By July 4, 1945, the war in Europe was over. That weekend, “many more cars (were) parked on the streets of Lake George Village than have been seen here since the war started,” the Lake George Mirror reported. The transformation of Lake George’s tourist economy from a summer-long resort for the wealthy to a place where middle class and working families could come by car for a two-week vacation had begun. By 1950, 50,000 people were spending their vacations here every summer.
But once these families were here, what were they do? One answer: roadside attractions, specifically, small-scale, family-owned theme parks.
By 1957, the Adirondacks contained the greatest concentration of roadside attractions to be found anywhere in the U.S.
“North, south, east and west, the visitor industry is awakening to the fact that ‘attractions make business for all,’ lengthening the seasons and supplementing the vacation appeal of lakes, rivers and mountains,” reported the Lake George Mirror.
In 1967, Adirondack attractions collectively spent more than $1 million in new displays, rides and parking facilities and nearly $35,000 in print and radio advertising.
These investments were a response to the increase in tourism, and they stimulated more tourism as well.
At the prompting of Robert Moses, the father of Long Island’s Jones Beach, New York built the so-called Million Dollar Beach at the head of the lake; it opened in 1951. That same year, the Ticonderoga, a World War II naval vessel converted to an excursion boat by Wilbur Dow’s Lake George Steamboat Company, began daily dining and entertainment cruises down the lake. The reconstruction of Fort William Henry began in 1953. Charley Wood opened Storytown, U.S.A. in 1954.
When families arrived at Storytown, they were greeted by Mother Goose, who led them to their favorite storybook characters and animals that came “to life in a beautiful Fairyland of color, animation and over 30 unique Nursery Rhyme settings,” according to the 1959 Adirondack Guide, edited by Lake George Mirror owner Art Knight and published by his Adirondack Resorts Press, Inc. in Lake George Village.
Storytown characters included Cinderella, Bo Peep and her sheep, Humpty-Dumpty, a Pink Whale, Mary and her little lamb, and Jack and the giant. People could “travel the River Dee in Swan Boats” and “ride the rails on the Storytown Express.”
Old Mother Hubbard’s Shoe, the Pink Whale and most of the park’s other features were fabricated by Arto Monaco. Born in Ausable Forks in 1913, Monaco attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn with the help of the artist Rockwell Kent, who recognized his innate talents. After serving as Kent’s assistant in his studio at Asgaard Farm, Monaco went to Hollywood in 1937, seeking work in the movie studios as an animator and set designer – experience that would serve him well when creating theme parks in the Adirondacks. (Monaco was among the animators who worked on Disney Studios’ immensely successful “Snow White” and, advised by Kent, helped organize the animators into the union that launched a strike against Disney in 1941.) In 1941, Monaco joined the army, where one of his assignments was to create a replica of a German village in California to help train paratroopers – another experience useful to his future career.
A few years after Storytown opened, Charley Wood added a new themed area to the park: Ghost Town.
“Here as you visit the authentically furnished buildings, such as the Grocery Store, Drug Store, Barber Shop, Post Office, Carriage Sheds, and Blacksmith Shop, you may be stopped and deputized, at a moment’s notice, capture, sentence or even kill the ornery, gun-slinging outlaws who keep the town jumping with bank hold-ups, jail breaks, etc.,” Art Knight’s Adirondack Guide reported.
Construction of the replica of Fort William Henry began on April 20, 1953. The museum’s doors opened to tourists thirteen months later and was completed in autumn, 1955.
“Prior to construction, an archaeological investigation of the grounds was initiated. This provided museum staff with a greater understanding of military life at the 18th century British site. The dig likewise collected artifacts for exhibit. The excavators, led by archaeologist Stanley Gifford, unearthed parts of the ancient fort’s casemates, dungeon, ordnance magazine, barracks, and other prominent features,” historian Joseph W. Zarzynski wrote in the Lake George Mirror in August 2022.
