The Storybooks South of Washington, D.C.
By Christine Stoddard
QuailBellMagazine.com
QuailBellMagazine.com
A Washington City Paper article dated January 20, 1995 starts out with the line, “Mother Goose is dead.” While we know just the opposite to be true at Quail Bell Magazine, we cannot contest what the article goes on to explain: Storybook Land, a beautiful amusement park once situated in the Washington, D.C. suburb of Woodbridge, Virginia off of Route 1 is indeed dead.
Photograph by Bill Reeves
From 1959 to 1981, the park delighted not only Washingtonians, but also numerous tourists who traveled the Baltimore-Richmond corridor during the height of animated Disney films and The Rocky & Bullwinkle Show's “Fractured Fairy Tales.” Storybook Land displayed 140 life-size figures and about two dozen buildings on 10 acres all themed according to Grimm's Fairy Tales and Mother Goose's Nursery Rhymes. Highlights included “The House That Jack Built,” “Three Little Pigs,” and “Mary & her Little Lamb.” The park also boasted pony rides and midget racers.
Kings Dominion in Doswell, Virginia posed a major threat to Storybook Land when it opened in 1975, eventually putting the mom & pop venture out of business. With bigger, faster rides and 400 acres full of commercialized fun, Kings Dominion was truly modern and mammoth compared to Storybook Land. One of the most popular features of the new park was The Happy Land of Hanna-Barbera, which included a junior wooden coaster called “Scooby Doo.”
Meanwhile, Storybook Land still maintained its slogan of “The Magic Forest of Make-Believe.” Adorable, perhaps, but hardly serious competition with its lack of a contemporary mentality.
Today, as Wikimapia.org will tell you, “Not much is left out there now other than some random odd brightly colored scraps of fiberglass and rotten wood with rusty nails...”
For all you nascent researchers out there, another similar but now defunct park was The Enchanted Forest in Ellicott City, outside of Baltimore.
Kings Dominion in Doswell, Virginia posed a major threat to Storybook Land when it opened in 1975, eventually putting the mom & pop venture out of business. With bigger, faster rides and 400 acres full of commercialized fun, Kings Dominion was truly modern and mammoth compared to Storybook Land. One of the most popular features of the new park was The Happy Land of Hanna-Barbera, which included a junior wooden coaster called “Scooby Doo.”
Meanwhile, Storybook Land still maintained its slogan of “The Magic Forest of Make-Believe.” Adorable, perhaps, but hardly serious competition with its lack of a contemporary mentality.
Today, as Wikimapia.org will tell you, “Not much is left out there now other than some random odd brightly colored scraps of fiberglass and rotten wood with rusty nails...”
For all you nascent researchers out there, another similar but now defunct park was The Enchanted Forest in Ellicott City, outside of Baltimore.
Original map given to Storybook Land guests
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