SPEAKER_01 0:12

The big green gorilla will be there too. You're that gorilla, I see. And there'll be rides and games and shows and functors. And listen to bring a real honest to goodness for leave the cover and you'll get free admission and unlimited rides for far people. This Saturday at Frontier Village and Saturday, from 10 in the morning to 4:30 in the afternoon. What a fun way to spend St. Patty's Day. How about that big fella? I'd rather you'd kiss the blurney stone, Mr. Clark.

Kelly 0:53

Hello and welcome to the Lowdown on the Plus Up, a podcast where we look at everyone's favorite theme park attractions, lands, textures, and novelties. We talk in, over, about, and through our week's topic, and then, with literally no concern for practicality, safety, or economic viability, we come up with ways to make them better. My name is Kelly McCubbin, columnist for the theme park website Boardwalk Times, and with me as always is Peter Overstreet, University Professor of Animation and Film History in Northern California.

Pete 1:33

So, Pete. Yeah. What are we talking about today? Well, today we're going to be talking about uh not Disneyland. Uh we're going to take a little sidestep for a minute, and we're going to go to San Jose, California. San Jose, California. There's nothing down there, Pete. Oh, yeah. Actually, there's a bunch of stuff down there, but this is the first thing that we're gonna we're gonna cover. Uh and I have a soft spot for it because I grew up not too far away from it. Um it was literally in our backyard, and it's good old Frontier Village.

Kelly 2:03

Frontier Village. I I gotta tell you, like when I started looking into this, um I was surprised at how strongly people feel about Frontier Village. Yes. Um, people have a real emotional tie to this. And speaking of, the reason that we're doing Frontier Village is our friend out there uh who listens to the show, Danica Bird, who wrote me online and said, Hey, why don't you do something about Frontier Village? And then mentioned that she had uh, you know, really strong childhood memories of it, and then sent me some reference material about it. And I was like, wow, okay, let's do it.

Pete 2:42

Thank you, Danica. Yeah, absolutely. So we are listening to our audience. So we are gonna We are. This is this is a this is an audience request show this time around.

Kelly 2:50

It is an audience request show. A little bit uh later we'll be doing Total Eclipse of the Heart.

Pete 2:57

As the prospector.

Kelly 2:59

As the prospector. Turn around, bright eyed. So yeah, that so it's it's interesting, and I really want to get some of your impressions about this because as I started looking stuff up about Frontier Village, I I will admit I knew next to nothing about it. I knew that it existed, and I knew that it hadn't been there for a long time. And I kind of knew that it closed sort of in conjunction with the openings of Great America. Aaron Ross Powell Yeah.

Pete 3:32

Marriott's Great America was one of the impeti of it uh closing down.

Kelly 3:39

But past that, I really didn't know much about it. And I start looking stuff up, and this thing has a following.

Pete 3:48

Oh, yeah. Big time.

Kelly 3:49

Yeah, and it and it's really it's interesting. They still, to this day, have yearly get-togethers on the site. Yep. Um, people come out and do gunfights like they used to do in the park. Uh, the group, the Fall Guys, who I don't know if any of them are actually the same Fall Guys that actually appeared in the park, but they come out and do stunt shows in in in the area. People who worked there, what, 50 years ago, still show up at this thing and talk about it being the best job of their lives. Yeah. There was a guy that I forget what town he was in, and it's not there anymore, but there was a guy not far from there that built an entire replica. Oh, in Campbell. In Campbell, thank you. A Frontier Village in his backyard.

Pete 4:34

Mm-hmm.

Kelly 4:35

Like the the fan response to this thing is insane. So, Pete, you went to Frontier Village.

Pete 4:42

Yes, uh, on a regular basis. Do you have these same sorts of feelings? 100%. I mean, I have this phenomenon that I don't mention this very often, but I will for the show. In the fact that when I think of Frontierland in Disneyland, uh-huh. There are memories of Frontierland. Like if I'm dreaming about it or if I'm just kind of reminiscing about it, I sometimes get the parks mixed up uh from childhood memories, going, didn't they used to have that at Frontier Village? Oh no, that was Disney. Didn't they used to have that at Disneyland? No, that was in Frontier Village.

Kelly 5:16

Now that that it's interesting that you mentioned that because um I have a similar situation with the original Six Flags over Texas, which if you hadn't been to any of the original Six Flags parks when they opened in the 60s and 70s, uh, they were much more themed environments than the Six Flags parks are now. But they did a lot of stuff, much in the same way that Frontier Village did. They did a lot of stuff that was very much a carbon copy of what they were doing in Frontierland. And um, much like at Frontier Village, there were gunfights in the middle of the street. Yep. There were people doing stunts, falls off of buildings.

Pete 5:56

Wally Bogue. Wally Bogue. You know, Pecos Bill would be out there, you know, shooting his teeth and shooting his gun and having a great time. Right.

Kelly 6:03

And you'd see the same thing at the six at Six Flags, and you'd see the same thing at Frontier Village. And uh I have that same thing where I will sometimes remember something about uh what I thought was Disneyland in the early years, and it was actually Six Flags over Texas.

Pete 6:21

I mean, it's interesting. I mean, we'll we'll do a let's do a quick little deep dive here. Yeah. Okay, so our deep dive has some weird, weird origins. Okay. Okay. Um the land that Frontier Village was built upon actually has its connections going all the way back to the 1880s. And the park itself has some interesting connections to other things from that era as well. Yeah. I'll start with the land. The land was owned by a woman named Mary Hayes Chinnewith. Yeah. Mary Hayes Chinowith was the widow of Mr. Hayes, and they had built a farm out there, a large farmhouse. And I believe he was General Hayes. Yes, he was. Yeah. As in General Hayes. Yeah. And they built this giant palatial mansion not too far, as far as Old West standards are concerned, from another eccentric widow, uh, Mrs. Sarah Winchester. Yeah. Um, and I find this very, very fascinating because for those who don't know, I used to work at the Winchester Mystery House in San Jose. And I remember hearing a piece of trivia from one of the tour guides there explaining that there was kind of an odd connection between the Hayes Mansion and the Winchester Mystery House. Huh. In the fact that they both have psychic connections.

Kelly 7:44

Okay.

Pete 7:44

Mary Hayes Chinowith was a psychic leader. She was she was like theosophist and uh crazy, like very big on uh psychic powers. She's apparently could see through bodies and see what was affecting people like an x-ray machine and figure out what their ailments were just by looking at them.

Kelly 8:04

So she was like a Madame Blavatsky type.

Pete 8:06

Very much, very much in that world. According to Wikipedia, uh, she would pinpoint medical issues and take their ailments into her own body and then heal them using herbs, water treatments, optimism, faith, and dietary restrictions, including abstaining from alcohol, coffee, tea, and tobacco. She was allegedly able to confer with patients who did not speak the same language, see patients en route to her, and foresee economic trends, allowing her to capitalize on downturns and upswings in the market.

Kelly 8:37

I love I love how it's like, oh, there's psychic ability and and and all of these things, and then and there's like, and also we're just going to remove alcohol and cigarettes and caffeine from your diet. I think I know what's doing the heavy lifting in these cures.

Pete 8:53

Yeah, pretty much. They uh the the family owned about 700 acres in San Jose. Yeah. Pretty much what would eventually become what is known as the Blossom Valley area, which is where I grew up as a kid.

Kelly 9:05

Okay.

Pete 9:05

Um growing up in that southernmost tip of San Jose, like next stop Morgan Hill, home of Mary Blair. Who it was her birthday this week. Yay! Happy birthday, Mary. I hope it was colorful. Um and I don't mean that facetiously, I mean that with all my heart.

Kelly 9:23

No, absolutely. I I hope it was a torrent of shocking pastels.

Pete 9:29

Little dads of watercolor and a five-legged goat. Well, growing up in that neighborhood was interesting because it was suburbia broken up by orchards of pear trees or cherry orchards or apricot trees. So we were constantly going to fruit stands, even in the 70s and 80s, yeah, uh, picking up fruit. That was all land that was started by the Hayes, eventually, you know, the Hayes family eventually was like sold off bit by bit by bit.

Kelly 9:55

Interesting.

Pete 9:56

Uh so the land was about 13 acres or so that they bought originally for the park. And then they uh the owner of Frontier Village, Zucan. Joseph Zukin Jr. of Palo Alto, California. Yep. He was inspired to build this park after his trip to Disneyland in 1959.

Kelly 10:16

Yeah, he went out for some sort of auto show and just happened to go by Disneyland very near when it opened, actually, and and uh was that changed all of his plans for his future.

Pete 10:27

Yeah, totally.

Kelly 10:28

Yeah.

Pete 10:28

He was originally going to build it along El Camino Real in Sunnyvale, California.

Kelly 10:32

Yeah.

Pete 10:33

And the draw the plans were drawn up for that in 1958, but it just didn't work out for him as far as the real estate was concerned, so they decided to build it near the Hayes Ranch. Yeah. So they bought those acres, and he did something that Walt did not do. He built extra land just in case they wanted to expand the park in the future. Yeah, there's a big irony there, but we'll get to that. So um the original design was uh by a guy named Paul Murphy, who uh was also uh working full-time at Santa Clara University at the time. Yeah. He was too busy to continue in designing, so he handed it over to a guy named Lawrence Hollings, uh, who knows some facts about him. We're gonna talk about him in a minute.

