008. — *Hong Kong Disneyland Hotel*, 2008.

The third “Micktorian” opened at Hong Kong Disneyland in September of 2005 along with that park. Here Disney returned to the more traditional stylings of the Grand Floridian with the Hong Kong Disneyland Hotel, and set as it is among verdant and dense jungle Southeast Asian foliage, the design takes on a pointedly Anglo-Colonial vibe. Oddly, Disney consulted extensively with their Chinese partners on the Hong Kong resort project (everything at the resort was even planned according to feng shui principles), so if this is what was designed and built, it’s what the Chinese pointedly requested.

The most recent iteration of this design is the Tokyo Disneyland Hotel (2008). In order to harmonize with that park’s entrance plaza and World Bazaar, again (as in Paris) the most fantastical Victorian elements were dialed up, and the color scheme was shifted to gold and blue (which, I think, makes the hotel look more French than Victorian).

The Hotel Breakers at Cedar Point is the genuine article, instead of the Disney Version; these stylized copies after copies. It’s ironic that what struck me as the best thematic design on my first day at the park wasn’t theming at all—it was just a really old hotel with a nice coat of paint. Here, the real seemed fake.

Continued in Part 2.

Greenfield Village - Part 2: Amalgamation.

November 17, 2018 by Dave Gottwald

If you’re a history buff, Greenfield Village is somewhat confusing. Like several other places I’ve passed through during my travels, there is a layering going on; reality, history, fantasy, re-creation, reconstruction, restoration all blend together with no discernable boundaries.

Amalgamated Spaces

I’ve come to call these amalgamated spaces. The 1890s-vintage building pictured above caught Henry Ford’s eye like so many other shops, barns, school houses, and churches—so he bought it and just plopped it down in his Village. It’s the the Cohen Millinery shop and it was moved from 444 Baker Street in Detroit; an urban structure that has been, for lack of a better term, ruralized.

Moved and restored? Rebuilt? Or just designed to look old?

You have to look carefully, and in some cases ask the staff (the guidebook is unclear) which are which. Henry Ford was essentially a hoarder of settings and environments, and much of Greenfield Village is like a playground where he deposited (and sometimes shuffled around) buildings he had accumulated, along with some he had built anew. Some of these structures and settings were personally important—his childhood home, or school, or church—and some were ideologically valuable to Ford, like Edison’s laboratory.

The Wright Cycle Co. building moved from Dayton, Ohio.

Or the Wright Brothers home and bicycle shop. As with Thomas Edison, Henry Ford was enamored of any American (man) whom he considered a.) self-made and b.) an innovator or entrepreneur. In other words, his heroes were those who reminded him of his own conception of himself; hardworking, industrious, intelligent, and something of a maverick.

Sarah Jordan Boarding House moved from Menlo Park, New Jersey.

Even structures merely adjacent to Edison’s legacy were crated up and moved to the Village. More than a dozen employees at Menlo Park, unmarried men, lived in this boarding house. As such it was one of the first three residential structures in the country to be wired for electricity in 1879. The Henry Ford Official Guidebook proudly states that the house was reconstructed at the same distance from the Menlo Park laboratory complex re-creation as it had sat at the actual location in New Jersey.

Imported slate at Liberty Square, The Magic Kingdom, Walt Disney World, 2007.

This is something I saw repeatedly at Greenfield Village, and it’s the kind of creative chicanery Disney does at their parks; the “real fake,” in which inconsequential details are replicated with great attention to complete a presentation or environment that is, on the whole, inauthentic. For example, again to reference Liberty Square at the Magic Kingdom, Disney spared no expense in importing slate from a quarry near Williamsburg, Virginia. There are also rocks from the Potomac River and from a quarry some six miles away from where General George Washington crossed the Delaware. Does anyone notice? Probably not, but Disney does things like this anyway, to establish a “real fake.”

And then there are bizarre amalgams which defy any attempt at categorization. This building touts the year 1886 on its facade, but was constructed at Greenfield Village in 1944, it’s home to a Jumbo dynamo which Edison had originally installed at the company’s first commercial lighting station in Manhattan in 1882, and is called “Station A” (from which it takes its architectural inspiration) yet includes equipment from both A and B. The Henry Ford Official Guidebook calls the structure “something of a hybrid” which I’m not sure is an understatement or an overstatement.

