However, the purpose of this essay is not exactly my personal relationship with westward expansion, but my purpose is to illustrate how the narrative of American history has been told in one of the most evocation lands of the Disney parks. I shall also include some unbuilt concepts in this analysis.
In 1953, Walt Disney was designing Disneyland and he wanted each section of the park to represent a facet of the Disney Company. Adventureland, or True-Life Adventureland as it was originally named, was based on the True-Life Adventure series of documentaries. Fantasyland was based on the animated features the Disney empire had crafted since the 1930's. Tomorrowland was based on Walt's brand of futurism. Other lands included a Lilliputian Land, a Holiday Land, and a Main Street based on Walt's childhood hometown. The other major land would be Frontierland and this was Walt's tribute to America's pioneering heritage as well as his way of capitalizing off of the success of the Davy Crockett television show. In 1955, Disneyland opened with Frontierland making a huge impact with the scores of young kids donning coonskin caps after watching the Davy Crockett show.
In fact, Westerns were in vogue in the 1950's and the television amplified their popularity by letting middle America immerse themselves in the days of the Wild West without leaving their living rooms. Shows such as Bonanza, the Lone Ranger, and Gunsmoke were very popular. Films with John Wayne were very popular and this was no mere fad. Let's look at why Westerns might have been popular at this time. After all, we had just went through the Great Depression and then the Second World War, so our desire to connect to the days of the frontier had to be strong, right? Well, not exactly because Westerns had been popular since the early-20th century with the advent of Hollywood, but that's a story for a different day.
The 1955 layout of Frontierland comprised of New Orleans Street, Frontier Street (the Main Street of this land), the Painted Desert, and the Mark Twain steamboat. This fairly simple representation of the American frontier was immediately expanded the following year with the additions of Tom Sawyer's Island, the Mine Train ride with the Rainbow Caverns, and the relocated Indian Village. To represent the West in the lens of 1955-1971 when the Indian Village closed permanently, the addition of the park's sixth land had increased the Southern flavor of Frontierland which had been existent since 1955 and it created a coherent narrative of specific westward expansion. The architecture of New Orleans Square, which had been seen as both a new land and as a Frontierland attraction, was fitting for that junction between the clapboard, false front facades of Frontierland and the visual smorgasbord of colonial and native structures. After all, the area was designed originally to be seen as western from the vantage point of the Disneyland Railroad, but the other side seen by the guests in the land takes on a progression from a western frontier town to a distinctly Southern riverfront.
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| Property of Disney. Sam McKim painted this predecessor to New Orleans Square in 1954 and this area, known as New Orleans Street, was unveiled in July 1955. |
For example, the Swift Plantation restaurant that lasted six years in the approximate location of New Orleans Square had been built in 1955 with a plantation facade similar to the antebellum manors of the South and the back side dressed in a Mexican or Southwestern pueblo-style. By 1963, this restaurant had been closed and demolished for the construction of New Orleans Square.
Actually, the Plantation House was originally included in the original plans for New Orleans Square. However, that was at a time when the planned Pirates' wax museum and haunted house were both designed on a small scale. This was before more ambitious plans had altered the layout of this planned land.
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| Courtesy of Atomic Redhead and Property of Disney. This is a 1957 conceptual layout of New Orleans Square with the Swift Chicken Plantation restaurant in the foreground. The Haunted House and the Pirates Wax Museum were both supposed to be walk-thru attractions. Now that's a true New Orleans Square! |
Over the course of the 1960's, the plans for a New Orleans-themed area at the southern bend of the Rivers of America had evolved from an expansion based off of the environment afforded by both the Plantation House and New Orleans Street into a sub-district with unique attractions and later into a separate, but unified area with the most popular attractions in the Park.
These plans seem like the westward expansion exemplified by Frontierland had been directed southbound with the inclusion of this area and the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction, but it was a logical progression, despite the Southwestern flavor existing mostly in the "Mexican Village" and the Casa de Fritos restaurant, both near the entry corridor of this land. It is mostly logical because it turned that primitive 1955 transition between Frontierland and Adventureland into something to be embraced in terms of being both foreign (after all, the real New Orleans had been occupied by a number of foreign powers before being bought by Jefferson in 1803) and American (New Orleans was one of the biggest commercial hubs in the United States in the 1800's).
It builds on the "harsh facts" of the Louisiana Purchase and the history of America through the 1800's to augment the time period. In fact, the façade of the Pirates of the Caribbean was portrayed by Herbert Ryman as the façade of the Cabildo in New Orleans where the Louisiana Purchase was signed.
For the first five years of New Orleans Square (1966-1971), the panorama of the area can be seen as follows: New Orleans Street with the Pancake House terminates at this flat plaza in front of the manor façade of the Pirates of the Caribbean with the nearby streets of New Orleans Square in their detailed elegance, the outdoor cafes with patrolling jazz musicians, the Frontierland Depot with a Santa Fe Railroad chugging into sight, the pristine Haunted Mansion towering over the nearby waterfront, the unassuming dock for the Columbia Sailing Ship, and after a mountain of trees, the Indian Village.