Kelly 11:13

Yeah, we're gonna get into Laurie Hollings.

Pete 11:15

Yeah, so that's you know, so that's that's our our main connection here of like early days as far as the land is concerned and how it was founded. Now, let's go back to the 1880s. Yeah. And there is a guy who kind of I think this is the origin of the entertainment that a lot of theme parks, even to this day, the which is the uh stunt show gunfight, whether you're in the streets or whether you're sitting on bleachers watching the events happen in front of you, like at Universal Studios. Uh this spectacle started with one man and his name was Buffalo Bill Cody.

Kelly 11:52

Yeah, yeah.

Pete 11:52

And the Buffalo Bill's Wild West show kind of helped formulate this notion of what the wow, wild west was all about. You know. Uh most of his show was uh um lauded as historical. It was mostly bullshit.

Kelly 12:10

Hello? Right, yeah, exactly. I I refer everyone to my Frontierland article from about a month ago about the origins of our our picture of the Wild West, um, because it's pretty much all lies.

Pete 12:24

Absolutely. Um mostly perpetuate started and perpetuated by Buffalo Bill. He was very key, and it established all the tropes, um, which is very odd because later on in his years he would actually start booking real people, including Wild Bill, Hickok, Calamity Jane, uh all these famous names of the Old West, who mostly became famous because they traveled with Buffalo Bill. Yeah. They went to um England on a tour and performed on the stage. During that time, one of the Native American chieftains who was traveling with them passed away and was buried in Brompton ceremony uh cemetery.

Kelly 12:59

Uh-huh.

Pete 13:00

But they were also in town right when the Jack the Ripper murders were occurring. Holy cow. And the uh Native Americans were actually listed as suspects briefly. Uh like maybe it's one of these, you know, one of these, you know, redskins that is causing this problem. It's like uh Yeah, okay. Thank thank you, racist, you know, Londoners. Yeah. But still, uh it became an international success. And I think that also because they traveled also I don't know if they traveled to France, but they definitely traveled to England. France has an obsession with the Wild West.

Kelly 13:34

Yeah, they still do. Um it's it's really interesting if you go look at the Disneyland there. Yeah. Because not only do they have their their frontier land section, but their haunted mansion is part of that. Oh, yeah. Phantom Manor is kind of in the Old West there.

Pete 13:51

Yeah, it's really interesting. It is. I mean, even with the works of Moebius with uh, you know, Blueberry, you know, it's really Lieutenant Blueberry. Um so the Wild West show has been something that has existed all the way back from the 1880s. And I would also like as much as Frontier Village uh was inspired directly by a visit to Disneyland, I have to mention very briefly, because we should probably do another show on this entirely, yeah. But I do want to mention this briefly that there was a probably another influence that came into this, uh, which was not too far from Disneyland. Yeah, with another Walt, Mr. Walter Knott and his wife opening up a roadside restaurant and finding that Mrs. Knott's chicken and her boysenberry pie, uh-huh, which he uh Walter Knott had invented and named after his friend, Mr. Boysen.

Kelly 14:42

Right, yeah, he he bred the boysenberry, it did not exist before him.

Pete 14:46

Yep. Um, and it was so popular that people were like waiting in line just to sample his chicken and boysenberry pie. So he wanted to give him something to do, so he bought a ghost town and and shipped it and named it Calico.

Kelly 15:00

Yeah.

Pete 15:00

And then started charging money, and they started adding entertainment, they added a train, they added a stagecoach, and it just built and built and built, eventually becoming the theme park that we know today is Knott's Berry Farm.

Kelly 15:13

Yeah.

Pete 15:13

Um Walt Disney would go to Walter Knott's place a lot when he was building the park. Yeah, they they liked each other a lot. They did. They got along really, really well. And you can see Knott's Berry Farm's influence on Disneyland. Absolutely. So I would actually like, you know, uh show this kind of lineage of going from Buffalo Bill to Walter Knott to Walt, and then all the way to our friend Jose uh Joseph Zukin.

Kelly 15:39

Now, here's an interesting thing that I heard recently, and it wasn't in research for this, it was for something else. Um actually, it was in research for our last episode, but Buffalo Bill lived long enough that I believe he actually met a young Walt Disney. Oh, I can believe that. There is a story of Disney early on, and I don't remember because I was I I didn't research it for this, but I don't remember what city he was. But you know, Disney's like five or so and actually shakes hands with Buffalo Bill Cody. Wow. Yeah.

Pete 16:18

So cool.

Kelly 16:20

You know. And you know, it's interesting how strongly this still to an extent holds sway. I mean, you know, we we we are um middle-aged gentlemen. And yes. And, you know, one of my favorite movies of all time is is Bronco Billy, which is very much in the lineage of the Buffalo Bill Wild West shows. Oh, yeah. And do we even know d need to talk about Night Rider? Because it's very much in the lineage of the Buffalo Bill Wild West shows.

Pete 16:52

Yes, it is. Yep. And we and we've talked about this before with the notion of the Wild West. Right. Where Americans have this very odd relationship to it because they like it, but they don't like it. It's almost like a shame thing because of the colonialism and the racism and the stealing of land, which is very, very valid. It's a very, very valid argument. And yet everybody still likes it because there were African American cowboys, there were great adventurers who were uh Chinese uh immigrants and Irish and Italian. I mean, Bank of America started in San Jose as Bank of Italy.

unknown 17:36

Yeah.

Pete 17:36

And eventually became, you know, Banco di Merigo, you know, and it became Bank of America. Yeah. Which is not a sponsor of ours, but B of A, if you are listening, this is not the first time.

Kelly 17:46

We will take some of that sweet, sweet B of A money.

Pete 17:49

I this is not the first time I have mentioned you guys on this program. We talked about him with Willis O'Brien at one point, so there you go. Yeah. Uh so anyway. Who will come into play in this story? Really? Yes. Oh, I'm excited. I'm so excited by this.

Kelly 18:03

As everyone well knows, we do not do any episodes that do not in some way touch on either the 1964 World's Fair or King Kong.

Pete 18:15

Our mutual obsessions here.

Kelly 18:17

Yes. Uh we are going to find ourselves touching on King Kong very soon.

Pete 18:22

Very cool. Um Yeah, so that's I that's kind of the lineage of this romantic West, the romantic Western, you know, and also the time it was built, the Western was like the number one genre as like superhero movies are today and the superhero genre is today. The Western was to baby boomer children of the 1950s.

Kelly 18:47

Aaron Ross Powell It's really interesting to me uh looking into this stuff because so the so this park opens in 1960. Um pretty hot on the heels of the opening of Disneyland. Just a couple years later. And in 1960, the Western was starting to transition into the revisionist Western Western. And so I it it's interesting to me to kind of track this because you know, Frontierland, Frontier Village, um Six Lags Over Texas, which opens a little bit later, they're all they're not doing the revisionist part. No. They are doing the classical they're not they're not doing like the stagecoach Western. Right. But they are doing the Calamity Jane, you know, what any anyway Davy Crock at the works. Right. Yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm. And and you know, they're they're doing that particular kind of Western and they will not let go of it.

Pete 19:49

It's the equ it's the it's the equivalent of um setting up a park that is, quote, medieval. Yeah. But it looks like it came out of an NC Wyeth, you know, Scribner's book. Right. Where it's very much, you know, knights in shining armor and damsels in long flowing pre-Raphaelite robes and stuff like that. It's like there's nothing to that in reality.

Kelly 20:11

Right. It's it's basically a a fantasy drawing come come to light.

Pete 20:15

Right. And in this case, it's, you know, Wild West. Right. It's has its mythical origin. So it's the myth. But people are willing to run with this. And I think part of the appeal is San Jose, especially that area of San Jose, has a strong connection to the actual West. Um, there was a quicksilver mine not too far away in the Almondin Valley. Oh, I didn't know that. That's interesting. Um so if you go into the Almadin Hills, you can actually still see some of the mining uh equipment and some of the that go on a trail that takes you up to the mine.

Kelly 20:49

Yeah.

Pete 20:49

It's a little bit of a hike, but it's worth a look. And then you had Sarah Winchester, who's the owner of the Winchester Rifle Corporation, living in San Jose and several other places because she had multiple homes. Uh you have the Hayes family, you have a lot of connections to the gold rush and the quote wild west in San Jose itself. And when I say San Jose, a lot of people say, well, that doesn't, you know, it's not Kansas City, it's not Tombstone, it's not Dallas, right? You know, it's San Jose. And you say, Well, yes. It's the West. It's like don't get any wester than this, you know, like maybe Santa Cruz, you know, and that's it.

Kelly 21:30

Aaron Ross Powell Well and the makeup of San Jose becomes very important in this story because at that point in 1960, San Jose was relatively sparse. Yep. And you know, that's why you you they could have that the Hayes Mansion and it could have, you know, however many hundred acres. Uh but uh two decades later, uh when we reached the end of this park, San Jose was not sparse. No. San Jose was a residential enclave. You know, it was It was urban, that ends up uh contributing to the downfall of this park. But we'll get there.