Here is one of the studio workshops of the Liberty Craftworks area. The Weaving Shop is a converted 1840s cotton gin mill which was brought from Georgia and reconstructed at the Village. Ford’s desire to transport buildings from locations far and wide and then arrange them as he saw fit despite their disparate origins gives Greenfield Village a complete lack of context—or perhaps it’s a hyper-contextuality; it’s just “American History-ness.”

Costumed historical reenactors walk down Main Street.

A pleasant experiential aspect of the Village is the presence of Henry Ford museum staff wandering around in period costumes, presenting themselves in character. This is something that became very popular in the 1960s and 1970s, and has roots in earlier historical displays at World’s Fairs. Many outdoor historical parks and museums today—of which Greenfield Village and Colonial Williamsburg are only the most visible—employ this practice.

Sometimes the role of the reenactors is very specific, and a vital part of educating the public about certain issues. The Susquehanna House from the Tidewater region of Maryland was probably built before 1820 and was moved by Henry Ford to Greenfield in 1942. Along with slave quarters elsewhere on the property, the house represents the Antebellum South at the Village. It was closed for some years while how to update its interpretation was considered. When it reopened in 1988, reenactors answered questions about the house and told the truth about the slaves who had once built it and worked the Maryland plantation it once sat on.

Amalgamated Time

So spaces are mixed up all over the place, whether they be moved, re-created, or newly built. But time is also amalgamated at Greenfield Village. It’s odd enough that this building comes from the Cheapside thoroughfare in London, England; even odder still that the business occupied it from 1846 until 1929. The problem, of course, is that Henry Ford bought and collected and moved to the Village whatever he fancied. His lifelong fascination with clocks and watches led him to save the clockwork and much of the facade of the Sir John Bennett Shop. Otherwise it doesn’t belong on Main Street in Greenfield at all; not in place, and not in time. Put another way, something belongs in Greenfield Village only if Henry Ford thought it should. Jessie Swigger notes in History Is Bunk that

…the design and appearance of the village reflected Ford’s personal understanding of what constituted historical authenticity. In some cases it was re-creating original buildings down to the last detail (as with the replica of Independence Hall facade); in others it was adherence to an idea of the past or historical generalities.

In the case of the Sir John Bennett Shop, Ford wanted it for the clockworks, but he insisted it not harm the scale of his Main Street. The building was originally five stories tall; Ford had his draftsman, Edward Cutler, chop it down to two.

Grimm Jewelry Store (1885) moved from 613 Michigan Avenue in Detroit.

Only a few yards to the left sits another building that only exists at the Village because of Ford’s interest in watches and clocks (he bought parts there when he was an engineer working for Edison). The Grimm Jewelry Store and other storefronts from Detroit represent industrialization and urbanism in the final years of the 1800s, yet here they are on a Main Street of a very small mid-nineteenth century farming community. It’s even odder that these city buildings are cleaved from their neighbors; there are no buildings on either side of any relocated storefront, so they feel not unlike massive tombs in a graveyard.

In the background we have a carousel (part of the 1974 Suwanee Park expansion) which is supposed to represent the late 1800s or perhaps the turn of the century. But based on the illustration and lettering styles, these broadsides look to be from the 1910s, 20s, and 30s.

Cotswold Cottage moved from southwestern England.

Here’s a particularly ancient standout—a limestone cottage from Chedworth, Gloucestershire built in the early seventeenth century. That’s right, the 1600s. Ford bought it and had it reassembled at Greenfield because he felt it represented the lives of American ancestors before the settled in the New World, even though (as the Henry Ford Official Guidebook concedes) ”most Americans did not actually come from the Cotswold region.”

Replica of Edison's Menlo Park laboratory.

The “real fake” is embodied in the Menlo Park complex, along with both amalgamated place and time. The staff boast of the authenticity of the wood used to hew the floorboards, and the size of the various glass bottles on shelves, nothing that “The Wizard” himself approved of the re-creation. The chair in the center of the room, however, represents the opening ceremonies of 1929, not electric lighting’s creation fifty years prior. Edison sat in that very chair to reenact the illuminating of his incandescent bulb, and immediately after it was nailed to the floor.

Give Me Liberty and Give Me Lunch

But not everything is a jumble of time and place here. Sometimes they take the effort to really dial in and deliver a top-notch thematic experience. An absolute highlight of both my 2017 and 2018 visit to Greenfield Village was having lunch at the Eagle Tavern. Here time stands still in the mid-nineteenth century; there is no electric lighting, no gas heating, and no refrigeration. Food is prepared as it was in the 1850s.

