Enchanted Forest (Maryland)

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For other uses, see Enchanted Forest (disambiguation).

Enchanted Forest entrance in 1955

The Enchanted Forest is a now-closed theme park in Ellicott City, Maryland, on U.S. Route 40 (Baltimore National Pike) near the intersection with Bethany Lane. Other theme parks with the same name have since opened elsewhere.

The Enchanted Forest officially opened on August 15, 1955, following a preview party the afternoon before — one month after Disneyland Park's opening. Appealing mostly to families with small children, the park had a nursery rhyme theme. The park featured fairy tale buildings and characters, but no mechanical rides originally. Track rides were added later, including the Alice in Wonderland ride with teacup-shaped cars, a Cinderella's castle ride with mice for the cars, the "Little Toot" boat that took children to Mount Vesuvius for giant slides, and the Jungleland Safari which was driven by open Land Rover-type vehicles. Children's birthday parties were often held in the picnic areas among the attractions; many local teenagers worked as ticket-takers at the park. Unlike many other attractions of the time, the Enchanted Forest was integrated from the day it opened.

Admission was one dollar for adults and fifty cents for children. At opening, the park was 20 acres, but it later expanded to 52 acres. At the height of its popularity, the Enchanted Forest welcomed 300,000 children per summer season. Part of the John Waters movie Cry-Baby, released in April 1990 and starring Johnny Depp and Ricki Lake, took place in the Enchanted Forest. After its original owners, the Harrison family, sold the park for $4.5 million to JHP Development in 1988, the park closed for the first time in 1989. After turning more than half the land (primarily the parking lots) into the Safeway-anchored Enchanted Forest Shopping Center in 1992, JHP Development reopened the park between 1994 and 1997, predominantly for children's birthday parties. An episode of the TV series Homicide: Life on the Street from season 4, entitled "The Hat," was filmed at the Enchanted Forest.

From when the park was permanently shuttered in 1997, to 2005 when active preservation began, much of the theme park sat undisturbed yet neglected behind a chain-link fence. In 1999, the Friends of the Enchanted Forest were formed with the goal of reopening the park; in 2003, the Enchanted Forest Preservation Society was formed with the long-term goal of reviving the Enchanted Forest. Current work focuses on preventing the artifacts from being lost forever. The current owner of the land, Kimco Realty Group, has agreed to allow many of the fairy tale buildings to be moved to nearby Clark's Elioak Farm for display and preservation, and the moving and restoration has been underway for the past several years. Funding is still needed to complete the effort.