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ENCHANTED FOREST |
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On Sunday, Aug. 14, 1955, Enchanted Forest opened its doors in Ellicott City, Maryland. It was the state's first theme park and missed by less than a month being the first theme park in America - Disneyland opened Sunday, July 17, 1955. With no mechanical rides, just the familiar characters and stories of childhood fairytales and fables, the park had a fanciful allure, which regretfully did not last long.
It only took a couple decades before the park closed. A brief reopening in the early 1990s proved unsuccessful. Perhaps the theme park's greatest exposure was in the 1990 Johnny Depp movie "Crybaby. Crews fixed up parts of the park and recreated its 1955 grand opening for a scene in the film. Today a shopping center has been built on acreage adjacent to the park, which must have once been its parking lot.
Just beyond the bank and grocery store, a metal fence rings the remains of the park. Cinderella's castle sits oddly in the shadow of a pet store and a line of gingerbread men stares out at the modern world from the overgrown and dilapidated theme park. A recent, midnight visit to Enchanted Forest revealed much of the park and many of the original 1955 attractions are still intact. Vines twist up castle turrets, grass has filled in what was once a children's fishing pool and once brilliant paint has faded with the memory of the forgotten park.
The park has been fairly well looted - anything that wasn't bolted down, nailed to a wall or cemented into the earth has been taken. Memorabilia and props from Enchanted Forest pop up in online auctions every now and again as the park moves into regional cult status. A friend brought along an electromagnetic field (EMF) meter, just in the off-chance Enchanted Forest may actually be enchanted by more than the lingering presence of Mother Goose, Humpty Dumpty and the like.
Unfortunately, the EMF meter went on and off sporadically as we meandered through the park and the few times it did register a reading it probably had more to do with operator error or our cell phones than it did with an otherworldly presence. The only unusual encounter of the evening, beside bumping into some gingerbread men when trying to mark my territory behind a tree, was a cat perched atop Mother Goose. The photograph was snapped with the intent of preserving an image of the immense goose, but the flash captured the unmistakable eyeshine of a feral feline.
There is currently a movement underway to save what remains of Enchanted Forest. An Ellicott City group had started a petition to preserve the park, possibly by getting it on the National Historic Registry. There were even rumblings of rehabilitating the park to open it once again to the public. However, when vandalism and thievery worsened at the old park, the owner of the property, which also owns the shopping center, agreed to donate what was left. Clark's Elioak Farm in Ellicott City gathered volunteers and transplanted many of the original pieces from the Enchanted Forest onto its own property not far from the original site. Help is still needed to move and rehabilitate what is left, but the farm expected to open an 'enchanted forest' exhibit on its property in spring 2005. |
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