Pete 22:06

Yeah. I mean, uh just as a quick note on that, I mean, you have to keep in mind when you think about the geography of where the park was and how close it was to the things that would eventually kill it. Yeah. Yeah. It's only about a 10 to 15 minute drive to a much larger park called Great America. That's Great America. Yeah. And I think it was only like a mile or two away from one of IBM's silicone chip processing plants. Yeah. Which um I had a friend whose mom used to work there, and she was one of the bunny suit wearing silicone, silicon polishers.

Kelly 22:44

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Pete 22:45

You'd always see pictures in like Scientific and American or National Geographic going, there's a Silicon Valley, and here's all these industrious people. And and not too far uh from Frontier Village at one of those processing plants, that's where they filmed Tron. Oh, no way. When they're sneaking in to NCOM, there's that humongous door that opens up. And Flynn's like, that is a big door. Yeah. There's a great story where the actors are like, yeah, so not too far from that door was literally a cordon-off area where they would dump all the toxic waste and barrels and stuff. Oh wow. And I think I forget the actress's name, uh, who plays Yuri and uh Lori in the Oh, I I feel bad that I forget. I feel bad too. So please forgive me. Yeah. I I I I love you in the movies, and you're great as Lacey Underalls and Caddyshack. Um, but she apparently backed into a puddle of toxic waste while they were filming that. Like that's how talk about Wild West of the Silicon Valley. It was like these companies just didn't seem to care. Oh, things were getting weird. It was very weird, and that plant was only three miles away from where my home was when I was growing up as a kid. Okay.

Kelly 24:00

And my grandparents were only a block away from me.net, you'll find some of the most well-considered and insightful writing about the Walt Disney Company, Disney history, and the universe of theme parks available anywhere. Come join us at BoardwalkTimes.net.

Pete 24:45

It's one of the reasons why people have such a connection to this park. Yeah. It's because it's a little bit of conservativism. It's like, let's preserve the park, let's preserve, it's like, don't change this. There's enough change going on for goodness sakes. And we'll get to what happened with this. Yeah. Yeah. But I think that's why there's such a strong connection, is that so much change happened so rapidly right around this park.

Kelly 25:06

Well, let's let's talk a little bit about let's let's go back to the uh because we're we're all aiming for the end, because the end is pretty juicy.

Pete 25:13

But not because we want to get to the end of this broadcast. Trust us, we want to tell you everything.

Kelly 25:20

But so it's it's interesting. Like you look at the origins of this park, uh you know, you you've got the the Disneyland trip in the mid-50s, you've got um Joe Zukin deciding he's going to uh build this park, uh finding a site, losing it, finding a site, uh finding a develop finding a designer, losing it, finding another designer. The designer that he ends up with is Lawrence Hollings, uh, who's uh often called Laurie Hollings. Laurie Hollings is one of the more interesting characters I've ever run into. So this guy he so he he's born in South Africa. He uh Really? Yeah, born in South Africa, okay. His mother is from there, uh his father is in South Africa, I think he might be British. And he uh and the mother get married, they convert to Mormonism. Okay, and they um and they move to Utah.

Pete 26:30

Okay. Because they're Mormons.

Kelly 26:32

That makes sense, yeah. Uh something happens, it's unclear what, the and they the parents split up, which is unusual for for Mormons in Utah. But they split up, the mother and Laurie Hollings move to San Francisco. Right. Now Hollings doesn't go to school. Huh. Hollings teaches himself to draw and draft and sculpt. Whoa. And just starts getting jobs. Whoa. So one of the one of the earliest things he does is he's designing so like shop windows, yeah. Big shop windows in Union Square.

Pete 27:12

Really?

Kelly 27:13

Yeah, he starts designing animal displays, he studies taxidermy, starts designing animal displays for the Academy of Sciences. Uh-huh. Eventually, he's designing sets for the San Francisco opera. Uh-huh. He's basically a kid at this point. Whoa. Has never gone to school.

unknown 27:32

Wow.

Kelly 27:33

It's amazing. So he um somewhere during that period, around 1933, uh having to do with his taxidermy and his modeling experience. He gets a job working on the stop motion animation in King Kong. There it is. And the the weird thing is he's he's got all of these hits, these like super bright hits of his career, and then he just moves on and he just keeps doing it. He ends up uh going down to LA. At one point, he says um that he says, I went down to Southern California to work for George Powell, but George Powell wasn't ready for me. But he does have a credit in the Puppeton movie where they they put all of the George Powell shorts together. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he did eventually work for George Powell.

Pete 28:25

As did Ray Harryhausen, right?

Kelly 28:26

As did Ray Harryhausen, absolutely. He goes, he ends up getting a job with Disney. Wow. Uh he works a little bit on the dancing elephants in Fantasia. Okay. Wow. Uh at some point during this period, he comes back to San Francisco and ends up getting work at Playland on the beach designing stuff. Ah, okay he he he sculpts that giant, I think is it a dolphin, the one that used to be on the cliffhouse? Oh, really? He sculpts that.

Pete 29:02

Holy Toledo. I did not know that.

Kelly 29:04

Yeah. That's so cool. He um he's going back and forth kind of from northern Southern California. He's working for Disney off and on, coming back up here. He goes back to Southern California.

Pete 29:17

He works a cane of kung fu of like theme parks in this era.

Kelly 29:22

It's unbelievable. Wow. He works on Disneyland before it opens for a while. Wow. Supposedly, and this is difficult to tell because the documentation is weird on his life. Sure. But at some point, he supposedly did some of the design in Frontierland. He comes back to San to San Francisco. Yeah. He designed, you may or may not remember this, but towards the end of Playland at the beach, they built in a western section. Like kind of a large western section. It was called Frontier Town.

Pete 29:58

Oh, yes. Isn't that where they like I think they like tore out Topsy's uh dance hall and kitchen or something like that and replaced it with that? That's right. Okay.

Kelly 30:07

That's right. It was kind of a last ditch effort just to save playland.

Pete 30:12

And yes, listeners, Topsy's Barn, Barnyard, fried chicken, fun house dance hall was as racist as you're imagining it. Yes. Sorry, it was. But go ahead.

Kelly 30:24

Yeah. And we're we're perfectly happy that they um tore it out. Yeah, it's totally fine. That can that can be cool. But yeah, he he designed a whole bunch of stuff in there, supposedly uh designed the main cowboy character that was a like giant fiberglass mascot that was a mechanical moving cowboy. He designed that. Wow. And then somewhere along that route got the job to design Frontier Village. Huh. So he came into Frontier Village with an insane amount of experience, all that was relevant to this job. Sure. Just such such an interesting guy. So when he designs Frontier Village, he's so careful about the design that so Frontier Village is about 33 acres. Yes. Um they bought over 60 acres, but they never expanded past the 33. Uh and and the reasons for that will become clear later. But uh Laurie Hollings, when he designed the 33 acres of Frontier Village, designed it so carefully that they only touched four trees.

unknown 31:43

Wow.

Kelly 31:44

Every other tree in the acreage, and it was a heavily wooded area. Yes, it was stayed. That's so great. And I think this is part of the magic of Frontier Village. This is it is built into a very old natural environment. And that's that's a sense you get. Like you see photos, you see films of Frontier Village at this point. It it seems foresty and it seems peaceful.

Pete 32:14

I distinctly remember it. Well, it was you know how Disneyland has the berm. Yes. The infamous berm. Yeah. Which to me, when it comes, and I all you theme park lovers out there are gonna hate me for this, but that's one of those words that like sticks in my craw every time I say it. Uh like the word moist. I don't know why the term berm drives me nuts, but it does. Anyway, the berm that surrounds Disneyland is meant as a site blockage so that way you don't see the outside world. Yeah. What was great about Frontier Village, even as a kid, is that you were kind of transported into this this park, this world. Yeah. And yeah, sometimes you would see patches of this kind of frontier fort style fence that surrounded it. Yeah. Uh, but the majority of it was this these woods, and there were parts of the park that it was just woods.

Kelly 33:05

Yeah.

Pete 33:05

And then you would come out. I mean, there would be things scattered throughout the woods. Yeah. But then you would get to the next attraction, and there it was. Here's, okay, here's here's this attraction, here's that attraction.

Kelly 33:16

It strikes me that it's not dissimilar to what Gilroy Gardens is now.

Pete 33:21

Yes, it's very, very similar. There are people who just remember the gardens alone, yeah. And and remember it fondly. Uh the train, the Frontier Village train that's circum very much like the Disneyland train that's that goes all the way around the park, did the same thing. Yeah. There are a lot of similarities where the train went around and then it interrupted the uh the stagecoach route, you know, that kind of stuff. Very 1950s Disneyland. You you there's a uh if you look it up on uh Google, uh listeners, you can actually find a village map from 1970. Yeah. And you can see the layout of the park. Uh and it it's there are portions of it you kind of go, you can totally see oh, you you got that from Disneyland.

Kelly 34:04

Oh, yeah. There's a ton of it that's oh yeah, it's lifted straight from Disneyland.

Pete 34:07

Absolutely. But it's miniature, which is it's delightful. It's like somebody's backyard Disneyland, but it's just Frontierland.

