Enchanted Forest (Maryland) - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The Enchanted Forest is a now-closed theme park

Amusement park

thumb|Cinderella Castle in [[Magic Kingdom]], [[Disney World]]Amusement and theme parks are terms for a group of entertainment attractions and rides and other events in a location for the enjoyment of large numbers of people...

in Ellicott City, Maryland

Ellicott City, Maryland

Ellicott City is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Howard County, Maryland, United States. It is part of the Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area. The population was 65,834 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Howard County...

, on U.S. Route 40

U.S. Route 40

U.S. Route 40 is an east–west United States highway. As with most routes whose numbers end in a zero, U.S. 40 once traversed the entire United States. It is one of the original 1920s U.S. Highways, and its first termini were San Francisco, California, and Atlantic City, New Jersey...

(Baltimore National Pike) near the intersection with Bethany Lane. Other theme parks with the same name have since opened elsewhere.

The Enchanted Forest officially opened on August 15, 1955, following a preview party the afternoon before — one month after Disneyland Park's opening. Appealing mostly to families with small children, the park had a nursery rhyme

Nursery rhyme

The term nursery rhyme is used for "traditional" poems for young children in Britain and many other countries, but usage only dates from the 19th century and in North America the older ‘Mother Goose Rhymes’ is still often used.-Lullabies:...

theme. The park featured fairy tale

Fairy tale

A fairy tale is a type of short story that typically features such folkloric characters, such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, dwarves, giants or gnomes, and usually magic or enchantments. However, only a small number of the stories refer to fairies...

buildings and characters, but no mechanical rides originally. Track rides were added later, including the Alice in Wonderland ride with teacup-shaped cars, a Cinderella's castle ride with mice for the cars, the "Little Toot" boat that took children to Mount Vesuvius for giant slides, and the Jungleland Safari which was driven by open Land Rover

Land Rover

Land Rover is a British car manufacturer with its headquarters in Gaydon, Warwickshire, United Kingdom which specialises in four-wheel-drive vehicles. It is owned by the Indian company Tata Motors, forming part of their Jaguar Land Rover group...

-type vehicles. Children's birthday parties were often held in the picnic areas among the attractions; many local teenagers worked as ticket-takers at the park. Unlike many other attractions of the time, the Enchanted Forest was integrated from the day it opened.

Admission was one dollar for adults and fifty cents for children. At opening, the park was 20 acres (80,937.2 m²), but it later expanded to 52 acres (210,436.7 m²). At the height of its popularity, the Enchanted Forest welcomed 300,000 children per summer season. After its original owners, the Harrison family, sold the park for $4.5 million to JHP Development in 1988, the park closed for the first time in 1989. After turning more than half the land (primarily the parking lots) into the Safeway

Safeway Inc.

Safeway Inc. , a Fortune 500 company, is North America's second largest supermarket chain after The Kroger Co., with, as of December 2010, 1,694 stores located throughout the western and central United States and western Canada. It also operates some stores in the Mid-Atlantic region of the Eastern...

-anchored Enchanted Forest Shopping Center in 1992, JHP Development reopened the park for the 1994 summer season, predominantly for children's birthday parties.
From when the park was permanently shuttered in 1995, to 2005 when active preservation began, much of the theme park sat undisturbed yet neglected behind a chain-link fence. In 1999, the Friends of the Enchanted Forest was formed with the goal of reopening the park and then in 2003 the Enchanted Forest Preservation Society was formed with the long-term goal of reviving the Enchanted Forest. Their work focused on preventing the artifacts from being lost forever.

The owner of the land, Kimco Realty Group, agreed in 2004 to allow most of the fairy tale structures and figures to be moved to nearby Clark's Elioak Farm

Clark's Elioak Farm

Clark's Elioak Farm, located along Maryland Route 108 in Howard County, Maryland, is a historic farm covering 540 acres. All of the acreage is part of county or state farmland protection programs, barring use of the property for non-farm development...

for display and preservation. Moving and restoration began in 2005. Contributions were still being welcomed in 2011, although many of the exhibits had been restored and returned to service at the farm.

Appearances in popular culture

Part of the John Waters
John Waters (filmmaker)
John Samuel Waters, Jr. is an American filmmaker, actor, stand-up comedian, writer, journalist, visual artist, and art collector, who rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films...

movie Cry-Baby
Cry-Baby
Cry-Baby is a 1990 American teen musical film written and directed by John Waters. It stars Johnny Depp as 1950s teen rebel "Cry-Baby" Wade Walker, and also features an expansive ensemble cast that includes Amy Locane, Iggy Pop, Traci Lords, Ricki Lake, Kim McGuire, David Nelson, Susan Tyrrell, and...

, released in April 1990 and starring Johnny Depp
Johnny Depp
John Christopher "Johnny" Depp II is an American actor, producer and musician. He has won the Golden Globe Award and Screen Actors Guild award for Best Actor. Depp rose to prominence on the 1980s television series 21 Jump Street, becoming a teen idol...

and Ricki Lake
Ricki Lake
Ricki Pamela Lake is an American actress, producer, and television host. She is best known for her starring role as Tracy Turnblad in the original Hairspray, her ground-breaking documentary film The Business of Being Born, and her talk show which was broadcasted internationally from...

, took place in the Enchanted Forest.
It appears in the horror movie Fear Of Clowns
Fear of Clowns
__FORCETOC__Fear of Clowns is a 2004 horror film about an artist who is seemingly stalked by a killer clown named Shivers the Clown. A 2007 sequel called Fear of Clowns 2 was made.-Plot:...

.
An episode of the TV series Homicide: Life on the Street
Homicide: Life on the Street
Homicide: Life on the Street is an American police procedural television series chronicling the work of a fictional version of the Baltimore Homicide Unit. It ran for seven seasons on NBC from 1993 to 1999, and was succeeded by a TV movie, which also acted as the de-facto series finale...

from season 4, titled "The Hat", was filmed at the Enchanted Forest.
The 2009 novel Closed for the Season by Mary Downing Hahn
Mary Downing Hahn
Mary Downing Hahn is an award-winning American author of young adult novels. Her first published book, The Sara Summer, was released in 1979, when she was forty-one years old. Since then she has written over twenty novels...

was inspired by Hahn's trips to the Enchanted Forest. Photos of the park appear on the book's cover.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.