How Walt Disney Built the Happiest Place on Earth

This is Lee Habib, and this is our American Stories. Walt Disney had a way of dreaming that was bigger than most people dared. He had ideas that were seemingly endless, impossible, a little bit crazy. Walt obsessed over the smallest details, not because anyone told him to, but because he refused to disappoint. Here’s Alex Adler, better known on YouTube as Alex the Historian, with our story.

Walter Elias Disney and his older brother, Roy Oliver Disney, started their company back in 1923. In those times, it was known as the Disney Brothers Studio. The stories and characters they created had become world famous, and tourists who flocked to Hollywood wanted to visit the Disney studios in hopes of finding something magical. But Walt’s studio was nothing more than ordinary offices and sound stages surrounded by well-tended lawns and rose gardens. He needed something that could buffer their disappointment. In the early 1940s, he thought of a themed corner of the studio where visitors could meet their favorite characters, but this project eventually grew into an idea for an 11-acre park across the street. In the early 1950s, Walt had been offering rides on his backyard live-steam railroad in Holmby Hills, California, and the sheer number of visitors the railroad received prompted him to consider that Little Mickey Mouse Park idea more seriously. Roy Disney, who was CEO of the company, was skeptical about opening an amusement park. Even Walt’s wife, Lillian, had said, “Why would you want that? Amusement parks are so dirty and dangerous.” Walt simply responded, “That’s just it. Mine wouldn’t be.” Reluctantly, Roy agreed to set aside money for research, and Lillian conceded to go along with it. To get financial backing, Roy knew a pile of papers with descriptions of the park was not enough to make a convincing pitch, so he asked Walt to have artwork commissioned that helped potential financiers to visualize the concept. He turned around and called upon one of his studio’s best artists, Herb Ryman, to create the rendering of the park over the weekend. Herb said, “No, well, I’m only just seeing these plans. I don’t want to create an embarrassment for you or me.” Walt went to stand in the corner of the room. The stress of trying to convince people the last few years to go along with his plans for a themed park were beginning to show. Herb said he saw a tear form in Walt’s eye, and he responded, “Will you do it if I stay here with you?” Herb Ryman would later admit that Walt was a persuasive person. The two of them worked throughout the weekend to generate the first image of the park that Walt would later name Disneyland, a name that Ryman lightheartedly joked had sounded somewhat egotistical. The artwork depicted the park with four themed lands: a jungle area to represent the Land of Adventure, a futuristic city to represent the Land of Tomorrow, an old West town complete with a riverboat to represent the Frontier, and a large medieval forecourt with a fairytale castle to act as the park’s visual icon. This represented the Land of Fantasy, complete with a carousel to pay homage to the idea that started it all, and surrounding the park would be a miniature railroad that would surpass any steam-train hobbyist’s greatest dream. Roy made arrangements for Walt Disney Productions to allot $10,000 towards the research and development of Disneyland. But when Walt needed more money, Roy suggested he create a private company that would own the rights to Walt Disney’s name. That way, he could license the name out to Walt Disney Productions, giving him weekly funding for the project. And so Walt created Retlaw Enterprises in the year 1950. It was the name Walter spelled backwards, and by licensing his own name to the bigger company, he received a weekly income of $3,000. Walt hired an architectural firm to design his park, but wasn’t satisfied with their concepts. He turned to his friend for advice, the famed architect Walton Beckett. He reviewed Walt’s ideas for fanciful architecture built from modern materials. “Walt, no one can design Disneyland for you. We don’t have that kind of background for this,” Beckett said. “You have to use your own people to build his Magic Kingdom.” Walt needed complete control. He didn’t want Walt Disney Productions’ board of directors voting or vetoing his ideas before they came to fruition. In 1952, he created Walt Disney, Incorporated, which was quickly renamed to WED Enterprises. The next year, WED stood for the initials Walter Elias Disney, and it was his newly dubbed team of Imagineers at WED Enterprises that would dream up all of the future things that would go into Disneyland. While Roy was able to get some financial backers, such as Bank of America, he still wasn’t having much luck. Walt called around to various television studios, offering that they could help fund his park in exchange for him starring in a television series he simply called “Disneyland.” Until then, he continued borrowing money to help pay for the development of his park. He took out $50,000 from his life insurance and then sold his Palm Springs vacation home. When his wife, Lillian, found out he had spent over $100,000 of their money, she was livid. Walt reminded her that when the park would finally open, Lillian and her daughters would receive a 15 percent return on any merchandise that visitors bought with his name on it. Still, Lillian feared that his plan would only work if the park would open, which seemed increasingly impossible with each passing day. In early 1953, Imagineer Harper Goff explained to Walt that the current size of the park exceeded the 11-acre land parcel across from the studio. It wasn’t until Burbank City Council denied his request to build an amusement park that Walt finally admitted it was time to look for land in a