Heritage Square

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Heritage Square is a Storybook Victorian theme park shopping village at Golden, Colorado. It was originally built as Magic Mountain in 1957-59 by a group spearheaded by prominent Wheat Ridge businessman Walter Francis Cobb and Denver sculptor John Calvin Sutton. They hired Marco Engineering, Inc., led by original Disneyland vice president C.V. Wood Jr. to build the theme park, the earliest known to have attempted to spread the theme park industry beyond Disneyland. Several veteran Hollywood art directors who worked on Disneyland created the design of Magic Mountain, led by MGM veteran Wade B. Rubottom and Disney veteran Dick Kelsey. The park is one of the world's foremost and best-preserved examples of Storybook design, a form of architecture translating to real life the stage and cinematic arts featuring fun, creative and whimsical distortions, embellishments and use of forced perspective (strategic sizing of design elements to make a place appear taller or larger than it is). This early work is particularly featured on Heritage Square's main street and Victorian House Events Center.

Although Magic Mountain collapsed in 1960, it was eventually reopened by Woodmoor Corporation as Heritage Square in 1971. Today it features a collection of artisan shops, children's ride, the second alpine slide outside a ski resort in North America, the Heritage Square Music Hall, and more. Admission is free, and it is open year-round.