Kelly 34:14

And and I want to say at this point that if anyone listening is really, really interested in seeing some images of Frontier Village, the San Jose Public Library site has I would say five to six hundred pictures that you can just look at online, one right after the other. Yeah. Uh that documents this for a a lot of its history. Yeah. Uh so it's it's a great resource, and I I I looked at a ton of them. Oh, and can I, real quick, let me one more thing about the train. Yes. Did you know you can still ride it? I heard a rumor about this. Please explain. Yes, in Cameron Park, California, which a little bit north of here where we are. Uh I think it's near Sacramento. Yep. Okay. Road trip. There's a um a place called the the Burke Junction Shopping Center. And they bought the train and they restored it, and it was running for a number of years uh around some track they had there at the shopping center. That this the shopping center got closed. It was an outdoor thing. Right. Uh it got closed and bought by somebody else, and the train needed a lot of repair, but evidently it's been repaired. Oh. So you can at this point go and ride the original Frontier Village train.

Pete 35:36

Oh, I'm going. Yeah. You have to do a road trip. Yeah. Isn't that cool? We'll do a follow-up episode and actually ride the train.

Kelly 35:42

And it's interesting. I saw interviews with some of the people that worked on that, on the train there, and some of the people who were engineers driving the train. And they kept saying over and over, it is stunning how many people would come and just go, I have these memories of this train from Frontier Village in San Jose. And it just means so much to me. And and this was the thing I ran into over and over looking into Frontier Village, is people have these strong emotional ties to it.

Pete 36:14

Absolutely. I mean, with the train myself, I do remember vividly sitting in one of the cars in the back. Actually, we were right behind the engine.

Kelly 36:22

Yeah.

Pete 36:23

And the steam was coming over. You know, you could actually see this, you could feel the vapor of the water vapor of the steam. And being only like three or four, I was saying something like, Daddy, it's a choo-choo or something like that. And the engineer turned around, he kind of like leaned back. He was this this old this old guy who's obviously one of those train nuts that you have at these parks. Yeah. You know, it's like, I better correct the kid, you know. So locomotive. And I always I felt really like shamed by that. Like, I'm a kid. What do I, you know, like in my head, I'm like, but I'm a kid, what do I know? Yeah. You know, like this, no, it's a choo-choo. Well, you gotta be a jerk. He goes, loco, and I go, choo-choo, loco. My grandpa went, Yeah, you are kind of loco. He's three. You know, like you're trying to correct a three-year-old, dude. Like, let's think about this for a minute.

Kelly 37:12

You know, it's it's it's funny because I was looking at found some film of the closing day ceremony. Oh man. Or close to the closing day. Yeah.

Pete 37:22

And uh final roundup, as we call it. Final roundup.

Kelly 37:24

And and uh it was great because I I got a better sense out of that footage than I did from any of the pictures of what it was like. But one of the things that really struck me, and it struck me while I was watching the train, was I was like, man, some of this park is dangerous. Yes, it was. And I saw like the train was riding around, but there was nothing to actually stop people from just walking in front of it. And I started keeping track. I was like, what else is here? And I made this list of things that was like, you would never get away with this now. Do tell. Uh so it was that. There was a petting zoo. Yes. That was cool, but they had a live crabs. Really? No. You know, there was a fishing pond, and they let kids fish with their hands, just reach in and grab fish. Rainbow Falls.

Pete 38:18

Yes. I I that I have memories of. My grandpa took me this. So let me let me explain the fishing pond of this. Rainbow Falls, which was like this little miniature falls setup. You uh like at a lot of these western parks, you have gold panning, yeah, where it's like this little, you know, uh wooden track with sand in it, and kids look for colorful rocks and little teeny tiny little flecks of gold, you know, like Walter Knott used to do this with his gold panning where he would actually load the gold in himself into the gold panning and have it trickle down. Yeah. Uh and then you walk around with a little glass vial with some gold in it, uh, which would eventually develop algae because they never chlorinated the water. Right. And so the the gold would be in there, but you have to look through all the green inside the little vial. Uh but and the rainbow, Rainbow Falls was really cute because it was really tiny. I mean, I don't think it was anything taller than 20 feet.

Kelly 39:11

Yeah.

Pete 39:11

Um, and it was all this, you know, concrete and fiberglass pond. Yeah, you know. And you could uh when I went, they would give you a fishing pole.

Kelly 39:24

Yeah, I saw I saw kids doing both. I saw kids with fishing poles, and there were areas where they could just reach in with their hands and try and grab the fish.

Pete 39:31

Right. And the reason why it worked every single time is they never fed the fish. Oh. It was overflowing with trout or whatever it was. There's these horrible fish. And like you go to a theme park and you go fishing, and then you have to take the fish home.

Kelly 39:51

Yeah.

Pete 39:52

So they would wrap it up in newspaper and put it in a plastic bag and hand it, and you have to walk around the park with this dead fish for the rest of the day. So I was like dutifully carrying, and my mom carried the fish at the time.

Kelly 40:06

I assume there's a little bit of ice or something.

Pete 40:08

No. No, no, they just handed you this dead, like they were expecting, like, I think they were figuring, like, well, if the parents are smart, they're gonna go, like, okay, kids, it's time to go, let's go fishing really quick, and then we'll call it a day. Yeah, that'll be the home with our fish, you know. It's not like you know it's not like going to like a state fair where you win a goldfish and they give it to you in a little baggie or the bowl thing, right? With the ping-pong, you know, toss. But you know, this is like you've got this dead, smelly fish in your back pocket for the rest of your thing. So if you're riding, you know, the the the fly, you know, the the Lost Dutchman mine ride or the Apache whirlwind or whatever, or the war canoes, you're just like, why am I what am I doing? What was I thinking?

Kelly 40:51

Oh, I know. And you have to imagine that at some point they had to start rethinking that and going, you know, our trash cans are kind of full with rotting fish right now.

Pete 41:02

I will note that it was probably because of Frontier Village that there was a heavy seagull population in southern San Jose. I bet. So I'm just saying there there were always seagulls around southern San Jose for a while. I was like, why it's probably because of the damn fish. People go out to the parking, like, I'm not taking this home. I mean, I don't know how to who knows what's in that water, you know.

Kelly 41:25

Like, well, you know, you used to uh originally the first couple of years you could fish in the rivers of America at Disneyland. I did not know that. You could off of Tom Soros Island, they would give you a pole and you'd you'd fish, and and it was similar. You catch one and they what they would wrap it and give you an ice. So that was a little smarter. But uh yeah, you can do that for uh a year or two and then they decide it was too dangerous.

Pete 41:50

See, if they were smart, if I was here's like a little mini plus up. If I was smart, yeah, I would actually make a connection with a frozen fish corporation. Yeah. And get pre-cut flanks of trout or whatever. And so the kids pull the fish out of the water, you take it up, we'll clean it for you, you know, you just pick it up later today. Yeah. And then when you you got it all clean, but you just hand the and you release the fish they caught back in the water and you're giving this fake, you know, frozen fish. That sounds smart. A little devious, but yes, smarter, you know? Yeah. So what other attractions were dangerous that you that you spotted in the so at the petting zoo, they did this bizarre thing.

Kelly 42:33

I saw some film of this where they put this sort of we thin plank bridge over the heads of the people in there and let goats walk across it. Yep. And I was watching this goat, like just barely making it across it, like over the head of this like five-year-old kid. And I'm like, oh my God.

Pete 42:54

Oh yeah. And and there's no guarantee that you won't get urinated or defecated. Absolutely. Yep. Oh yeah. What is this mar why is it raining marbles? Yeah. Oh, there's the goat overhead. Unlike, you know, until unlike Big Thunder, it's like, don't watch the goat.

Kelly 43:11

Yeah. Don't look up. Don't look up. I you know, they they had a stagecoach ride. It was interesting to me that a lot of these things, stagecoach, canoes, you know, uh there was a borough ride, much like a Disneyland. Um, but they just kind of went around the scenery. There wasn't a ton to see.

Pete 43:31

Uh it was the experience of riding on these older contractions.

Kelly 43:35

Yeah. But look, the stagecoach ride, I saw pictures of that thing and it was like packed. I mean, just so many people hanging off of this thing. Oh, yeah. And I'm like, that's not great.

Pete 43:48

I rode on top of that thing. Yeah. And I remember distinctly when it was done, I think I passed my first kidney stone because it was so violently shaking. It's like my mom had. To hang on to me because I think I almost fell off of it.

Kelly 44:02

So, because we were on top. Did I tell you, by the way, and this is just a brief aside, that I actually found a medical study, a legitimate medical study, about people passing kidney stones on uh Big Thunder Mountain?

Pete 44:17

No.

unknown 44:18

Yeah.

Kelly 44:19

It had been this kind of rumor for a while that if you had a kidney stone, you could ride Big Thunder Mountain Railroad and you would pass the kidney stone. It turns out that that uh that rumor is true. And and not the California one, though, particularly the Florida one. And they and people heard it enough that doctors did a study, and it turns out that yes, uh, if you have a kidney stone and you ride Big Thunder Mountain Railroad in Florida, you are very likely to pass it. Wow. Who knows why?

Pete 44:56

Dang. That's almost that's almost worth the price of admission. Right. You know, like I'm in real pain. Let's go ride Big Thunder. I would, yeah. Let's go to Tomorrowland. I feel great. Feeling good. Woo-hoo. Howdy, folks. Do you have a kidney stone? Well, come on down to Big Thunder Mountain. You'll be peeing gravel. Flush them nuggets, little partner. And then we'll pan for gold. This is the wildest urinary tract in the wilderness. This went downhill really fast.

