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    The Land of Oz
    The Land of Oz
    The Land of Oz
    Ebook159 pages25 minutes

    The Land of Oz

    By Tim Hollis

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Skip down the Yellow Brick Road with author and historian Tim Hollis as you uncover the history of this beloved mountaintop attraction.


    In 1966, North Carolina tourism moguls Grover, Harry, and Spencer Robbins began exploring ways to utilize their new ski facilities atop Beech Mountain during the summer. They brought in their associate Jack Pentes to come up with an idea. As a long-time fan of The Wizard of Oz, Pentes planned and developed the Land of Oz theme park, opening in June 1970. The park did not resemble the famous 1939 MGM movie or the Oz as depicted in L. Frank Baum's book. Instead, Pentes interpreted his own vision of Oz, with a comical Wicked Witch and a wizard who did not turn out to be a fake. The Land of Oz closed after its 1980 operating season and was left to deteriorate. Since 1990, however, its remnants have been secured and restored. The property is now available for special events, and a giant Oz celebration takes place each autumn.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateSep 5, 2016
    ISBN9781439658703
    The Land of Oz
    Author

    Tim Hollis

    Tim Hollis has written thirty-seven books on pop culture history, a number of them concerning southeastern tourism. He also operates his own museum of vintage toys, souvenirs and other pop culture artifacts near Birmingham, Alabama.

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      Book preview

      The Land of Oz - Tim Hollis

      collection.

      INTRODUCTION

      The story of how a park based on L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz came to exist on a mountaintop in northwestern North Carolina actually begins with another innovative aspect of tourism for that region of the country. In 1966, the three Robbins brothers (Grover, Harry, and Spencer), who were already well known in North Carolina’s tourist industry, announced plans to build an entertainment complex on top of Beech Mountain, a 5,506-foot summit near Banner Elk. The main feature of their new project would be a ski resort; the idea was a novel one for the southeastern part of the United States, where obviously the ski season was much shorter than in Colorado or New England. For that reason, the Robbins family also wanted to do something that would make use of the ski facilities during the long off-season.

      The Robbinses turned to their valued associate, Charlotte designer Jack Pentes, to come up with an idea for their summer attraction on Beech Mountain’s summit. In recounting the story, Pentes often related how he was first shown the property for the proposed development, and it was the indigenous trees, twisted and gnarled by centuries of exposure to the harsh mountain climate, that reminded him of the crabby apple trees in MGM’s 1939 movie version of The Wizard of Oz. As it turns out, though, Pentes had long wanted to create a theme park based on the movie (and Baum’s book). In the early 1960s, he had been responsible for a walk-through Oz display that served as a Christmas feature for the Charlottetown Mall, and ever since, he had dreamed of doing basically the same thing on a full-scale basis. When he suggested to the Robbinses that they build the Land of Oz atop Beech Mountain, the brothers heartily agreed.

      Considering that Baum’s book had been published in 1900, it is somewhat surprising that it took nearly 70 years for it to become the basis for a theme park. Way back in 1906, Baum himself had announced plans to build an Oz park on a small island off the coast of California; had he done so, it might have qualified as the first theme park in American history, beating an entrepreneur named Walt by a half-century. From approximately the same period, fading newspaper clippings mention some Oz attractions in a Chicago amusement park without being specific enough to identify just what they were. The 1933 Chicago World’s Fair incorporated Oz characters into its children’s area known as the Enchanted Island, and Cincinnati’s Coney Island park also had a Land of Oz section at one time. Nothing on the scale of what Pentes and the Robbins brothers had in mind had ever been attempted, however.

      Their timing was nothing if not fortuitous. In the 1960s, most people’s familiarity with the Oz tale was probably about equally divided between Baum’s book and the 1939 movie, which was shown on network television once each year. In those days before home video, that single annual exposure was the extent of its reputation. Baum’s story and characters had gone into public domain in 1956, so after that point, anyone could do whatever they wanted with the underlying property as long as it did not resemble the appearance of the movie. Using elements created by MGM, including the music, required a separate licensing agreement. (It should be noted that Baum went on to pen 13 more Oz novels before his death in 1919. His

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