By 1959, more people were paying admission to Million Dollar Beach than at any time since it had opened. That same year, to give the growing crowds (especially the adults) something to do in the evenings, Charley Wood opened Gaslight Village. Wood invested $100,000 – roughly $1 million in 2025 dollars – to build the attraction’s Fun Midway and Ferris Wheel.
To promote the amusement park, Wood acquired two U.S. military surplus anti-aircraft searchlights. “Described as ‘attention-getters,’ the omnipotent beacons lit up the nighttime skies between 9 pm and 10 pm,” according to Joe Zarzynski.
Wood’s indomitable flack, Ed Lewi, hinted that the flurry of UFO sightings in the area could probably be attributed to the reflections of the searchlights’ beams in the nighttime sky.
Other local attractions included Animal Land, Indian Village and Magic Forest.
“We all had our niches; everyone offered a different experience,” Jack Gillette, whose father, Arthur Gillette, opened Magic Forest in 1963 as “Christmas City USA, featuring a Santa’s Village,” told the Lake George Mirror.
Arthur Gillette had been in the entertainment business in one form or another since 1947, when he and his brother Jules began stocking county fairs with rides and midways. Tiring of life on the road, he opened an amusement park in Lake George in the late 1950s, on the site where the Holiday Inn now stands.
When the rent became too expensive, he began looking for another spot. In the meantime, he operated pop-up Santa’s Villages at Christmas time in places such as Latham Circle and opened Carson City, a cowboy-and-Indian-themed park, in the Catskills.
Gillette found a site for the business on 24 acres west of the Delaware and Hudson tracks, on what was, before the coming of the Northway, the busiest highway from New York to Montreal: Route Nine. Construction of “Christmas City USA, featuring a Santa’s Village,” began in 1962 and by the spring of the following year, it was ready to open. Gillette announced that it would be among the first businesses to open for the season and among the last to close, open on summer evenings and for extended hours from Thanksgiving to Christmas Eve.
It would feature daily circus shows, live reindeer, craft demonstrations and attractions such as Santa’s Hide-away, where Santa Claus supposedly recuperated between trips from the North Pole.
“My father didn’t want to bother with rides,” Jack Gillette said. “He hoped to attract enough people with the park’s other features.”
Reality, however, intervened, as it must, even or especially in a park devoted to Santa Claus. Apparently, Santa himself lacked sufficient appeal to support a theme park on his own, which may explain why the park’s name was soon changed to Magic Forest. It also came to incorporate Indian Village, a former Lake George attraction that opened in 1952 and closed after a 1958 fire.
Like the Frost family, which created the original Indian Village on Bloody Pond Road, the Gillettes invited Native Americans from western states to create an encampment that people could visit, watch ritual dances and ceremonies and listen to Native Americans discuss their history and lives.
In 1955, the Frosts opened a souvenir shop called the Indian Trading Post on Route Nine, and the Trading Post’s Teepee became a popular roadside attraction on its own. But according to Sam Frost, owners of attractions on Route 66 told him that the approaching interstate would divert most of his traffic, and he began looking for a shop in Lake George Village, which his son Doug now owns and operates.
The Northway reached Lake George in 1963, by-passing the roadside motels, gas stations, souvenir shops and theme parks.
Laura Rice, the curator at Adirondack Experience (formerly the Adirondack Museum) told the Lake George Mirror recently, “roadside attractions are now recognized as integral to the development of the Adirondack Park as a resort area in the 1950s.”
Museums, she said, “may have been slow to recognize the significance of these pieces of popular culture. Museums are often a generation behind. But we now have enough distance to place theme parks and the other attractions in the proper perspective.”
The theme parks have a prominent place in this summer’s exhibition at the Bolton Museum, “Welcome to Lake George: Vacation Paradise of the 1950s and 60s.” which documents the transformation of Lake George’s tourism economy after World War II through colorful displays. Located at 4924 Lakeshore Drive, with an entrance in Rogers Park, the museum is open 7 days a week, 10 am to 4 pm.