The Tavern was moved to the Village from Clinton, Michigan (about fifty-some miles from Detroit) after Ford bought it in 1927. The structure dates to 1831–32. The thematic dining experience was added in 1982; curiously EPCOT Center opened at Walt Disney World that year, featuring themed fine dining in its World Showcase area from various countries.

The small details at Greenfield Village, such as this hand painted shingle sign, really make the experience. After all, what would be the point of contemporary printing if they’ve gone to the trouble to deny patrons electricity once inside?

Servers at the Eagle Tavern did their very best to stay in character, speaking with an odd but identifiable American regional accent, somewhat stilted diction, and occasional obscure vocabulary (the kind of word or phrase you can discern, but is not in common use today).

Eagle Tavern Bill of Fare. Click to enlarge and read the tavern’s history. — Eagle Tavern *Bill of Fare*. Click to enlarge and read the tavern’s history.

I don’t think I’ve ever had a fresher meal. Ever. Fricassee (a kind of flat noodle in a thick white sauce) of chicken with roast beef and gravy, potatoes, and fresh seasonal vegetables (all from the working farms on the Village property). Salt and pepper were not in shakers, but had been ground with a mortar and pestle. The butter was churned at the Village, and kept cool in an icebox. The butter and muffins were baked that day. And my favorite touch? True to the period, there were no straws in our drinks—they were instead straight, hollow pieces of macaroni.

A Model Experience

Probably the most unusual structure at the village is the 1/4 scale replica of the original Ford Motor factory on Mack Avenue in Detroit, which was added to Greenfield Village in 1945. Unlike Disney's use of forced perspective, this building is literally "shrunk" by a quarter. The factory sits right next to where visitors queue up to take a ride in its product.

I’ll admit it—riding in a restored, antique Ford was right at the top of my list for Greenfield Village, and I was able to do it both times I visited. It’s the closest thing, besides the Weiser Railroad, to an amusement park ride or theme park “attraction” on the property.

As always, passengers like to wave at passersby.

The Model T ride is extremely ironic, actually, because Henry Ford’s intention in the development of his Greenfield Village was to showcase American farm and small town life before industrialization—and more pointedly—before the proliferation of the automobile. Ford innovations were on display inside the main museum building of the Edison Institute from day one but cars were verboten on Village property itself until well after Ford’s death.

For the most part, as you’re being driven around, waving at other antique automobiles, busses, and trolleys (all from approximately the same era) it’s a cohesive experience. Despite the architectural leaps from Europe to the United States and spanning centuries of building styles, the caravan of automobiles making their way through Greenfield Village keep you grounded roughly in 1920s and 30s America.

And then I saw the soldiers.

Union troop reenactors on the battlefield after their tactics demonstration.

A Civil War in the Twentieth Century

As it turns out, during my second visit to Greenfield this blend of time periods without clearly defined edges was further (and bizarrely) compounded by the annual Memorial Day Weekend Civil War Remembrance festivities. My colleague Greg and I lucked into this time-warp, as we had no idea it was going on the day we had scheduled to tour the Village.

I can't describe what it was like to walk along Union (called "Federals") and Confederate (known as "Rebels") troop encampments while restored Model T automobiles cruised by. My thoughts ran immediately to Disneyland, of course, where you can see the rocket ships of Tomorrowland from Main Street U.S.A.

An extensive list of the weekend's activities.

But at least at that park there is a kind of fantastical disconnect. Here at Greenfield Village, the clashing time periods are presented in vivid detail—authenticities sparring for attention. The Civil War reenactors are perfect, right down to their brass buttons and razor-sharp bayonets. These men, women, and yes, even children stay in character as you converse with them while they cook food and boil coffee over open fires. Their tents are real, and so are all the trappings of hearth and home. So too are the antique Fords with the sounds and smells of their engines. The realism goes beyond mere patina; it's visceral and multi-sensory.

At first this historical soup struck me as a kind of temporal cognitive dissonance. But as the day wore on, it sort of washed over me. In a sense the Civil War and the Model Ts were just a more pronounced extension of Henry Ford's entire vision for Greenfield Village—imaginary, amalgamated spaces of amalgamated time.

My colleague and I fight over the use of our time machine on May 26, 2018.

Just like Walt Disney and Ward Kimball, Greg and I couldn't resist posing for an authentic tintype. Our wet-plate photographer, Robert Beech, suggested a pose of 'fisticuffs.' We had to hold the pose for a full eight seconds to expose the film. Our concessions to period authenticity included tucking in shirts and matting down hair. I also turned my t-shirt inside-out, as a tintype is actually a reverse image of the original pose, so the text would have been mirrored.

