Taken at Storybook Gardens, Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin, May 2011.
This may be one of the last photos ever taken of this place. I read last week that it was not going to reopen this summer after nearly 60 years in business. I read today that the owners actually plan to burn it down as part of a practice exercise for the Delton Fire Department.
I visited last Monday after a short meeting. I figured I had about 20 minutes or so between getting gas, driving to the Dells, and sunset. I consider myself lucky to have gotten one good shot in that short time of this doomed place, boat boarded up, grass overgrown. There were several of these signs in front of the former entrance, warning rubberneckers to "keep out." The parking lot was deserted when I pulled up, not a soul in sight.
In the article I linked to above, Jason Fields explains that kids don't know about the storybook characters anymore, and I can understand that point of view. Storybook Gardens is part of the old Dells, the rollercoasterless Dells absent of waterparks and upside-down White Houses. I know we visited Storybook Gardens when I was little, although I only have vague memories of the place. I was more saddened to hear that Riverview Park was being torn down to make way for the Timbavati wildlife park. The phrase "aging waterpark" reminds me of the "litter of our times" Steinbeck was talking about, all that cheap and forgotten plastic.
However, when I read that the owners and the DFD planned to burn down the ship at Storybook Gardens, something didn't sit right with me. The mental image of flames licking the blue sky from that faded fake boat, boarded up and overgrown, making way for more cheap and plastic "zorbing," whatever that is. The comments in the article above rue the demise of the place, but they must know that in the whole history of the Dells, nothing has been sacred there for over 150 years. Attractions are burned down, people are shipped in and out, and the city sprawls and sprawls, those strange and artificial landscapes leeching into newer territories.
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