Fess Parker had turned to real estate after his successful film and television career. One of his dream projects was to open a park. That’s all he wanted, just to open a park. He first tried in Boone County, KY, a bit too close to Cincinnati for the Coney/Taft people’s comfort. Once they heard of the plan, they quickly got to work planning their own park…and shutting all financing off for Parker (Taft was powerful in the region).
Fess tried again in California, setting his sights on acreage in Santa Clara. As part of the process of planning a new amusement area, much research must be done in the way of financial feasibility studies, environmental studies, and so on. I happened to find a copy of the Environmental Impact Statement for Frontier Worlds, dated February 20, 1973. Each section provides details on proposed components for development (specialty shops and restaurants, hotel, industrial park, and the theme park), information on the surrounding area in Santa Clara, future growth expectations, population, transportation, geological features, acoustic impact, and so on. The extensive study was completed in conjunction with ERA (Buzz Price’s outfit, who did nearly everybody’s feasibility studies for years).
Unlike his plans for Kentucky, this park would become reality, to this day throwing open its gates for daily joy and excitement (at least once this Covid virus thing goes away). But Parker would not be part of that. Frustrated with the city and other potential partners such as Ray Kroc of McDonald’s, he sold his idea and the land to Marriott, who was looking to build three nearly identical parks across the country.
Marriott’s Great America, the California version, opened on May 20, 1976, nine days before its slightly larger sibling debuted in Illinois. One day I’ll scan my opening year souvenir map of the California park and post another park tour on the site. For now I want to concentrate on the environmental study, so here are various images I captured from the book (please excuse the less-than-perfect scans…the book binding was really difficult to work with).