In 1971, the Indian Village was closed for a myriad of reasons and was replaced with a representation of the Great Northwest (Pacific Northwest) named Bear Country, which opened in March 1972. Obviously, there was a change in the layout of this unified area in 1971. Perhaps, some argued, the fight for civil rights for Native Americans had deemed the Indian Village to be too racially insensitive by this point in the 1970's, or the labor disputes involving the performers at the Village and Disney management had shut it down (which is the most likely reason). However, the major reason beyond both of these was a little attraction being built in Florida.
Bear Band, or the Country Bear Jamboree as it became known, had been planned for a Disney-owned ski resort in Northern California that was being developed in the mid-1960's, but since the plans for the ski resort had been largely doused by the time Disney turned its eyes to building a Disneyland-like theme park in Florida in 1967, they decided to include it in the Frontierland of that park. WED even planned to include it at Disneyland sometime between 1969 and 1971.
The replacement of the Indian Village with Bear Country had two effects on the "westward expansion" of Disneyland, both literally and figuratively. Since the Indian Village was closed down, this meant that the Native or Indian element was largely gone with the exception of the natives on the Rivers of America. This may have eliminated any politically-incorrect implication of having an Indian Village, but it largely erased the interactive nature of the exhibit and by extension, had largely erased the aspects of American history dealing with relations between settlers and natives, which were complicated on their own accord.
The other effect was the representation of the Pacific Northwest in a panoramic view of the American frontier. After all, Lewis and Clark were commissioned to reach the Pacific Ocean on an official expedition.
Bear Country was more designed as an IP (intellectual property) land for the planned anchor attraction, the Country Bear Jamboree, than a testament to the sea-to-shining-sea nature of Frontierland. In fact, the Magic Kingdom park in Florida has their Country Bear attraction in Frontierland and we'll discuss the all-American panorama in Florida in a later post. Proceeding onto the placement of Bear Country, we can see that official WED publications in the early-1970's had announced Bear Country as being in the forests of the Pacific Northwest and even the 1971 Annual Fiscal Report announces Disneyland's seventh land as being "styled in the tradition of a Visitor Center in a National Park" with the Country Bears being the main draw to that corner of the Park.
Bear Country was a separate land from the get-go, but this was mainly done to keep the fantastical aspects of a roadhouse of musically-inclined bruins away from the "harsh facts" that Walt insisted America was founded on.
The next major change to the scenery of the west side of Disneyland began as an idea for Walt Disney World. The Big Thunder Railway was supposed to be a part of a planned expansion for Frontierland in Florida known as Thunder Mesa. Since the Pirates was omitted from the plans for Florida in 1967, Imagineer Marc Davis developed the idea of a Pirates-like attraction, exclusively for Florida's park. It was called the Western River Expedition and it was supposed to be housed in a towering mesa, similar to the ones in the American Southwest. One of the other draws of Thunder Mesa was the runaway mine train-based roller coaster. In 1970 or 1971, Imagineer Tony Baxter had expanded upon the narrative for the runaway mine train segment and it was eventually separated from the plans for Thunder Mesa with the Western River Expedition being slated for construction at a later date.
Disneyland's Big Thunder employed the scenery of Bryce Canyon in Utah, whereas Florida used Monument Valley's red-rock. Disneyland's Mine Train Through Nature's Wonderland had to be replaced because it was taking up a large amount of valuable real estate in the Park and yet it had a low ridership among guests. They even toyed with Marc's Western River Expedition as being a sound replacement, but remnants of Nature's Wonderland were preserved with the construction that began after the ride permanently closed in January 1977.
Big Thunder opened at Disneyland in September 1979 and the miniature town of Rainbow Ridge that had been a staple of Nature's Wonderland can be spotted from the queue of Big Thunder as well as part of the scenery of the ride itself. Guests fly by the miniature buildings on their return back to the station.
This is all Disney's perception of American history from the beginning of the frontier to the "closing of the frontier" according to Frederick Jackson Turner's masterful thesis in the 1890's, which is interestingly where the mythology of Main Street USA takes off. The history goes from the exploration of the frontier in the early-19th century through the 1880's, but it brings the American Southwest, the Deep South, and the Pacific Northwest together in a fantastic display of American history. It might not be as historically accurate as the intent of the proposed Disney's America project in the 1990's, but it serves as a gateway, nonetheless, to an appreciation for history in some measure.
Of course, Frontierland is different with every iteration of the land and I intend to explore the Americana and mythology of each iteration and counterpart and how it corresponds to our understanding of the mythology and history of the frontier era. However, make no mistake, Disney made sure that not every "harsh fact" of the past is overwhelming and pervasive, which has been subject to criticism from those who are either activists or authenticity-freaks, and yet there is an understanding, even among children, that what Disney brings is not pure fiction or pure fact, but an amalgamation of both.
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The Adventurelands of Disney parks have often employed the Frontierland narrative of expansion and colonialism to the "exotic" regions of the world and that is worth its own analysis in the future.
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