Page 18 - AAA Every Day – AAA Hudson Valley – May/June 2019

The Story of
Storytown
By John T. Garcia
In 1954, while a Hollywood movie producer named Walt was breaking ground on a theme park in California, Charles Wood, along with his wife Margaret, opened a theme park near Lake George,
New York. Storytown U.S.A. opened with two rides, Cinderella’s Pumpkin Carriage and Swan Boats, as well as other attractions based on Mother Goose stories.
And while plenty of things have changed throughout the years, Wood’s original plan has not. In fact, Storytown U.S.A., now known as Six Flags Great Escape, will be celebrating its 65th
year of fun and
adventure when
it opens for the
season May 10.
The milestone
is quite an
accomplishment.
In a 2003 interview,
Wood said he had
doubts about his
new amusement
park on the eve
of its opening. “I
sat on the Mother
Goose hill and I
cried. I thought,
‘What have I done? I’m not gonna have anybody pay and see what I’ve done,’” he told Funworld Magazine, the official publication of the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions.
He was wrong. People came and they kept coming
and Wood would put his profits back into the park, expanding it and adding attractions. But soon, Wood said, he noticed something peculiar. “I used to stand up on the hill and look down on the cars in the
parking lot, and the men were all smokin’ cigars and leanin’ against their cars, talking to other men,” Wood said in his Funworld Magazine interview.
Wood wanted to convert those men into paying customers, so in 1956 he opened Ghost Town, an interpretation of a western town since cowboys were ubiquitous during the 1950s. Wood noted that the men could even take their son’s to the saloon
for a beer. A root beer, that is, but at least it was a saloon and the men were coming into the park.
That saloon, Dan McGrew’s, is still open and another saloon has been added in Wood’s memory, Charley’s Saloon. Plenty of other attractions also
18 I MAY/JUNE 2019
All photos courtesy of Six Flags Great Escape