“You’ve Got a Great Past Ahead of You”: The Rise of Frontier Theme Parks in the Mid-20th Century

Building on Bethanee Bemis’s research on historical narratives at Disney parks, this paper examines the rise of frontier theme parks in the mid-20th century United States and how they taught tourists about US history. Distinct from ostensibly education-oriented destinations like Colonial Williamsburg and from the entertainment-oriented amusement parks of previous decades, these new theme parks forged a middle ground that immersed tourists in an entertainment-forward, reconstructed vision of the past. It focuses on Frontier City, U.S.A., founded in Oklahoma in 1958, Silver Dollar City, founded in Branson, Missouri in 1960, and Tombstone Junction, founded in Kentucky in 1969. These middle ground sites—located in what many people considered Middle America—emerged with the explosion of leisure tourism in post-World War II United States. None of the three employed educational staff members, and yet they purported to offer tourists an experience of the past. In particular, they emphasized the frontier as the heart of the American national story. Though Frederick Jackson Turner had declared the frontier closed in 1892, these theme parks kept it alive. Unlike viewing Westerns on television and the silver screen, tourists could actually place themselves in these sites. Overall this paper examines the ramifications of such theme parks and the work they did to cement enduring national narratives about the past.