As we took turns holding the developed, dried tintype, I noted a strange sensation. The material reality of the chemicals, the glass; the unmistakable reality of the specks and dirts and imperfections in the print, all this presented a kind of time travel. Our fisticuffs photograph actually looked and felt like it had been taken in the 1890s. In a sense, it was.

Greenfield Village - Part 1: Brave Old World.

November 11, 2018 by Dave Gottwald

The following observations and photos are culled from two separate visits to The Henry Ford museum complex in Dearborn, Michigan. My first visit was on July 15, 2017 and the majority of the photos featured in this post are from that day. Most recently I visited again on May 26, 2018 with my colleague Greg Turner-Rahman.

"History is more or less bunk." — Henry Ford, 1916

Industrialist Henry Ford—founder of the Ford Motor Company and perfector and popularizer of the mass production assembly line—was also an obsessive collector, and by the late 1920s he had amassed perhaps the largest collection of Americana in the country. Ford was fascinated by two notions; first, the preservation of ordinary, useful objects such as machinery and household goods, and second, an appreciation for pre-industrial times (quite ironic, given his most profitable efforts to hasten that very industrialization). Most of Ford’s vast accumulation of objects were deposited in a former tractor assembly warehouse while he planned for a larger display project.

The resultant museum was designed by Robert O. Derrick and resembled Independence Hall in Philadelphia; dedicated in 1929, it opened to the public in 1933, and was mostly built out by the 1940s. The museum was initially called the Edison Institute in tribute to Ford’s friend and mentor Thomas A. Edison (the 1929 dedication marked the 50th anniversary of Edison's electric light).

Greenfield Village, satellite view. Click for link. Map data: Ⓒ Google.

Although interesting on its own, the purpose of my two visits was the adjacent Greenfield Village property, an outdoor living history museum noted by the National Register of Historic Places for being a model for subsequent types of museums (along with Colonial Williamsburg which was restored and re-created with funding from John D. Rockefeller at roughly the same time). At its time of opening, a re-creation of Edison’s Menlo Park Laboratory Complex was a key highlight of the Village experience.

Souvenir map of the Greenfield Village property, 1951. The David Rumsey Map Collection. — Souvenir map of the Greenfield Village property, 1951. *The David Rumsey Map Collection*.

In History Is Bunk: Assembling the Past at Henry Ford's Greenfield Village, Jessie Swigger offers perhaps the best description of the park and its intentions. Calling it "an imagined place" she notes that it was named after the township where Henry Ford's wife was born, and that the

village was constructed in Dearborn, just a few miles from the farmhouse where [Ford] grew up and a short drive from downtown Detroit. Only a few of the buildings represented local history, however; several were moved to the village from across the country or, like the Menlo Park buildings, built on the premises. The homes, artisan and industrial shops, and businesses were not linked by geography or time period but, as the replica of Menlo Park suggests, by Ford's personal interests. [emphasis mine]

If this sounds like Walt Disney’s intentions in building his park, it’s no coincidence.

Walt Disney with his daughter Diane at The Henry Ford museum on April 12, 1940. Ⓒ Disney Enterprises, Inc. — Walt Disney with his daughter Diane at The Henry Ford museum on April 12, 1940.
Ⓒ Disney Enterprises, Inc.

The Henry Ford records two visits by Walt Disney to the Edison Institute and to Greenfield Village, the first being in 1940, and both times he took a tintype souvenir photograph. Given the broader timeline of his ruminations for the concept which became Disneyland, this is somewhat premature for a ‘scouting’ trip. Officials remarked that Walt was much impressed by all he saw, particularly showing “a great interest in everything mechanical.”

Walt Disney with animator Ward Kimball at The Henry Ford on August 3, 1948. Ⓒ Disney Enterprises, Inc. — Walt Disney with animator Ward Kimball at The Henry Ford on August 3, 1948.
Ⓒ Disney Enterprises, Inc.

Disneyland Origins: The 1948 Chicago Railroad Fair

By his second visit in 1948, however, Walt’s ideas for Disneyland were beginning to solidify, and he was surely paying closer attention this time. Walt had travelled to Chicago that summer with Disney animator Ward Kimball to visit the Chicago Railroad Fair. Kimball had grown close to Walt over their mutual love of trains, and when the Disney Studios nurse, Hazel George, suggested that her boss was in dire need of a vacation to relieve stress (despite having just returned from Hawaii a few weeks prior), Kimball was pressed into service as his companion.