Kelly 45:30

I'm so sorry. Sorry, let's no, I've I was it was my fault. I will reel it back in. So I want to I want to ask you about your experience with something that I saw a film of. Yes. Um, because it looked terrifying to me. I was looking, so I I, you know, I look at that Ferris wheel they had, and and I'm like, this looks old, but you know, it's small. How how bad is it? And then I saw film of it moving, and it was it was like going at lightning fast speed. Is that really what it was like?

Pete 46:03

That is really what it was like. I think it's one because it's based off of uh the older state fair style of um Ferris wheels. Yeah. Uh and those were not meant as a passive ride initially. Yeah. Uh there, I mean, when Mr. Ferris first did his wheel, it was meant to be an observatory. Yeah. Get up in the wheel, get a good view, come back down. But over time, because of scenic railways and uh roller coasters and hurdy-girdies, uh, it became fierce competition. So they made the Ferris wheels smaller, yeah, faster. So you get the impression of going up and backwards and up and backwards. Oh, it wasn't meant to like, oh wow, this is really nice. It was like, whoa gosh, we're going backwards and up and backwards and up. So it really was kind of terrifying.

Kelly 46:55

That was what it looked like. And I was I was watching this film, I was like, I've never seen a Ferris wheel go that fast. Yeah. And it looks like an erector set.

Pete 47:03

So it really old rickety. Yeah. There's an interesting thing about that Ferris wheel. Oh, yeah. Apparently, there was a guy who's uh he was a freshman at San Jose City College, okay, named uh Jim Backich. Okay, not not Jim Backus, not the voice of Mr.

Kelly 47:20

McGoon.

Pete 47:21

Uh oh, we're gonna ride the Ferris wheel. Oh no, it's not Jim Backus. Jim Backich uh attempted to set a world's record for the longest continuous Ferris wheel ride uh in 1964. I'm sorry, no, 1965, and he vowed to spend two full weeks aboard the park's wheel nonstop. Uh we all have the same question. Why?

Kelly 47:47

Well, no, the question is where did he go to the bathroom?

Pete 47:53

Maybe he Howard Hughes' it, you know, just give me a bottle of milk, I'll be fine. Yeah. Maybe actually maybe that's where they got the idea for the goat bridge in the pennies here. I don't know. Um but uh yeah, so that and I don't know if he actually succeeded in it, but he did make an attempt. Yeah. So uh there was other people who tried to sell uh set world records at Frontier Village. There was somebody who tried to uh uh finish the longest foot propelled scooter journey of a 114 miles from Big Sur, from Big Sur all the way down to Frontier Village. Frontier Village? That was the final that was the final stop. Did he make it? Uh yes, he did. Wow. Uh and and also the lar world's largest pizza, uh-huh. Uh which at the time was four and a half feet in diameter. Why you would eat that, I don't know, but awesome. I'm in. Yeah. Uh so there were there was a lot of these kind of like, hey, it's a theme park. I'm gonna set a world record here and do something silly, you know. Really strange. Yeah. Some of the things, but that Ferris wheel, I can't imagine being the guy like, I'm gonna go on that thing backwards and go around and around and round and non-stop. It's like I don't know how okay. Yeah, you you go right ahead. He just go right ahead. But it when it opened in in the mid-60s, it was praised as being cleanly, yeah, friendly, yeah, not jam-packed with people all the time, because there was enough space put into it to let people spread out and not be clustered together.

Kelly 49:27

Well, and some of this is is Laurie Holling's design because it's not a big park. And you know, if you consider that Disneyland, the park Disneyland is you know what, something like 150 acres, 200 acres, something like that. Frontier Village was 30. Yeah. I mean, it was small, but the the design was so smart that people didn't seem to notice. Yeah. And you know, I I read very similar things about like it it was just so clean. And one of the things if you if you go to the San Jose Public Library site, there's a bunch of pictures of just employee manuals. Yeah. Which is the kind of stuff that I love. Oh, yeah. I I obsess over that stuff.

Pete 50:15

Oh, yeah. No, because it's a great little window into like, here's how we're gonna here's how we're gonna operate this.

Kelly 50:20

Well, one of the things you really see and you heard about Frontier Village is that uh the employees were treated really well. Yep. And everybody felt involved and invested in the thing. And this is this is similar to Disneyland in the early years, and and it less and less so as it kind of went on. But everyone's memory of working well, everyone that I I read about. Everyone's memory was we were all doing this together. Whatever role you had to do, you did. If you were one of the stunt men and the marshal was sick that day, you're the marshal. And um, you know, they used to have uh as we talked about gunfights on the street, and and they and they used this was another thing on my dangerous list, they actually used real cult single action army revolvers, you know, like your papy used in the big war. Oh yeah. And they're just filled with black powder blanks and uh double barrel shotguns filled with black powder banks.

Pete 51:20

They were terrifying.

Kelly 51:21

Yeah, yeah. I mean, real real honest to God guns. If someone put a bullet in there, you'd die. But um they did they did these shootouts and nobody died. Everyone enjoyed it.

Pete 51:31

I almost did. Did you? I ran out because when you're a four-year-old kid, you're an idiot. Yeah. I was running, I saw a grandma, you know, because this this would happen right in the middle on on Main Street. So they had different streets. You had California Street, Front Street, Nevada Street, and Main Street. Yeah. And um I saw I was in the Penny Arcade, which is right opposite the Marshall's office, which is usually where the shootout would take place. Yeah. Was in this little Main Street square. And it's opposite of where people could put their lockers, you know. Yeah. But I was they had a Nickelodeon, so they had a penny arcade, they had the like little claw machines, all the kind of stuff that would be available at the time, and um mutoscopes and stuff. Yeah. Um, you know, and fortune-telling machines. And I saw my grandma and I ran across the street right as the guys are starting to go bam, bam to each other. Oh man. So I was like, oh my god. And my grandma grabbed me and yanked me off the street. Wow. Uh, because I was right in the line of fire of these things. Oh, geez. And I remember just being like a lot of little kids. Oh, they're so loud. Yeah, it's very, very loud. I remember that. Yeah. Um, but my favorite memory of that though is like being fascinated by this and watching it, and then they arrested Black Bart, you know, the bad guys. They did every day. Every day. Yeah. And they take him over to the marshal's office and put him in into jail. Yeah. And then grandma and I go over and we went over to the Last Chance casino, which was like a, it was pretty much, you know, they had some games in there, but it was mostly like, let's go get a hot dog. Yeah. And as we're walking out, I see Black Bart casually walking out of the marshal's office. Uh-huh. And my little four-year-old righteous indignation kicked in, and I rushed right in, going, guys, you let the bad guy go. He's getting away. Like I'm yelling, like, go get him. And he's like, no, he's fine. He's, you know, like one of the guys like they kind of went, uh-oh. You can totally see him trying to save face. Like, he's totally reformed now. You know, he's we reformed him. And I go, in 10 minutes, like I'm four years old, going, in ten minutes, go get him. You know, like, come on, sheriff, go get the bad guy. Recidivism. Right. Rapido Fander. That's one bonehead name, but that ain't me no more. Ocasine.

Kelly 53:50

Yeah, and and I actually I saw some stuff where I occasionally they would um engage kids to both catch Blackbard and imprison him. Yep. Or sometimes kids would really would free him. Like they'd hold a jailbreak and let him out. That's cool. Um, which is just I think part of the charm of this. But one of the things I was getting at with the gunfights and and how how the staff of that park worked was they would have a gunfight, someone would get shot and die. Yeah. And undertakers would come with a big wheelbarrow, put the guy in the wheelbarrow, and cart him off. Yeah. So that was what they did. The people who did the undertakers were often just the custodial crew. And so they they would they would be sweeping and sweeping, and and and I was reading about this. They would they would be sweeping, the gunfight would start, they would walk into an area, drape an undertaker's outfit on, walk out, pick up the body, take it away, go back and put their custodial uniform back on. And then fill in a part. Yeah, and go do it. This was how that park seemed to work. And I think this is part of people's affection for it. Was there was just a real sense of we're all doing this together to make this experience magical.

Pete 55:08

Mm-hmm.

Kelly 55:08

It was a yeah, it was a collective playtime. I saw I saw uh a few great pieces where they were talking about building you know, the there was a an area, the schoolhouse museum. Yes. Which was a big schoolhouse kind of up on a hill. It was a bell you could ring. And originally the idea was that they were gonna basically build it as like a wax museum. So you would go in and there'd be wax kids, which is pretty creepy when you think about it.

Pete 55:35

I'm creeped out now.

Kelly 55:36

And and so there was a guy working on it, and he talks about like he's he's there doing some stuff, and and Laurie Hollings is there, and they're just they're putting planks up together, and they're they're putting the rope in, and he's like, Hey Lori, I've got an idea. Why don't we do this not with kids, but we do it as kind of like just as if the kids are all outside, and it's you can just tour what a schoolhouse was like, and Hollings is like, Yeah, that sounds good, let's do that. And and that's just how this place was built.

Pete 56:06

Yeah.

Kelly 56:06

Like the designer, the guy who worked on King Kong and helped build parts of Disneyland and worked on Playland at the beach, is just standing there going, sure, construction guy, I like your idea. Let's go with it.

