Among my previously-rejected slides were these two views taken from the Skyway in 1957. They had turned a wretched shade of pink, and (at the time) I had deemed them to be boring. But now that they don't look so unpleasant, I find them pretty interesting!
SO... we are just leaving Tomorrowland behind, and are entering Fantasyland (with Snow Hill to our right, looking very bulldozed for some reason). In the lower left we see trees crated up, and a dirt clearing where construction for the Monsanto Home of the Future has begun.
Now we're a bit closer to the buildings that housed some of Fantasyland's dark rides, with more evidence of earth-moving in the lower left corner of the picture. Why not inhale and get a lungful of that extra-chunky SoCal smog? Optimists like to call it a "marine layer".
Major-
ReplyDeleteThese are most-assuredly not the old run of the mill images from Disneyland-! Definitely fun to look at these two.
Thanks for thawing them out.
I'm glad that these were un-rejected, Major. Could some of the earth moving down there be for the Alice In Wonderland attraction and the bathrooms located underneath it?
ReplyDeleteAhh yes, LA smog. Never trust air you can see.
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to see how blank and un-themed the back of the Peter Pan/Mr Toad structure was at the time, especially since guests could get back in that area and see it.
ReplyDeleteI think that's a fire break on Snow Mountain. Too bad the whole mountain burned down the following year.
I agree with Chuck, quite interesting (and amazing) to see so much un-themed space.
ReplyDeleteBoring? Construction pics of Disneyland are always cool to see. I surely hope you're digging more out of the waste basket.
ReplyDeleteAnd to think the tallest structure in the Park at the time was the main Skyway tower at 85 feet which is probably near where this photo was taken from. Nice set today. Thanks, Major.
Nanook, I probably rejected these because I was unable to color-adjust them to an satisfactory degree. Even now I feel like I could do a better job than I did for these.
ReplyDeleteTokyoMagic!, it is certainly possible that some of that earth-moving is for “Alice”; construction began on the House of the Future in January 1957, and this can’t be too long after that, don’t you think? Alice opened in June of 1958, I don’t know how long that ride took to build.
MRaymond, you could chip a tooth on that air.
Chuck, I would imagine that they figured that money would be better spent where most guests would actually notice nice theming. With the Skyway, they could see all kinds of unglamorous backstage areas!
Snow White Archive, that is part of what I love about these early views!
K. Martinez, it’s funny, the first box of slides I revisited yielded a lot of goodies, so I got all excited; the three or four boxes I’ve checked out since then haven’t been as great. Sad trombone…