Riding an endangered species.

Photo: iStockphoto

But Lindstedt’s summers changed in 1980, when the owners of Frontier Village decided the park’s 33 acres would fetch them far more dollars in the San Jose real-estate market than it ever would as a kiddie kingdom. The park never stood a chance, and closed its gates for good.

“It was heart-wrenching,” Lindstedt says today. “The park sat there all closed up. They auctioned off some of the stuff, but … the things that were left were just rotting away. It was kind of sad to see this place all decrepit and failing.”

Today, a good portion of Frontier Village is a city park — not a bad use of the land, in Lindstedt’s opinion. But you can hear the cringe in Lindstedt’s voice as he reports that the other half is home to a large condo complex. Worst of all? The developers had the nerve to call their development “Frontier Village.”

It’s not an uncommon story. Running a small, regional amusement park — defined by the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions as one that draws fewer than 500,000 visitors a year — is no easy task. Insurance costs are high. Competition from larger parks is intense. Attendance traditionally dips significantly once the summer ends. So it’s no surprise that owners often sell their parks to developers willing to pay big money. The problem comes when land that included some amount of open space is swallowed by shopping centers, strip malls, and high-density subdivisions.

Jim Futrell, historian with the National Amusement Park Historical Association, says he’s seen more amusement park closings in the last two to three years than in the previous 25. The number of active amusement parks in the U.S. is about 600, according to the IAAPA, and half of these are small, regional parks. In 2005, the country’s parks generated about $11.2 billion in revenues from 335 million visitors.

Those numbers actually increased from the previous years, but still the closings come. Futrell doesn’t have any statistics on the fate of closed parks — he doesn’t know how many became strip malls or condominium developments — but he’s familiar enough with the industry to know that’s the fate of many.

Those concerned about this growing trend, a mixed crew consisting of nostalgia-driven amusement park junkies, neighbors concerned with traffic resulting from new businesses and housing, and open-space advocates, say there must be a better use of old amusement parks. Many of them are willing to fight for it — with mixed results.

Consider the fates of two other independent amusement parks. One appears destined, despite the efforts of a group of citizens, to become a gated housing community. The other has become a busy public recreation area, complete with reminders of the destination it once was. Why the difference? It may be as simple as the land upon which the parks sit.

A Real Roller Coaster

Since 2001, Allyson Bowen has fought to save Whalom Park, a more than 100-year-old facility in Lunenburg, Mass. Bowen’s family had run the park since 1935, but in the late 1990s, an uncle sold his shares in the Whalom Park Amusement Company. This left the Bowen family with control over just 41 percent of the enterprise.

Citing the costs of operating and dwindling profits, the company shut Whalom down at the end of the 2000 summer season. In 2005, a developer signed an option on the property, and is planning to build an upper-end gated community of 240 condominiums called Emerald Place on the site.

Historic postcard of Whalom Park, built in 1893.

Bowen, who no longer lives in the area, has spent long hours rallying support for the park, encouraging donors to raise money through her website. She originally planned to use the money to create an investment group to buy back the land, but that plan failed. Bowen next worked with Lunenburg residents to convince the town’s planning board to raise more than $5 million to reclaim the park’s land through eminent domain. That effort, too, failed, with the board voting in support of the condo plan.

Now, Bowen is ready to concede. She says she never expected to reopen Whalom Park in its old form, saying that was unfeasible. But she did hope to turn the site into a public park and recreation area, repairing and refurbishing some of the old buildings, including a vintage roller rink and the building that housed Whalom’s antique carousel. That, Bowen says, would be a far better, and friendlier, use of the land than a gated community.

“People are telling me now that this is over, you can at least move on,” Bowen said. “Yeah, that’s great. But the issue really isn’t my issue anymore. It’s the town of Lunenburg’s issue. I live in New York City now, so I have Central Park. It’s the people in the town who have lost their amusement park and are going to have all this new housing come into their town. They’re about to lose their drive-in theater, too. They are losing the things that make people want to live in the town in the first place.”

The fight isn’t completely over. Four residents abutting the proposed site of Emerald Place have filed a lawsuit challenging the development, saying that the planning board did not act in the best interests of nearby residents when approving the project. Bowen, though, has little hope that the lawsuit will save Whalom.

“I think it gets to the point where you’re tilting at windmills, and that’s sad,” she said. “I knew eminent domain was a long shot. But turning Whalom into a public park could have worked, and it would have been such a better idea than bringing more housing to the area.”

Show Them That You Carousel

There is another option, though, for parks that face the wrecking ball, and it’s the one that the citizens in Lunenburg tried unsuccessfully: turning old amusement parks into public recreation areas. This allows the parks to retain their history, and places less of a strain on the land than condominiums or shopping centers. In fact, open space puts less stress on the land than even small amusement parks; no one would say, after all, that having crowds lining up in front of roller coasters or funhouses is a low-stress use of land.

The concept has worked well in Glen Echo, Md., home of Glen Echo Park, which operated as an amusement park from the early 1900s through the 1968 season. That year, its owners announced that they were shutting the facility. Three years later, the National Park Service took over ownership, shipped out most of the rides, and turned the site into a public recreation center.