Pete 56:19

Grab a hammer, start banging away. Yeah, let's do it. Yeah. I I want to bring up some of the rides. Yes. Um there's a couple that are pretty standards. They had the merry-go-pready standard. A lot of very standards. You had the the the ridiculously fast Ferris wheel. Yep. You had the uh merry-go-round, uh-huh. You had Stampede, which is a classic, you know, whirly-girly kind of thing.

Kelly 56:46

Yeah.

Pete 56:46

Where you're zipping around backwards.

Kelly 56:48

Yeah, sort of a mixer twister kind of. It's a mixer twister.

Pete 56:52

Yeah. Uh but the actual what I love to call a swirl and hurl uh was called the sidewinder. And it was it's one of those things that has the big you know, half dome that's built over you. You're spinning around. Yeah. Um, I'm not I can't remember the actual name of what that type of ride is. It's like a tilt a whirl. Tilta whirl, that's it. It's a tilt-whirl. Uh but one of, I mean, obviously one of my favorites uh was the Lost Dutchman mine ride.

Kelly 57:19

Yeah, I wish I could find better pictures of this because it looked really cool and it seemed to have this interesting mixture of uh sort of just a a haunted dark ride, but also kind of the Rainbow Caverns mind train feel from Disneyland. Yep.

Pete 57:38

Um That's exactly it. You got to ride it? I got to ride it. I I still have distinct memories of it, and it actually led to my career as a haunted house designer. Whoa. So um I went this was my first experience on any sort of haunted dark ride was the Lost Dutchman ride, not the haunted mansion.

Kelly 57:58

Yeah.

Pete 57:58

I I got to ride the Haunted Mansion when I was five, when I was three and four, because we went to Frontier Village so much. Right, because it was close. Yeah, it was cheap. Yeah, it was it was cheap, it was down the street from grandma and grandpa's house. So I could, you know, and grandma and grandpa would take me all the time, Grandpa Jim. And um, who plays a little minor part during the demise of this park, by the way.

Kelly 58:19

Interesting, okay.

Pete 58:20

But the Frontier Mine, Lost Dutchman Mine, yeah, uh is a blending of rainbow caverns, a little bit of haunted mansion, yeah, and just a little bit of nature's wonderland, all kind of mixed together. And uh when I was done writing this thing, I was so inspired that I tell this infamous story uh about my origin stories as a haunt designer where I took two card tables and stretched a piece of cloth over it and charged money where I had you know a haunted tunnel, you know, a cardboard sign. But I made it look, it was very much inspired by the Lost Dutchman ride. I had those memories. Okay. Um, but the interior of it was all black light. Yeah. Um, not very elaborate sets, yeah, except for the equivalent of the of the rainbow caverns. Right. Because they, you know, they have you know a lot of concrete stalagmites and stalactites and some pools filled with UV reactive water, uh, which we talked about the origins of UV paint previously. Yep. Um, but they had a a skeleton with a TNT box, and he would, you know, that was your escape was you know, the the thing, the plunger would come down and you would blow up and you get out with red flashing lights. Yeah. That was the end of that. Um, but it was very, very short. And the Dutchman Minor was creepy as hell because it did not look realistic at all. I'm showing Kelly a picture of it.

SPEAKER_06 59:46

Oh my god, it's that's horrible.

Pete 59:48

Yeah, it it's if if you have any familiarity with uh Kilroy was here as an emblem, yeah. Just put a giant Gabby Hayes beard on him and a Wild West hat, and that's the Lost Dutchman. He was hideous. But there were a lot of skeletons. Uh yeah, there was this drowning guy that was made out of concrete. Oh, I saw a picture of that. Yeah.

Kelly 1:00:11

You know, it was actually an interesting effect. It's it kind of is.

Pete 1:00:14

I don't know how it looks under the black lights, but uh you know, even as a kid, some of the stuff you just like, meh, meh. Ooh, skeleton, that's cool. Yeah, ooh, that's cool. But you wrote in minecarts.

Kelly 1:00:26

Yeah, and I saw some of because they had some film of them outside, and and they were pretty cool, actually.

Pete 1:00:33

Yeah, they were just they were kind of not quite minecars, they were just like mine boxes.

Kelly 1:00:37

Yeah, they're they were like little boxes, but but the the track they were on was super thin. It was using some sort of bumper detection thing. I don't I don't really understand.

Pete 1:00:48

It is the same uh ride conveyance uh uh design as the Alice in Wonderland ride.

Kelly 1:00:55

Okay, okay, yeah, makes sense.

Pete 1:00:58

In which it follows a narrow track, and yeah, the the inner parts bump and go, okay, we're gonna go over here, go over here, go over here. So you're kind of doing this back and forth wobbling thing as you're rounding corners. Right. Uh so again, it's another kidney stone uh clearer. Uh and yeah, it it I it's delightful. It was just a very simple, delightful ride. Uh and then, of course, the one that I loved as a kid uh were the old time cars. Yeah, the antique autos. Yep, antique autos. They were really cool because you really got the feeling when you were steering, you really were steering. It was on a track. Right. So you couldn't veer too far off, but you could bump and and zip back and forth. So it was like Autopia. Yeah. But with you know, great race style cars that made the but and it hit you had the old squeeze bulb horns on but as you're going around this, you know, and it would intersect with the burrow track, so that you know the burrows are looking at you like, hey they. Yeah, you know, and then I mean it was it was crazy, and it was a very small track, you know, and you run alongside the the train. And then you had a couple of other rides like the Roundup, which is one of those spinning tilt-a-whirl things. And right. But then you have Indian Gyms war canoes.

Kelly 1:02:21

Yeah. And uh real quick, I wanted to say the guy that uh did the recreation of Frontier Village in his backyard actually bought two of those antique autos. He owned, owns them. Oh, that's so cool. That's cool. That is cool. But yeah, I there was there was the the Indian war canoes, and there was Indian Island, which I didn't exactly understand what that was.

Pete 1:02:45

It literally was an island where they kept Indians. And and I'm and I'm I'm not making a joke. Like that you would not see any sort of reference to Native Americans or or or Indians as they were referred to back then. Right. Yeah.

Kelly 1:02:59

Um one thing I could not figure out from pictures, and maybe you can tell me this.

Pete 1:03:04

Yes.

Kelly 1:03:05

Um so I saw people dressed as Native Americans on the island. Yep. I don't know what they were doing, but I could not figure out if these were white people dressing as Native Americans, or if they had hired people with actual native heritage.

Pete 1:03:26

Um do you remember the memories I have are embarrassing.

unknown 1:03:34

Okay.

Pete 1:03:36

For you or for them? Yes. Uh because you have to keep in mind when the when the park closed, I was six years old. Yeah, so it's so it's you know, I have to go off of my memory. Um but I do remember one person of color. Uh-huh. In Indian village. Okay. In the Indian Island. They had these giant concrete teepees, you know, and uh I mean they were canvas, but they had soaked them with fiberglass, so like with last the weather and so forth. Yeah. Uh and I always remember Indian Island being very hot.

Kelly 1:04:10

Yeah.

Pete 1:04:10

I I have distinct memories of going, I don't want to be here. Because they had the trading post and they had the archery thing, and I just was like, get me out of here. I don't want to be here.

Kelly 1:04:18

Yeah, and I wonder if I I mean, there's probably a lot of reasons that that Indian Island is not particularly represented in photos and stuff that I saw. One is probably it's just uncomfortable. But the other one I have to wonder, like I heard over and over people talking about how cool, like temperature-wise, Frontier Village was. Yes. Um, and a lot of that had to do with you had hundred-year-old trees. Yeah. Because thanks to Laurie Hollings, who did not cut very many of them down. Yeah. Um, but I have to wonder if maybe that's another reason that the Indian Island wasn't represented, was people didn't like to go there because it was hot. This month at Boardwalk Times is all about succession. Editor-in-chief Zach Perelstein presents a four-part series about who might take over the CEO slot after the once-in-future Bob steps down. Hey, here at the Lowdown on the Plus Hub, we really appreciate you listening to our show. It really means a lot to us. We also want to remind you that election day is coming up on November 5th. Get out there and exercise your right to vote. It's really important. And hey, if you happen to be at Disneyland over the next few weeks, ask them about the Halloween tree in Frontierland. It's a pretty good story.

Pete 1:05:51

Um, and I think that's why in the 70s, that's when another park would rear its head. San Jose. Marriott's Great America. Right. And part of the appeal of Marriott's Great America was its proximity to 1976. Because the whole the whole premise was America's great. You know, we got this. Oh, Frontier Village has a uh has one Mary Garound. We got a two-story one. Yeah. We've got this, we got, and we got Bugs Bunny.

Kelly 1:06:23

Yeah, which is is interesting because Frontier Village had original characters. Yes, it did. For a while. And um they were cool, I thought. Yeah. Oh yeah. And you know, I I am the kind of guy that that is fascinated by this sort of thing. I I also I love rides like the Lost Dutchman Mine Train or The Cave at Six Flags Over Texas. Oh, yeah. Or the cave train and at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. I love those kind of things. Yeah. I I love like weird dark rides with original properties. Yeah, absolutely. Neat stuff. Yeah. But yeah, they had Theodore Bear, uh-huh. Uh, which was just a kind of cute bear character. They had, I really love this one, Tumbleweed the Gold Digger. Yep. Who is sort of a Yosemite Sam kind of looking thing, but but really pretty adorable when you look at him. Mm-hmm. And they had Cactus Kong. Cactus Kong. Which, what were they thinking?

unknown 1:07:25

Yes.

