The Land of Oz: A Yellow Brick Road in the Clouds
Near Banner Elk, North Carolina
Near the summit of Beech Mountain lies one of the strangest and most beloved ruins in the southern Appalachians: the Land of Oz. In the late nineteen sixties, developer Grover Robbins wanted an attraction to draw people to the mountain outside of ski season, so he hired Charlotte artist and designer Jack Pentes. Walking the property, Pentes noticed that the gnarled beech trees looked like the talking apple trees from Lyman Frank Baum's stories, and he built his theme park around the classic tale The Wizard of Oz.
With composer Loonis McGlohon and choreographer Alice Lamar, Pentes created a sixteen-acre park complete with a yellow brick road and an Emerald City. The Land of Oz opened on June fifteenth, nineteen seventy. Sadly, Grover Robbins had died a few months earlier and never saw it.
Actress Debbie Reynolds cut the opening-day ribbon alongside her young daughter, the future Star Wars actress Carrie Fisher. Some four thousand visitors came that first day, and by the end of the first season attendance reached six figures. But the parent company went bankrupt in nineteen seventy-five, vandals burned the Emerald City and stole an original dress worn by Judy Garland, and the park closed in nineteen eighty.
Today fans still walk the preserved yellow brick road at seasonal reunions.
