Where Fairytales Came to Life on a Civil War Battlefield (Part 2)
Fantasyland, the amusement park on a portion of the Gettysburg Battlefield, was an immediate hit. The Gettysburg Times noted in 1959, “’Fantasyland,’ which is Gettysburg’s newest major tourist attraction, outgrew its facilities for handling crowds on the second day of its operation.” During the opening weekend, 4,500 people entered the park and that number quickly grew to 4,800 by the third weekend. Weekdays saw 500 to 700 people a day visiting the park. “We never turned anybody away,” Jacqueline White, daughter of park owners Kenneth and Thelma Dick, said. A second entrance even had to be built to handle the weekend crowds. White started working at the park when she was only eight years old. She played Little Red Riding Hood walking through the park and talking to the visitors. As she got older, she worked other jobs in the Read more…
Monkey hunting in Gettysburg
At first, Gettysburg policemen and firemen thought the call they received around 8 p.m. on June 17, 1960, was a crank call. However, more than one person called in to report the same thing. According to the Gettysburg Times, “… residents there insisted there was a monkey swinging through the trees…” Both the Gettysburg Police and Fire Department responded to the call, which took them out to Hillcrest Place, where they discovered that a squirrel monkey was indeed playing in the trees. Squirrel monkeys are small, growing to roughly a foot and weighing less than three pounds. Their fur is short and usually colored black at the shoulders and yellow-orange on their back and legs. A squirrel monkey named Miss Baker had become famous the previous year as one of the first two animals launched into space by the United States Read more…
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