- May 4th, 2005, 10:30 pm
#12002
Before Carowinds...
Before Ghost Town...
There was Tweetsie.
I thought I would point out some news regarding North Carolina's first (and longest-lived) theme park, Tweetsie Railroad. I'm sure many people here have childhood memories of visiting this unique little mountain park over the years, but I'm also sure some people probably have no clue as to what I'm talking about.
This article from WRAL.com has some nice back info on the park in addition to the latest developments on the drawn-out land battle the park has been in since the late 1980s.
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Tweetsie Railroad Faces '07 Deadline To Determine Future - April 29th, 2005
BLOWING ROCK, N.C. -- In 1957, when Chris Robbins' father and two uncles signed a set of 50-year leases on the land for the Tweetsie Railroad theme park, 2007 seemed impossibly far away.
"In 50 years, we'll be flying around in gyrocopters to the moon," joked Robbins, 50, who literally grew up at Watauga theme park and is now its general manager.
There are no gyrocopters and man hasn't been back to the moon since the early 1970s. But SUVs, minivans and station wagons still fill Tweetsie's parking lot on U.S. Highway 321 each summer, as families come to see the shows, feed the animals and ride the Tweetsie, the little steam engine that once carried passengers through the high country of the southern Appalachians between Boone and Johnson City, Tenn.
Tweetsie opens for its 49th season this weekend, but its future is in question as the leases near their expiration.
Much of the park, which over the years has expanded over a mountainside just south of Boone, is on land that Robbins and his immediate family do not control. And in booming Watauga, land values have done nothing but zoom upward in recent years.
"At one time, this (site) was way out there" in a no-man's-land between Boone and Blowing Rock, Robbins said. "Now, we're right in between, and there's a huge demand for good, buildable land."
Randy Baker, a Charlotte architect, is the nephew of Blowing Rock native Grover Robbins Jr., who founded Tweetsie Railroad with his brothers Harry (Chris Robbins' father) and Spencer in 1957. He represents DeeArthur Properties, a group of descendants who hold one of the two leases not directly controlled by the Tweetsie Corp.
Baker said in a telephone interview this week that he and the other leaseholders in DeeArthur want to renew.
Terms still have to be negotiated, Baker said, but "the way I look at it, Tweetsie is a part of the mountain community. We'd really love for that whole area to be turned into Tweetsie Village. We have an interest in making sure Tweetsie survives."
Mike Lentz, a representative of the Broyhill family, which owns the third lease, declined to be interviewed for this story.
Although dressed up as a Wild West theme park, Tweetsie has legitimate historic roots in the area. In 1881, the Eastern Tennessee & Western North Carolina Railroad began operations on 50 miles of narrow-gauge track through the rugged mountains that separate northwestern North Carolina and northeastern Tennessee.
Eventually, the railroad connected Boone and Johnson City, offering passenger service and a way to transport lumber out of the mountains. Locals named the train the "Tweetsie," after the shrill steam whistles that echoed through the hills.
Highway construction improved access to the mountains and by the 1930s and '40s, Tweetsie was suffering from competition from trucking companies. In 1950, the ET&WNC Railroad ended narrow-gauge operations and the last of the locomotives - Tweetsie No. 12 - fell into the hands of Hollywood star Gene Autry, who intended to use the train in cowboy films.
Grover Robbins, developer of a number of other Southern tourist attractions (including the Dollywood forerunner Rebel Railroad in Pigeon Forge, Tenn.), had another idea. In 1956, he bought No. 12 from Autry and the following summer he and his brothers opened the Tweetsie Railroad on its present site. The park purchased a second steam locomotive, No. 190, in the early 1960s from an Alaskan railroad.
Over the years, the Robbins brothers developed a theme park around the excursion railroad, expanding the track into a three-mile loop and adding the Wild West theme, along with a Main Street, a petting zoo, a chairlift that takes visitors up the mountainside and other attractions.
