The Greatest Thing That Never Happened

The other day I was at my Mom's house helping her clean up the 30+ years of "treasures" that have collected in her basement. We moved a cabinet that had been pushed up against a wall for as long as anyone can remember and discovered a collection of bumper stickers that we hadn't seen in many years. Among them was this great patriotic sticker that declares "WE WANT GREAT AMERICA". Now, what the heck does that mean...you ask!? Back in the late 70's the Marriott company, who was into the theme park business at the time, wanted to build a giant, first-class theme park in the county I lived in - practically in my backyard! (For those of you familiar with the Howard County, MD area, we're talking somewhere near the intersection of 175 and Rt. 1 in Jessup.) Of course to me, being not even 10 years old, I though this was the greatest idea since Saturday morning cartoons! The only other amusement parks that I knew of were car rides of 3 hours or more, but this one was going to be 5 minutes from my driveway! Other people wanted Great America to be built in Howard County too. It would have created tons of jobs and been a boost on the economy of the area. But many more people didn't want a theme park in their backyard. People were worried about traffic and noise and some even thought an amusement park would be an eye-sore for the community. I guess none of those people stopped to think that we'd have cartoon characters for neighbors and log flumes and roller coasters at our nearby disposal.

The park never happened. The negative people won and for a long time I was pretty bummed about it. Years later, my sadness over the event grew when I found out that Maryland's Great America was to be the ultimate theme park. Here's an excerpt from a 1978 book called FunLand U.S.A. by Tim Onosko:

"Finally, just in time for the 1976 Bicentennial celebrations, the Marriott Corporation simultaneously opened two parks, in Santa Clara, California, and Gurnee, Illinois, both appropriately named Great America. Though the parks were planned to be identical, geography and climate produced subtle differences. Nearly 5 million people visited them in the first season. A third park, tentatively planned to open in 1980 near Howard County, Maryland, will present a refinement of the Marriott theme park idea, based on the lessons learned at their other parks."

How sweet does that sound!? I figure I would have gotten a job there when I was a teenager and would have worked my way up through the ranks over the years and today I would be Vice President of International Affairs for the Six Flags Corporation. But the good people of the nearby brand new city of Columbia pushed the amusement park people away, and today - standing where rides, shows and attractions should be standing is a run down old shopping mall and a prostitute-infested truck stop.