Glen Echo Park’s Spanish Ballroom
comes alive every weekend.

Photo: NPS/Sally Ehrlich Hoffmann

Today, the nonprofit Glen Echo Park Partnership for Arts and Culture runs the park. Remnants of its past include a restored carousel, an arcade building, and a large Spanish ballroom. Groups such as Glen Echo Dance and Movement, Discovery Creek Children’s Museum, and The Puppet Co. hold classes and performances on the grounds.

Katey Boerner, executive director of the Glen Echo partnership, agrees that having a public park and tribute to Glen Echo Park’s past is preferable to staring up at rows of townhouses or yet another Bed Bath & Beyond. A major reason the land didn’t fall into the hands of residential or commercial developers, though, was probably its location, Boerner says. A bit of luck was involved: The amusement park sat on the Potomac palisades near Bethesda, Md. It’d take either amazing guile or truly terrible planning for anyone to suggest putting up condos on such a historic piece of land.

About 500,000 visitors stop by Glen Echo every year, a testament to the strong draw of open space, water views, and history. “There was definitely an environmental reason to keep this a public open space,” Boerner said. “The goal was never to save the rides of the old park, but to save the land and some of the historic older buildings. I think this has been a wonderful public use of this land. I can’t think of a better use for it.”

In the end, the land may be what made the difference between the fates of Whalom Park and Glen Echo. Open-space proponents across the country might consider researching the sites on which closed amusement parks — and even still functioning ones — sit. These are prime parcels whose future is too often decided by economics alone.

Back in San Jose, Lindstedt is doing his part to keep at least the memories of Frontier Village alive with a website he created and runs. Every year, he attends a picnic at the former grounds of the park with other fans, who reminisce about the days when the likes of Tonto and Lorne Green dropped by. Unfortunately, memories are all this crowd of devotees has left. “I think I’ll always miss this park,” Lindstedt says. “And I really don’t like those condos at all.”

Dave Shealy has spent chunks of his life trudging through the muck of the Everglades’ Big Cypress Swamp in search of a monster — a hairy, 450-pound one that can stand seven feet tall and reeks of rotten eggs. Most people think Shealy’s either crazy or a shameless publicity hound, but he couldn’t care less. As the proud founder of the world’s only skunk-ape research center, the inveterate tracker says he plans to study this elusive animal until the day he dies — even if he never does get to see one up close. He’s even called for the state of Florida to pass a law to make it illegal to hunt his apes.

The truth is out there.

Photos: iStockphoto.

Shealy may seem like an eccentric, but he’s not alone in seeking protection for an animal that most think doesn’t exist. Throughout the country — and the world — individuals, politicians, and organizations have fought to gain legal protection for imaginary monsters of all shapes and sizes. Sometimes they’ve even been successful.

Why do people fight for such laws? In some cases, it’s simply to attract tourists, to have an excuse to hold kitschy annual festivals and sell souvenirs. But in others, the laws are a serious effort by devoted, though perhaps deluded, individuals who want to protect something they have never seen.

Better Left Untouched

Shealy’s Skunk Ape Research Headquarters is part of the Trail Lakes Campground in Ochopee, Fla. The campground, which he co-owns, is ideally situated for skunk-ape sighting, Shealy says. It butts against a wild area of thick trees, forbidding swamps, and dark waters that provide a perfect hiding place for the creatures, which are said to be as reclusive as their more famous brethren, the Sasquatch, or Bigfoot.

Most people, if they’ve heard of skunk apes at all, think the creatures are about as real as the tooth fairy. But that didn’t stop one Florida state representative from trying to pass a law in the late 1970s — twice — to make it illegal to molest a skunk ape. Shealy is still disappointed that the proposal never passed. “Everyone thought the law was a joke. They shot it down,” he says. “What harm would it have done to pass a law like that? Is the skunk ape in harm’s way? Yes. No doubt about it.”

Shealy estimates that eight or nine skunk apes roam the nearby swamp, and claims the beasts have lived quietly in the Everglades since the days when the Seminole tribe ruled the region. He believes the skunk apes actually helped the Seminoles in their frequent battles with the U.S. Army in the late 1830s and early 1840s — something that explains why the military had so much trouble evicting the Seminoles from the area, he says.

“Florida is an interesting place, no doubt,” Shealy says. “Park officials know that there are all sorts of things in the Everglades that aren’t supposed to be there, things that are better left untouched. There have been exotic pets that have gotten away from their owners and taken hold. And that’s just the beginning. Florida has a deep, deep history in evolution. We had dinosaurs here and the big animals, like the woolly mammoth and the saber-toothed tiger. It’s awfully easy to hide in the Everglades.”

Floridians may have come up short in their quest for protection, but similar laws do exist elsewhere. In the 1980s, the states of Vermont and New York passed resolutions making it illegal to harm or molest in any way Champ, a serpent-like creature that some claim lives deep under the surface of their shared waterway, Lake Champlain. Port Henry, N.Y., officials are so proud of their monster that they hold “Champ Day” each summer, a festival in the monster’s honor. T-shirts, as you can imagine, are sold.