different place. Walt hired a man named Harrison “Buzz” Price, who was with the Stanford Research Institute, to find the land required for the ever-growing ideas of the park. Walt’s requirements to Buzz were that he needed at least 100 acres, which could not be located anywhere near the beach in order to avoid the types of visitors that might show up, and the park would need to be easily accessible from all corners of Southern California. It wasn’t easy. Buzz scoured five counties, an area roughly 35,000 square miles in size. Eventually, he came back to Walt with a specific parcel: 200 acres of orange and walnut groves in the sleepy rural town of Anaheim, California. It was cheap land, butted up against the still under construction 5 Freeway, giving convenient access to both Los Angeles and San Diego, and yet it was far enough away from the big cities that they could avoid the riffraff coming in. Walt quickly snatched up all 200 acres and went out to meet some of the farmers who sold their land. One family went by the name Domingas, and they had only one request. On their land were two Canary Island date palm trees planted years before during a family wedding. They hoped Walt wouldn’t cut down the trees. Being the sentimentalist that he was, Walt gave his word that the trees would stay standing, a promise that survives even to this day, as the two trees are both located adjacent to the Jungle Cruise loading area. Walt had purchased the land using money given to him by Bank of America, but he was still in need of construction funding. Roy went back to New York to request more money, but they refused to lend any more unless Walt could find a major financial backer. It turned out ABC Television Network was looking to compete with more popular stations and was in need of a big name like Walt Disney to boost their popularity. ABC agreed to fund a large portion of the construction in exchange for Walt starring in the weekly “Disneyland” TV show and giving them 35 percent ownership in the park. When Roy left the meeting, he immediately went back to Bank of America to increase their loan to a further $8 million. Disneyland was now funded by a total of $17 million, and almost no one involved was fully convinced the idea would be a success. On July 16, 1954, site leveling began. Walt was adamant the park would open the next year on July 17th, an impossible deadline even for the mid-1950s. To save money on fully grown trees, horticulture Imagineer Bill Evans suggested keeping some of the orange and walnut trees. He tied special ribbons to the trees, which indicated which were to be removed and which would stay. As it turned out, the bulldozer driver was colorblind and had been removing all trees using his best guess as to which would stay. The contractor arrived on the site and ran out to the bulldozer driver to stop him before he destroyed any more plants.

And you’ve been listening to Alex Adler, better known on YouTube as Alex the Historian, telling the story of this crazy idea that Walt Disney had in his mind to build an amusement park. Heck, his wife even hated the idea, and when she found out he’d invested some of their own family money in the project, she was furious. His brother didn’t get it, and heck, most of the folks around him didn’t. The banks didn’t. He had a hard time securing financing, but in the end he got those 200 acres in Anaheim, and off to the races was Disney. When we come back, more of this remarkable story, the story of Disneyland. Here on our American Stories, and we continue with our American Stories and with the story of Walt Disney’s impossible dream: The making of Disneyland. Let’s return to Alex Adler with the story.

Groundbreaking on Disneyland happened on July 21, 1954, and Walt brought in retired Navy admiral-turned-naval architect Joe Fowler to manage the construction contracts and oversee the work being done. When it came to the landscaping of Disneyland, Walt was inspired by the Tivoli Gardens of Copenhagen and Denmark. Imagineer Bill Evans had the monumental task of planting up 60 acres of themed park to look like it had been there for ages. The sheer number of foliage he had to purchase for the park easily exceeded both his company’s nurseries and all the local ones from Santa Barbara to San Diego, a roughly 80-mile radius from Disney. With California being so limited on the kinds of plants that were sold, Bill ended up flying to countries around the world and collecting plant specimens for the park. He sometimes sneaked seeds from exotic plants into the country by placing them in his socks. In his effort to acquire the most exotic plants, Bill Evans even discovered a species of plant that would later be named after him, Philodendron evansii. Meanwhile, Roy Disney had been worried about how the park was going to turn a profit. Research suggested that merchandise sales alone could carry the financial burdens of the park, but he feared that all the Disney merchandise combined could not fill the numerous gift shops around the park. They would have to be rented out to third-party retailers. Park sponsorships also could help ease the cost of operation, but Disneyland was such a risk that no company wanted to accept a sponsorship deal. That was until the Swift Meatpacking Company agreed to operate the Market House on Main Street, and their sponsorship opened the floodgates to around 40 other companies that promptly signed up. Walt was so excited to show off the progress of his park to his friend, television host Art Linkletter. He made him promise that he couldn’t tell anyone what he was about to see. Linkletter recalled, “I couldn’t believe my eyes. We were driving through orange groves and dirt roads. I didn’t tell him what I really thought—that he was out of his mind. After all, it was 45 minutes from where people lived, and there was nothing there.” The