Kelly 1:07:26

Cactus Kong. He's showing me a picture and it's in black and white, which doesn't do it justice because neon green gorilla. Yes. Like super bright.

Pete 1:07:36

Yeah, a dark green hands, dark green face, with a big 10-gallon hat that was white. Yep. And bright green fur. And if you were Cactus Kong, you were a troublemaker. Yeah. To the point where, not too far away from uh the park, there was a shopping mall called Oak Ridge Mall. Yeah. Yeah. And there was a JCPenney there that used to have there was one of those weird places where the shopping mall would have like a little cafe with a long dining counter. And my mom and I were there, again, we must have been four or five. Yeah. We're going to go shopping at Monkey Wards or something like that. So we went to JCPenney to go get something to eat. And all of a sudden there's this banging on the window behind me. Yeah. And there's Cactus Kong trying to get my attention. Hey, kid, you know. And he's like, you know, waving at me, and I'm like, ugh, freaking out. Yeah. And then I was like, hey, it's Cactus Kong. And like, you know, he came into the diner and it was like trying to interact with kids. And he had a minder who was like passing out Frontier Village flyers. They were trying to drum up business. Right. Because they were trying to do more public appearances. Because this is the same era in which McDonald's would have the hamburglar show up and start stealing cheeseburgers in a restaurant with an audience. And when Toys R Us would have you line up to meet Skeletor and Dr. Zaeus from Planet of the Apes. So Cactus Kong, wow. Yeah. That's all I gotta say. It was it was like, I don't know why, but it worked. People have distinct memories of the green gorilla. Oh, it's it's shocking to look at. It's like, whoa. It's terrifying, but at the same time, it's like this kind of cool. Like in in retrospect, I think, I kind of want to make a replica of a Cactus Kong outfit so I could wear that. Well, and and I you know, out to dinner.

Kelly 1:09:31

I love that by the time they hit the 70s, they had they they had started building this mythology. Yeah. The park had its own mythology. And so it had these characters that that sort of fit into it. It had the the gunfighter western characters, and there was kind of loosely an ongoing story with them. Oh, yeah. Much like you see in like Ghost Town Alive at Knott's still these days, where like if you went enough, you could kind of see a progression with what these characters did, who they were, and like the Marshall gets replaced at one point, and there's a backstory as to why. And it's it's super interesting. Yeah. And then a lot of this gets kind of tossed out the door uh in the late 70s. Yes. And the reason, it's very interesting. The reason that it gets tossed out the door is that the owner, Zoucan, so he's got this extra land. He could pretty much double the size of his park. Sure. And so he goes to his investors and says, I want to double the size of the park. Uh, we've got this competitor down the road, it's becoming a problem. And the the investors won't do it. So what Zoucan does, and and this is it actually is a really smart move. He sells the park to this other company. He sells it to a group uh bunch of developers called Rio Grande Industries. Oh, yes. And and this sounds bad, but it's actually not bad. It's it's actually a pretty smart move. Rio Grande keeps him on to run the park. And Rio Grande owns a company called Aero Development. And so what Rio Grande wants to do is they want to keep Frontier Village as a theme park, expand it. They they're willing to put the money in, and they want to use it as a kind of proving ground for Aero Development's new theme park attractions. Like this is a huge win-win. Yeah. Right? Absolutely. You've got the original management, the one that's built this like family-friendly, self-uh sustaining infrastructure. You've got this company that is like the number one maker of theme park vehicles in the world. Right. And they want to come in and take this park and really, you know, flex its muscle a little bit. Yeah. And it's a great idea. One of the things that comes to this, and this is why I started this story, one of the things that comes with this is Rio Grande brings in new characters. And so for the last couple of years of Frontier Village's life, the old ones, they're replaced by Hannah Barbera characters.

Pete 1:12:30

Yep. Jabberjaw, Fred Flintstone.

Kelly 1:12:33

Weak straw.

Pete 1:12:34

Yeah.

Kelly 1:12:35

And Scooby-Doo.

Pete 1:12:36

Scooby-Doo, Huckleberry Hound.

Kelly 1:12:38

You bet. All of it. And so that's okay, but it is a little bit sad because you lose a lot of the original property that that the park itself had developed. But maybe it's going to be worth it. So they go in and they start pushing for this development, but San Jose has changed a lot. Yes, it has. Especially in that particular region. Yeah. And they are surrounded on all sides by residential areas. Yep. And the residents in the area, they don't want the park to expand. And they fight it and they fight it and they fight it. I actually saw a short documentary online where a guy went through some of the documents that were being presented. And Frontier Village, they and Rio Grande Industries, they did all of these studies and they just showed over and over again that expanding the park was going to be pretty good for the area. But the residents just fought and fought and fought, and they eventually just gave up.

Pete 1:13:36

Yep. And one of the people that was interviewed for those studies about how it affect the real estate prices were a pair of owners of a little fledgling real estate company called New Almaden Development Corporation, run by Robert and Jim Overstreet. It was like a quick little like, what do you think? What would it do? And they knew that their son and grandson loved the place. Yeah. So, like, yeah, it would actually improve some of the value here and so forth. Oddly enough, it was because of what was happening in that area uh that my father would eventually say, uh, it's time to move someplace. Oh. And he would buy land uh down in Gilroy. Yeah. And that's where we would move not too long after uh Frontier Village shut down.

Kelly 1:14:29

Oh wow.

Pete 1:14:29

The same year, within roughly about 10 to 15 days, Frontier Village closes and I and we move out.

Kelly 1:14:36

So 1980.

Pete 1:14:37

1980.

Kelly 1:14:38

Yeah, it would be late, late 1980s.

Pete 1:14:40

Yeah. Yeah. And I loved how they promoted the end of this park. Yes. The final roundup, and they did something extraordinary. They still had that kind of local quality to it. They made this great commercial.

SPEAKER_06 1:14:54

Oh, did you see the one where the guy's like locked into prison?

Pete 1:14:57

Yes. Yes, that's so great. And I remember that commercial distinctly because I would watch that on Captain Cosmic on Channel 2, KTV U2. Yeah. And Captain Cosmic was still on the air, played by Bob Wilkins, uh-huh, who was also the host of Creature Features, their late night monster movie show. And there's this guy in pretty much a like an escape from Alcatraz prison uniform, dungarees, you know, and he's like, Frontier Village is about to close forever. Yeah. Better get your tickets now. I won't be able to. And all of a sudden, like this jail cell closes around him. I get out in October. You know, you're like, and he looks all sad, like, you better. It's like, we better get tickets, otherwise, we're gonna go to jail. Like, you know, that was my impression. It's like, we better get him out of jail and get tickets, you know.

SPEAKER_06 1:15:46

I saw that commercial just the other day, and I was like, that is the weirdest ad campaign.

Pete 1:15:51

It's like one step short of like the owner of the park looking in the camera and giving boo-boo lip. Yeah. You know, please buy please come and buy tickets for our park. We're about to close, boo-boo, boo. Well, you know.

Kelly 1:16:05

And people did.

Pete 1:16:06

Yes, they did. Uh so many people came. It looked like Miller's outposts threw up in the park. Yes. There were so many puff jackets and western shirts and tight jeans. I mean, so 1980. It was it was like a Marlboro ad had come to life. Yeah, it was it was astonishing. Crazy. Yeah.

Kelly 1:16:24

Well, they were saying at one point like 30,000 people a day were coming. And you know, for perspective, so Disneyland four or five times bigger than that park. If Disneyland hit 80,000 people, they would shut the park. Yeah. They would stop taking admissions. So you've got nearing half of that for a park that is like a fraction of the size. Yeah. A fraction of that size. But people, again, they're so emotionally connected to Frontier Village. We went.

Pete 1:16:58

I mean, I remember my parents taking me, it's like, we got it one last time, let's go do it. And we and it was the first time that I as a kid got to dictate when we left. Yeah. You know, my parents are like, Did you ride everything? Did you ride everything you wanted to ride? I want to do the Dutchman one more time. Yeah. And I felt so sad because it was like I knew the Dutchman was not going to be there ever again. So yeah, it was it was heartbreaking because Great America was fun, but it was so big. Yeah. And there was something strangely impersonal about it that they've never been able to shake. And I worked at that park. I I worked when it when it became Paramount's Green America. Yeah. Uh I played a Klingon. Very short summer job. It was not easy when you're boiling your buns off on you know in a neoprene and and plether outfit going kapla for six hours a day. You're like, I'm done. So I did not last long. But that park is really, really huge and it's very impersonal. And it just they just didn't know how to keep it family friendly because it became the teenagers park. And with the teenagers and the demographics of that area that surrounded Great America, it started to get kind of a seedy attitude that we never could shake. Whereas Frontier Village was always, always family friendly and safe.

Kelly 1:18:15

Frontier Village never tried to be anything other than what it was. Yeah. All the way to the end. Like, like you saw, if you you know, you were there, I saw footage of it. Like they were still going full bore being exactly who they were up until the last day.