Vintage postcard, Chicago Railroad Fair.

The Chicago Railroad Fair is a curious chapter in the development of Disneyland all on its own. Several themed environments that would later become part of the Disneyland concept, such as an Indian Village and a Gold Rush-era ghost town, were highlights of the Fair.

The historical re-creations and thematic design which Disney and Kimball ate up during their visit served as the perfect appetizer for their visit to Henry Ford’s own take on Americana.

Disneyland Origins: Main Street Muse

After visiting the Railroad Fair and gawking over the massive spectacle of locomotives and rolling stock on display, Walt and Ward spent two days at Ford’s Edison Institute and Greenfield Village on their return trip to California. The one-two punch of the Fair and the Village managed to reignite Walt’s imagination and pushed the visioning for his park into overdrive. Kimball later said that it was all Walt talked about during their entire trip.

Left: Village Green, Greenfield Village. Right: Main Street U.S.A., Disneyland. Map data: Ⓒ Google. — Left: *Village Green,* Greenfield Village. Right: *Main Street U.S.A.*, Disneyland. Map data: Ⓒ Google.

During both my visits, it became quite clear that Walt Disney took some very direct planning cues from the Village. Greenfield's Main Street aligns with a long symmetrical lawn, or Village Green, flanked on either end by two structures Henry Ford had in mind for his Village since the very beginning—a town hall and a chapel. The exact same vantage and dual “weenies” would later employed at Disneyland—the train station at the park’s entrance and then down Main Street U.S.A. to Sleeping Beauty’s Castle.

The Town Hall at the opposite end of the Village Green from the Chapel.

Upon his return to the studio, Walt passed on detailed notes to studio production designer Dick Kelsey that clearly show the influence of his time spent in both Chicago and Dearborn. According to Neal Gabler in his comprehensive and well-regarded biography, the memo to Kelsey dated August 31, 1948 described “a Main Village with a railroad station and a village green…a small town would be built around the green, with the railroad station at one end and a town hall at the other…there would be other sections too: an old farm, a western village, [and] an Indian compound” [emphasis added].

Vintage postcard, Suwanee Riverboat at Greenfield Village. — Vintage postcard, *Suwanee* Riverboat at Greenfield Village.

Disneyland Origins: Steamboat Sympaticos

There’s another key feature of the Village which Walt tucked in his back pocket and later deployed as a main attraction at Disneyland—a steamboat river ride. As with so many things at Greenfield, all things point back to Thomas Edison. While in Florida, Edison was fond of travelling on a 19th century steamer, the Suwanee. In time it was sunk and Henry Ford had the engine salvaged. In 1929 (the year the museum and village were dedicated) Ford hired Conrad Menge, who had once captained the Suwanee, to help rebuild it. In 1937 a loop of the adjacent Rouge River was dredged to create Suwanee Lagoon, and boat tours began around it.

Interestingly, ten years later the Suwanee was one of the last things Henry Ford saw on his final visit to Greenfield Village on April 7, 1947—the day he died. The Rouge River had recently been flooded by heavy rains, and the riverboat was submerged at its dock, disabled. Ford’s driver reported that with a laugh, he quipped “We’ll soon put it back on an even keel again.” The craft was indeed repaired and continued to offer tours to guests for decades until the Suwanee was taken out of service at the Village in 2004; she was finally dismantled, board by board, in 2011.

The Mark Twain Riverboat at Disneyland, 2008. — The *Mark Twain* Riverboat at Disneyland, 2008.

Although the vessel Walt had built for his park was far larger than the Suwanee, it was still smaller than an actual Mississippi riverboat—roughly 5/8 scale. Comparing the two from roughly the same vantage point, it’s evident that the Greenfield craft informed the Mark Twain’s central role in Frontierland, even down to the looped route of travel.

Left: Suwanee Lagoon, Greenfield Village. Right: Rivers of America, Disneyland. Map data: Ⓒ Google. — Left: *Suwanee Lagoon*, Greenfield Village. Right: *Rivers of America*, Disneyland. Map data: Ⓒ Google.

The Rivers of America at Disneyland is longer, narrower, and more elaborate, snaking back and forth around Tom Sawyer’s Island—but the DNA of the experience is right here at Henry Ford’s Greenfield Village.