first building completed at Disneyland was the Main Street Opera House, which had a massive floor space used as a lumber mill and machine shop to construct the rest of the park. The next building was the Firehouse next to City Hall. Above the Firehouse on the second level was a tiny one-bedroom apartment for Walt and Lillian. During the final stages of construction, Walt would stay overnight on the weekends to oversee the progress being made, offering up advice and instruction along the way. When it came to Tomorrowland, Walt wanted to showcase the innovations of the near future. At this time, freeways across California were being constructed, and Americans were excited to see a highway that featured no stops. It was this that inspired Walt to create an almost utopian auto motorway for Disneyland, and he would call it Autopia. Bob Gurr was fresh out of school for autobody design and was hired as an Imagineer for WED. Bob’s first task was to design cars for the Autopia, which was a task much more difficult than it seems. He needed a miniature car that could be operated by one pedal and could drive all day on low gear, withstand constant impacts without cracking the frame, and could easily be driven even by a child. This immediately required the transmission to withstand such rigorous work, especially with a modified clutch. It was Bob’s ability to think on the spot and offer insight that Walt would also appoint him to help design other ride vehicle projects around the park. While vehicles gave Disneyland its motion, the wonder that the park would inspire was the result of the shape of its landscape. A Magic Kingdom with dead flat land doesn’t leave much of an impression, especially considering that Walt didn’t want the public to be able to see inside the park from the outside, and he didn’t want the incredible landscapes within to be shattered by views of the surrounding city. When earth-movers had dug out lakes, riverbeds, canals, and streams around the park, the massive amounts of dirt excavated from the ground were then used to create a system of berms that surrounded the park, some of them towering 30 feet high. There was even enough dirt to create rolling hills and islands. In fact, there was so much dirt that it would have cost too much money to move it off site, so the extra earth was piled up next to the castle in a mound that was lovingly nicknamed Holiday Hill. Over in Frontierland, the Rivers of America was carved out and filled with water, only for crews to arrive the next day and find that all the water had soaked into the sandy Anaheim soil. Admiral Joe Fowler discovered a local clay, and he had the river lined with it to prevent the water from being absorbed into the ground. City of Anaheim had to annex 800 acres of land surrounding the park in order to provide it with public works. The farmers that had lived on the property before Disneyland had mostly lived off-grid, without access to sewage lines, rainwater sewers, and some homes didn’t even have electricity. Nearly 2 miles of clay pipe was laid down Harbor Boulevard to connect Disneyland with the city’s sewage systems. New power lines were erected to supply the park with enough power to light a small town. Funds for Disneyland continued to run thin. Fowler explained that there may not be enough money to complete the Mark Twain Riverboat. Walt mortgaged his remaining home to fund the completion of it. His wife, Lillian, protested this, and of course he got into a heated argument with his brother. Roy pleaded that he consider postponing the opening of the park in order to ensure its proper completion, but Walt was adamant that he gave the public his word the park would open on July 17th, come hell or high water. If it didn’t, they might lose the confidence of all the creditors and sponsors, and the company would suffer as shareholders might pull out, causing a rippling effect that would doom the park and the studio. The studio itself wasn’t producing any live-action movies, as the various sound stages were being used as fabrication sites for ride systems and special effects. Everything they worked up to, everything they built over the last 27 years, was sunk into Disneyland, and it all hung in the balance, entirely predicated on the success of the world’s first theme park. With time running out, construction on the attraction we know today as Storybook Land was facing new challenges. Bill Evans had exhausted all the nearby plant nurseries, and there was nothing left to plant. The Canal boat ride while constructed, Bill to label all the weeds growing around the dirt hills of the boat ride with their Latin names, hoping to disguise the situation as an intentional feature of the ride. To help speed up construction of the park, cutting-edge techniques were used. Parts of the buildings and their facades were prefabricated in the Opera House and installed in sections in their final location. The layout of Disneyland was also something master-planned. Many amusement parks often tried to maximize land use by placing rides and buildings wherever space would allow, but Walt noticed that this resulted in people getting lost and walking unnecessary distances. He had a special nickname for the particular exhaustion that comes from a poorly laid out venue. He called it “museum feet.” Disneyland was designed in a spoke-and-wheel shape, with the various lands fanning out from the center. The park itself had only one exit so that people wouldn’t get confused about which way led to their car, and each land within the Magic Kingdom had only one entrance, ensuring that you couldn’t get lost while inside Disneyland because all lands emptied back into the central plaza. Forced perspective was in heavy use at Disneyland. Walt wanted guests entering the park to marvel at its size, so the building facades on the north end of Main Street were