Thursday, March 14, 2013

Inside Fantasyland, Gettysburg

Holy Cow! I finally found some film footage of Gettysburg's long lost theme park, Fantasyland. Somebody uploaded to YouTube about 12 minutes of family home movies including 2 minutes of a visit to the defunct Fantasyland park.   Just click on this link to see about two minutes of silent footage shot on 8MM. You'll see the park's iconic entrance through a giant story book. The structure of the book was still standing as recently as 2002, but has since been destroyed. The film also shows kids on a sliding board attraction. Research shows the park did have a sliding board in The Old Woman Who Lived In A Shoe's house, but this appears to be more of a castle structure...perhaps Rapunzel's Castle which is also reported to have been an attraction at the park.
 
There is also some footage of kids playing around a giant farmer with a huge apple. This display was sponsored by Musselman's Apple Sauce, who along with their parent company own three factories in the area.
Mr. Musselman - A Musselman processing plant in nearby Chambersburg, PA was bought by parent company Knouse Foods in 1949 and was used to produce one product...applesauce!

Vintage Newspaper Ad
The park's train - The Cannonball Express - can also be seen in the footage.

Vintage Postcard
 

4 comments:

mpm said...

Love these historical views!

Eric Pomert said...

I love the nostalgic look of that old 8mm footage. Great find.

Anonymous said...

When I was about 9 years old my uncle and aunt took me to Fantasyland...I loved it. One of my favorite childhood memories ever!

Anonymous said...

I just stumbled across this online. Thank you to who posted this. I live in Thurmont and so this was basically right in my back yard. My cousins who I grew up with lived in Waynesboro. Every year as soon as school was out my Mother and my Aunt and my Grandmother would schedule a Fantasy Land date. I remember being so excited to go and we had just the best time there. I have not thought about that place in many years. I wish something like that was still around. Awesome memories!

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