Disneyfying Greenfield

For most of the Village’s history, the park had grown organically. There was no cohesive master plan, and this unplanned nature of the attraction became even more pronounced after Ford’s death. Ironically, Henry Ford’s obsession with historical re-creation and that influence on Walt’s Disneyland concept would come full circle by the late 1990s; Greenfield Village would be, quite deliberately, turned into something of a Disney-style theme park.

A history attraction uses the techniques of theater, drama, storytelling, pacing and crowd control of the themed attraction to address the important stories that matter in people’s lives [emphasis added]. — The Henry Ford’s “History Principles,” 2002

The Village entrance plaza and visitors center which were built during a massive 2002–2003 renovation reflect the Colonial look of the Independence Hall facade of the Henry Ford museum complex right next door, but these structures are even more elaborated planned and themed than that older “re-creation.”

Liberty Square, The Magic Kingdom, Walt Disney World, 2007.

The renovation designers appear to have taken a very direct lead from the Liberty Square area of Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom, which is themed to the time of the American Revolution. This land was wisely included on the opening day menu of that park in 1971 as a substitution for New Orleans Square (the real Big Easy was thought to be too close to Florida to be exotic), and five years later both the area and its signature attraction, The Hall of Presidents, were inundated with guests as the entire country was caught up in Bicentennial fever. Perhaps I digress; bottom line, Greenfield’s new entrance is more Disney than Ford.

Greenfield Village's full-size steam train.

Or perhaps I digress not. Even though the Disneyfication of the Village wasn’t complete until the early 2000s, I’d argue that it actually began much sooner, in direct response to that very opening of the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World in October 1971. It was not until the summer of 1972 that Greenfield received an antique steam train attraction, and just like in the fashion of Disney parks, it circled (and thus enclosed and provided a perimeter for) the Village on a three-mile course. The subsequent Main Street and Suwanee Stations was completed and operational for the 1974 season. Unlike the Disney Version, however, Greenfield’s Weiser Railroad is standard gauge and employs no reduced scaling.

Company leadership was very direct about these alterations to the Village (which included not only the new railroad but also Suwanee Park, a themed re-creation of a turn-of-the-century amusement area by 1974) and that the emphasis now needed to be experiential:

We must realize that the area in which we operate—the attraction of visitors—has become extremely competitive in recent years [meaning, among other things, Walt Disney World]… A major purpose of our development program is to add the means by which we can offer visitors a greater sense of personal participation—all within a historical context [emphasis added]. — William Clay Ford, July 1972.

Themed districts with their own title signage.

The ultimate extension of this desire to compete with attractions like the Disney parks and also to offer visitors a more immersive experience meant not just redesign in the late 1990s and early 2000s; it also meant reorganization.

Rather than an organic assemblage of buildings Ford had bought and moved, or had ordered constructed new “as old” on site, Greenfield Village took on the narrative approach of seven newly organized themed districts (much like Disney’s “lands”) during its 2002–2003 renovation. As indicated in colors and numbers on the above map, those areas in 2017 and 2018 when I visited were:

1.) Working Farms: This is a demonstration of traditional American farming. Produce grown and livestock raised here are served at some of the Village’s finer restaurants.

2.) Liberty Craftworks: Pottery, Glassblowing, Metalworking, Milling, and Printing are demonstrated in period-appropriate settings, with wares available for sale.

3.) Henry Ford’s Model T: A scaled down replica of a Ford manufacturing plant frames perhaps the park’s most popular contemporary attraction—the opportunity to ride in restored antique Ford automobiles around the Village.

4.) Railroad Junction: A reconstructed roundhouse from Marshall, Michigan was added to the Village in 2000 and became the heart of this area dedicated to Greenfield’s trains.

5.) Main Street: The area which probably required the least amount of reorganization as its theme was evident at the Village’s opening. Also includes the Suwanee Park amusement area which was added in 1974, and the Suwanee Lagoon (now lacking a riverboat).

6.) Edison at Work: This re-creation of Edison’s Menlo Park Laboratory Complex has been Greenfield’s signature attraction since the day the park was dedicated.

7.) Porches and Parlors: Essentially a residential district composed of historic structures which Ford had moved to the site, or re-creations constructed in situ at his direction.

Greenfield Village is one of those rare examples of a park which not only predated Disneyland but directly informed Walt’s design choices for his project—and then in turn was itself Disneyfied to remain a compelling and competitive experience in the wake of the success of the Disney Park Model.

Continued in Part 2.