Pete 1:18:34

Yep. Yep. And then not long after, not long after, uh, they started tearing it apart. Yeah. When they shut it down, they tore it apart, they auctioned off the rides, all of the antique automobiles got sold off. Yeah. Um, the train got sold off, everything, bits and pieces just kind of scattered to the wind. Right. And I think that's another tragedy of it all. It was just so uh there was kind of a scattering of all that that was kind of very, very sad.

Kelly 1:19:01

The uh the merry-go-round I saw went to Santa's village. Yep. Um until Santa's Village closed down. Though though I understand that's reopened.

Pete 1:19:10

Yep, it's it's coming back, which is pretty great.

Kelly 1:19:13

Yeah. You know, it's it's interesting, and you s you even see it in that that ad for um the final days with the jail ad, which is so funny. And it's just like they never lost their sense of humor. They never lost the the the almost kind of dark sense of humor that comes with doing Western shows.

Pete 1:19:34

Yep.

Kelly 1:19:34

They just stayed kind of true to their mission all the way through.

Pete 1:19:39

Aaron Ross Powell And I think that's it. And like it never wavered. And I think that was that constancy of this local park that people could locally believe in, locally go to, and say, this is a piece of us.

Kelly 1:19:49

Yeah.

Pete 1:19:50

This is our thing.

Kelly 1:19:51

And I I think I what seems to me to be true is that if the Rio Grande Aero Development Plan had worked, if if the neighborhoods had and and I I'm not I'm not casting judgment on what the residents there did. No. Like I I don't know the situation, I don't know what it would have been like, I don't know what they were worried about. But if that plant had gone through, I think Frontier Village would have become kind of a powerhouse.

Pete 1:20:20

It could have been.

Kelly 1:20:22

They were also, as as part of that, they were not only going to expand into like the rest of the 60 acres that they had, but they were also going to they there was a drive-in theater attached to the back of it. Yep. And they were going to knock that out and turn that into theme park too. And it was I think Frontier Village would have been a force to be reckoned with. I think so too. But it just didn't it didn't work. They had to close it down.

Pete 1:20:47

Yeah. I mean it makes you wonder.

Kelly 1:20:48

So wait, before we do this, I I just want I want to throw one more thing very quickly about Laurie Hollings. Oh yeah, go for it. I made a note about this. One of the things that they found after Laurie and his wife passed away, they they lived into the up until the 1990s. Wow. They moved to Mesa, Arizona and lived there. One of the things that they found was that Laurie Hollings had books after books after books of pictures of playland at the beach from like the 1930s. And no one's exactly sure why Laurie Hollings. I mean, he he did work there, but it is clear that a lot of these pictures were taken by someone else at times when he wasn't there. And there's some belief that the owner who seemed to really have an affection towards Hollings just gave them to him. That makes sense. Yeah. But if you see pictures of Playland at the beach now, and um the especially from that earlier period, because you know you still see some 50s and 60s stuff, but if you especially that earlier period, almost inevitably they came out of Laurie Hollings collection. So our idea of what that was, of what Playland at the Beach in the 30s and 40s was, we have that because of Laurie Holling. That's so cool. Otherwise, there's barely any documentation at all. Wow.

Pete 1:22:20

Well, we're gonna have to reach out to his estate and do a little research so we can do another show just on Playland at the beach.

Kelly 1:22:27

A lot of it is kept in a couple of different libraries. Um the San Jose library has a lot of Laurie Hollings. Oh, cool. Yeah, cool, cool.

Pete 1:22:36

Anyway, I just wanted to get that in because I know that was really significant. And it's a nice little teaser for a future show. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. So I don't know if you've had a chance to think about this, uh, but what would your plus up be regarding Frontier Village?

Kelly 1:22:55

Yeah. So you know, the easy choice here, I have had a little time to think about it. Um the easy choice here is obviously to say my plus up would be that the Aero Development Deal went through and they carried through with those plans and continued to be the wonderful park that they were, you know, throughout the years. Yeah. But that didn't happen. And what I would like to say is I would like to use them as an object lesson to give a plus up to Disneyland. And my plus up is that the people at Disneyland and and the people at Universal and the people at Cedar Fair and Six Flags, go take a look at what worked there. Go take a look at how people were treated and how invested the staff was and how people, you know, the staff felt like they were family, and then they made the guests feel like they were family. And that's how people grew so attached to Frontier Village. Go look at what worked there and do that in your park.

Pete 1:24:09

I feel like you're about to plug Abigail's army.

Kelly 1:24:14

We don't know anything about Abigail's army. We don't talk about Abigail's army. We uh we we have never met anyone that knows anything about Abigail's army.

Pete 1:24:24

Yeah, that's a great one. That's a great plus up, and it's a great suggestion because I agree with that wholeheartedly. I mean, that makes perfect sense. It's it's something that an object lesson that I think Disney really does need to learn now more than ever.

Kelly 1:24:36

It's that is and you still see it at at the parks, but it is now an individual's volition to push outside of their role to bring that magic to the role. And sometimes they get squashed down. They do. Um and so, you know, but that should be part of the culture.

Pete 1:24:55

Agreed.

Kelly 1:24:55

Yeah.

Pete 1:24:56

Agreed. Um so my my plus up is is along those lines a little bit where uh the real grand development would have happened, also in my scenario. But how would you expand a park of Frontier Village when the Western was already starting? Like we're approaching the 80s. Yeah. The Western is not as popular. Right. There was a nightclub called the Saddle Rack, not too far from Frontier Village. Is this gonna get dirty, P. No. Okay, but you know, but it was it was a total urban cowboy mechanical bull style. Yeah, you know, joint. Yeah. We got both types of music here, country and western. Um, but it's uh so there was definitely a target audience in San Jose that could sustain the western part, sure, but not the burgeoning Silicon Valley spread that was rapidly happening in that area. Yeah. Um and southern San Jose at throughout the 80s and 90s rapidly became the suburbs where the service workers lived. Very much like lower working middle class families were living in that area. And then all of the wealthier people were moving closer and closer to Mountain View, Palo Alto, and some parts of Santa Clara, or moving into suburbs like Morgan Hill and Gilroy. Yeah. But I think if I was part of the X that expansion, which I was way too young to be a part of, but I let's let's ignore that for a minute. I would we would I would say like, let's continue with the notion of frontier. Yeah. What other frontiers are there? Yeah. How about the frontier of space? Yeah. How about the frontier of science? How about the frontier of exploration? You know, there are many different frontiers that you could run into and still maintain a delightful theme with it, yeah, with that same kind of family atmosphere kind of approach. Yeah. And I think that that would have been m my uh suggestion in uh the alternate reality where this park still existed. Yeah. It's like, well, yeah, you get to still have the Wild West, and that's the opening, but have other frontiers. Yeah. You know, the jungle frontier in an area have a jungle area, have a space area. Yes, I know we're starting to tread into the Disney area.

Kelly 1:27:17

Yeah, it's like we're starting to build Disneyland.

Pete 1:27:19

But you know what? That's kind of appropriate because that's kind of how this whole park started. That's right. So, like Yeah.

Kelly 1:27:24

Well, you know, and and I still love Disneyland, and I think Disneyland did a lot of these things for a long time. Yep. Um, but when you're talking about frontiers, it's very interesting because I think of frontiers as an optimistic idea. Yes. In in and and it it doesn't quite fit the mold all the time, but but I think of it as possibility.

Pete 1:27:50

It's a human experience. Right. The frontier is actually a human notion of the possibility of what what is this really about? It's it's the road less traveled, and that's kind of how that whole park always felt. Well, I think this is a marvelous place for us to stop. Yeah. To all of our friends out there from the San Jose area who remember this. This this episode's for you. Yep. All my fellow San Joseans. Yep. Uh or ho San Jose Jelinos, I don't know, or San Joseans. I don't know. I don't know. San Joseans. Uh I I should be ashamed of myself for saying that because I'm from there.

Kelly 1:28:23

Um but anyhow. Yeah, and I, you know, the thank you, Danica, for suggesting this. Thank you, Danica. And uh everyone listening, you know, please refer us to other people. Let's other parks. Yeah. Yeah. And and and let us know what you're interested in. Let us know if you've got some plus ups that that you think are better than ours, because maybe they are.

Pete 1:28:44

Maybe they are. Absolutely. And if you worked at the park, let us know if you like this broadcast. If you worked there at one time and one of those people, we'd love to hear from you. So thank you so much. Yeah. All right. Well, I'm Peter Overstreet. And I'm Kelly McCoven. And you've been listening to The Low Down on the Plus Up.

Kelly 1:29:10

We hope you've enjoyed this episode of The Lowdown on the Plus Up. If you have, please tell your friends where you found us. And if you haven't, we can pretend this never happened and need not speak of it again. For a lot more thoughts on theme parks and related stuff, check out my writing for Boardwalk Times at Boardwalk Times.net. Feel free to reach out to Pete and I on our Lowdown on the Plus Up Facebook group or send us a message directly at comments at lowdown-plus-up.com. We really want to hear about how you'd plus these attractions up and read some of your ideas on the show. Our theme music is Goblin Tinker Soldier Spy by Kevin McLeod at Incompitech.com. We'll have a new episode out real soon. Why? Because we like you.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:38

Don't you miss it? I will. I won't get out until October.