(Editor’s note: Disney’s Land, written by Richard Snow and published late last year by Scribner, describes how Walt Disney decided on Anaheim for his park. Below is an edited excerpt.)
In the early 1950s, Walt Disney toured New York City’s most famous seaside attraction, Coney Island, which he described as “run-down and ugly.” Disney had found what he didn’t want to build.
“Mine’s going to be a place that’s clean, where the whole family can do things together,” he said.
Burbank was originally proposed for the park, but that city council turned it down because of the low reputation of amusement parks. The site turned out to be too small for Disney’s dream.
Disney had a high opinion of Knott’s Berry Farm. “I’ve been thinking I’d like to have something like that,” he told an employee.
Disney hired architect William Pereira, who made a key contribution—the supreme importance of one entrance. “If you have more than one entrance, you would never be a success,” he told Disney. Pereira went on to design the master plan for the University of California-Irvine and the city of Irvine as well as some of Newport Beach’s most well-known buildings.
Disney hired the Stanford Research Institute to search for 150 acres somewhere in Southern California; its executives visited 71 sites.
Disney didn’t want the park near the ocean “with the idea of sand-encrusted vacationers slopping through his park in beach wear; nor did he want to compete with the Pacific Ocean: Disneyland had to be its own attraction.”
Anaheim in the 1950s was covered with orange trees that were making way for tract lands for housing and speculation was rampant.
Anaheim offered several advantages such as its swings in temperature were far less than other sites visited, such as the San Fernando Valley, which is 12 degrees hotter than coastal areas in summer and seven degrees colder in winter. Also, there was little haze, no significant industrial presence and no nearby oil wells. It was alongside the new Interstate 5 Freeway that would connect Los Angeles and Santa Ana.
One proposed site was owned by a variety of farmers. Disney’s agents began by offering $4,000 an acre; a speculator who heard a tip bought up 20 acres. Disney walked away from the proposed spot.
Disney decided he had to form an alliance with the city of Anaheim, so he contributed several floats to Anaheim’s annual Halloween parade. It was at an Oct. 31 event that a Disney representative disclosed the park to Keith Murdoch, the then 34-year-old city manager who would stay there for a quarter century, and Ernie Moeller, executive secretary of the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce.
During Disney’s tour of another site, they came across an overgrown graveyard, which Disney wanted nothing to do with. “I wouldn’t bring my guests past this for love nor money.”
He fell in love with another site and celebrated afterwards with a chicken dinner at Knott’s Berry Farm.
A local real estate agent sitting at a nearby table understood enough of what was being said that he bought options on much of the land. An infuriated Disney exited the deal and began looking in Garden Grove.
Anaheim’s Murdoch and Moeller didn’t give up. The pair was able to move the site a block away by closing a portion of Cerritos Ave. and having Anaheim annex a portion of the land from the county government.
When buying up the land, the agents spread disinformation to keep speculators at bay, including that an amusement park was planned for the San Fernando Valley.
Disney, who sold his life insurance policy and his vacation home in Palm Springs, eventually purchased the land for $879,000.
One afternoon, Disney took his good friend Art Linkletter, then an American television star, on a 25-mile jaunt through orange groves until they came to large uninhabited land with a few grazing horses and abandoned sheds.
Disney vividly described the colorful places he would build with names like Tomorrowland, Jungleland and Fantasyland. Linkletter became concerned that his friend was betting too much on this project.
“Who in the world, I mused, is going to drive 25 miles to ride a roller coaster?” Linkletter remembered saying. “I hardly knew how to tell him that, for once, he was making what would probably be the biggest, most ruinous mistake of his life.”
Disney told Linkletter, “Financially, I can handle only Disneyland itself. It will take everything I have as it is. But the land bordering it, where we’re standing now, will in just a couple of years be jammed with hotels and motels and restaurants and convention halls.
“I want you to have the first chance at this surrounding acreage because in the next five years it will increase in value several hundred times.”
Linkletter thought the project would fail and politely begged off, telling Disney he’d think about it later.
“Later will be too late,” Disney said.
They started walking back to the car.
“I will remember that short walk along the dry, sandy road,” Linkletter recalled, “because that little stroll probably cost me about a million dollars a foot.” n