Nessie? Champy? Whitey? Is that you?

Peter Jewett, founder of a website devoted to Champ, is a dedicated fan. And while he’s not naive enough to think that local officials actually believe Champ exists — he believes the laws are simply intended to separate tourists from their dollars — Jewett is glad that such mysterious monsters are getting at least some protection. “I think people wanted tourists in the lake hunting for Champ with their cameras,” Jewett said. “I don’t think they wanted hunters here with their guns.”

A similar creature is protected in Arkansas, where, in 1973, the state Senate passed a resolution declaring portions of the White River a protected refuge for the fabled water monster Whitey. And in 1969, Washington’s Skamania County Board of Commissioners passed an ordinance setting out a $10,000 fine and five years in prison for anyone who killed a Bigfoot in the county. Both are still on the books.

This trend isn’t limited to the United States. There’s the well-known obsession with Scotland’s Loch Ness monster, of course. But perhaps the most amazing example is the case of the migoi in Bhutan, a tiny Buddhist country bordered by Tibet, China, and India.

The migoi is a version of the Yeti, or abominable snowman, with more quirks. Reported to stand eight feet tall, the reddish-brown creatures are said to walk backwards and even turn invisible to trick trackers. They have been part of the area’s legends for centuries, and even show up in ancient Bhutanese and Tibetan texts. Generations of locals have reported sightings of the elusive beasts, though no one has ever captured one.

In 2001, the government of Bhutan created the Sakteng Wildlife Sanctuary, 253 square miles of land designed to serve as protected habitat for the migoi. The preserve features other wildlife, too, including pandas, snow leopards, and tigers, but was created specifically for the mythical creature in their midst.

But What If …

What would happen if a creature of Bigfoot’s status really were discovered? Are there adequate federal or state laws to protect something like the skunk ape from fame-hungry poachers and hunters? It sounds goofy, but the question isn’t actually all that far-fetched.

Nicole Paquette, director of legal and governmental affairs with the Sacramento-based Animal Protection Institute, which is dedicated to protecting animals across the globe, says that newly discovered species — even ones as fantastical as sea monsters and skunk apes — would more than likely be protected by the Endangered Species Act. Such animals, if they’ve managed to avoid detection even with an army of hunters trying desperately to find them, would certainly exist in small numbers, she says. They would then qualify as either threatened or endangered.

True believers always keep a
lookout.

“We are seeing new animals being discovered these days,” Paquette says. “It isn’t that unusual anymore. They are finding different subspecies of animals, so it’s not that far-fetched to worry about new animals needing protection. They are not monsters, just animals that have not yet been discovered.”

The only problem may be timing. Under normal circumstances, when a new species is discovered in the U.S., its boosters have to petition the U.S. Department of Fish and Wildlife to list it as protected. That process can be lengthy, and must include a public comment period. “Once listed, no one could hunt or kill these animals,” Paquette says. “But up until they are listed, essentially, that animal has no protection.”

Christine Nolin, branch chief for endangered species conservation with Fish and Wildlife, admits that the process of declaring a species endangered is lengthy. (It’s especially laborious now, she says, with the department facing a large backlog.) But if a newly discovered creature is found to be facing an immediate threat — and surely Bigfoot would qualify — there is a provision for emergency protection. Under the rule, the agency has 240 days to finalize the creature’s inclusion in the Endangered Species Act. During that time, the animal is protected as if it were endangered.

Tales From the Crypto

Loren Coleman, a Portland, Maine, cryptozoologist — one who studies creatures that may not exist — says he has mixed feelings about the laws protecting some of the country’s legendary monsters. Too many, he says, are publicity ploys. But he recognizes that people do want to protect creatures that may exist but haven’t yet been discovered, while others want to keep hunters and poachers out of wildlife areas. Both intentions are good, Coleman says, talking quickly as he rattles off facts about a subject he’s spent the majority of his adult years studying. (His other specialty is suicides among baseball players.)

“Cryptozoology deals with monsters that have yet to be discovered,” Coleman says. “But that doesn’t mean that they don’t exist. They usually just don’t exist in as fantastical a nature as people think. The gorilla, you know, isn’t a giant animal that squeezes native women to death. There are some serious individuals out there who feel that animals like Champ are really an endangered species that haven’t yet been discovered. They want to protect them, and think that the best way is to pass laws protecting them before they’re discovered. That’s usually not the way we go about it, but it does seem to be a way to offer immediate protection.”

Coleman isn’t worried that a creature like Bigfoot would really face any serious danger if discovered. Proof of its existence would create loads of publicity, he says, and would undoubtedly spur federal and state officials to act quickly — within 24 hours, Coleman predicts — to enact protective legislation.

The actions of an adventurer, though, out to make a name for himself? There isn’t much protection against that, even from Congress. That’s why, back in the swampy Everglades, Shealy hopes his skunk apes one day receive the same consideration as Champ, Whitey, Bigfoot, and other legendary creatures.

He even has an idea of how simple the regulation should be: “I’d like a law passed that says if something out there looks like a man covered in hair, don’t shoot it.”