| Location | Howard County, Maryland |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 39°16′49″N76°51′24″W / 39.28028°N 76.85667°W |
| Status | Closed |
| Opened | August 15, 1955 |
| Closed | 1995 [1] |
| Theme | Nursery rhymes and fairy tales |
| Operating season | Summer |
| Attendance | 300,000 |
| Area | 52 acres (210,000 m2) |
The Enchanted Forest was a theme park in Ellicott City, Maryland, on U.S. Route 40 (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 theme. The park featured fairy tale 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-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. [2]
Admission cost one dollar for adults and fifty cents for children. The park expanded from 20 acres (81,000 m2) to 52 acres (210,000 m2). At its peak, the Enchanted Forest welcomed 300,000 children per summer season. [3] 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-anchored Enchanted Forest Shopping Center in 1992, JHP Development reopened the park for the 1994 summer season, predominantly for children's birthday parties.
The park was permanently shuttered from 1995 to 2005, when active preservation began. Much of the theme park sat undisturbed yet neglected behind a chain-link fence. On June 30, 1998, the post office opened the Enchanted Forest branch onsite. [4] 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. [5] 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 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. In 2013, the Howard County Department of Planning and Zoning approved Kimco to build a bank next to the castle site and wetlands by rerouting the stream that ran around the base. [6] In 2015, Martha Clark announced the concrete block Castle would be relocated to Elioak, while the Cinderella Castle and the Gingerbread House would be demolished. [7]
Six Flags Great Adventure is an amusement park located approximately 20 miles southeast of Trenton in Jackson, New Jersey. Owned and operated by Six Flags, the park complex is situated between New York City and Philadelphia and includes a water park named Hurricane Harbor. It first opened to the public as simply Great Adventure in 1974 under the direction of restaurateur Warner LeRoy. Six Flags acquired the park in 1977. The park is located right off of Interstate 195 and is along Monmouth Road.
Tokyo Disneyland is a 115-acre (47 ha) theme park at the Tokyo Disney Resort in Urayasu, Chiba Prefecture, Japan, near Tokyo. Its main gate is directly adjacent to both Maihama Station and Tokyo Disneyland Station. It was the first Disney park to be built outside the United States and it opened on April 15, 1983. The park was constructed by WED Enterprises in the same style as Magic Kingdom in Florida and Disneyland in California. It is owned by The Oriental Land Company, which licenses intellectual property from The Walt Disney Company. Tokyo Disneyland and its companion park, Tokyo DisneySea, are the only Disney parks in the world not owned or operated by The Walt Disney Company in any capacity.
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Hickory Ridge is one of the 10 villages in Columbia, Maryland, United States, located to the west of the Town Center with a 2014 population of 13,000 in 4,659 housing units. The village overlays the former postal community of Elioak. It was first occupied in 1974. Neighborhoods in the village are Hawthorn, Clary's Forest, and Clemens Crossing. The name Hickory Ridge is derived from the 1749 estate "Hickory Ridge" in nearby Highland, which later became the family home of the nephew of hospital and university founder Johns Hopkins.
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Prince Charming Regal Carousel is a carousel in the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney World Resort. A similar attraction under a different name can be found at Tokyo Disneyland. It plays organ-based versions of Disney music during the two-minute ride period. Hand-painted scenes from Cinderella can be seen on the top; hence the name "Prince Charming".
The Enchanted Forest is an amusement park located in Turner, Oregon, on a small patch of hilly wooded land next to Interstate 5, just south of Salem, Oregon. The park was created and hand built by Roger Tofte over a period of seven years in the late 1960s. The park first opened to the public in 1971. Early success led to many expansions over the last half-century, mostly built again by Tofte by hand. The Tofte family still owns and operates the 20-acre (8.1 ha) park, with three generations of the family involved in the day to day operations. The park sees an average of 200,000 guests a year during the normal six-month-long season.
James Clark Jr. was the president of the Maryland State Senate from 1979 to 1983.
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The Enchanted Forest — Water Safari is an amusement park/water park. It is the largest water park in New York and is located within Old Forge, in the Adirondack region. It has been rated the number four waterpark in the US.
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. The Clarks, a family with a tradition of farming in Maryland spanning seven generations, have owned the Elioak farm since 1927.
Elioak is an unincorporated community in Howard County, Maryland, United States. It was the home of the "Pushpin Farm", a 200-acre slave plantation purchased in 1724 in the Howard District of Anne Arundel County by Col. Edward Dorsey and which is the site of many prominent Dorsey family graves. The postal community was named after the Elioak plantation built by Owen Dorsey, Judge of the Baltimore Orphans' Court. A postal office operated in the community from 12 June 1893 to 15 September 1922. Local farm orchards were known for prize winning apples and pears. Local families such as the Kahler, Miller, and Worthington claimed Elioak as home while they served in World War I. After the war, the name fell out of use.
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