Opening at the height of the Western craze - Davy Crockett, the Lone Ranger and "Gunsmoke" were all on TV and coonskin caps perched on the heads of many Baby Boom youngsters - Tweetsie was an exercise in cornball nostalgia from the start.
"Tweetsie was the first of the Western parks in the South," said Tim Hollis, author of "Dixie Before Disney," a look about Southern roadside attractions of the mid-20th century. "All of those Western parks were tied to the Westerns on television."
Fifty years later, the Western genre exists only to be revived every few years for the sake of irony or revisionism. And the ET&WNC Railroad that was a living memory for so many of Tweetsie's first patrons has receded into the mists of history like train travel in general.
Now, Tweetsie has itself become the nostalgia trip, a living link to the "Dixie Before Disney" era of piling the kids into the station wagon for a two-week ramble to see the sights.
"We're seeing third-generation visitors, fourth-generation visitors," said Robbins. With entertainment aimed squarely at the 3-to-12-year-old demographic, "It's a lot more family-accessible than Carowinds and Six Flags."
And for parents and grandparents who grew up on cowboy-and-Indian stories that today would be branded politically incorrect, riding the Tweetsie, with the stops for a staged "train robbery" and a view of Indians attacking a fort, is like boarding a time machine.
"It's a caricaturized depiction of a Wild West that never existed - except in popular culture," Robbins said. "We sort of celebrate it and parody it at the same time."
Running a family-operated theme park is a tough business - particularly in the mountains, where a rainy Independence Day weekend can ruin an entire summer.
Robbins said Tweetsie has been profitable in recent years and can continue to be, although he has hedged on making major capital investments because of the park's uncertain future, instead focusing on maintenance and upkeep.
If lease renewals cannot be secured, he said, there are other options. Neighboring counties have expressed interest in being home to the Tweetsie, although that raises the question of whether tourists would follow the park to a different location.
"That's definitely a fallback position for us," Robbins said. "It would be better to move Tweetsie than just have it fade."
Last year, Tweetsie acquired a Pennsylvania-based locomotive repair shop and moved its operations on-site. Robbins believes the repair facility could be spun off as a standalone business, servicing steam trains in use at theme parks and other attractions around the country.
"Some mornings, I feel like 80 percent" that Tweetsie will remain in business at its present location, Robbins said. "Some mornings I feel like 10 percent."
Randy Baker is confident a solution will be found that keeps the Tweetsie whistling and the cowboys fighting off their Indian attackers well into the 21st century.
"Let's face it: Tweetsie is a landmark now," he said. "That's where it needs to be. That's where it all started, from Boone to Johnson City. That's where Tweetsie made its course."
***********************************************************
From <a href='http://www.wral.com/news/4434614/detail.html' target='_blank'>WRAL.com</a>.
It seems that all the little parks are disappearing around the south. Miracle Strip and Ghost Town are gone, the MBPavilion's situation doesn't look good, and now Tweetsie Railroad is having problems.
I hope Tweetsie manages to work out its situation. I have many memories of visiting the park over the years, and it is most certainly a landmark for the state of North Carolina. Hopefully TRR can continue to operate in its current location.
<a href='http://www.tweetsie.com' target='_blank'>www.tweetsie.com</a>
Before Ghost Town...
There was Tweetsie.
I thought I would point out some news regarding North Carolina's first (and longest-lived) theme park, Tweetsie Railroad. I'm sure many people here have childhood memories of visiting this unique little mountain park over the years, but I'm also sure some people probably have no clue as to what I'm talking about.
This article from WRAL.com has some nice back info on the park in addition to the latest developments on the drawn-out land battle the park has been in since the late 1980s.
***********************************************************
Tweetsie Railroad Faces '07 Deadline To Determine Future - April 29th, 2005
BLOWING ROCK, N.C. -- In 1957, when Chris Robbins' father and two uncles signed a set of 50-year leases on the land for the Tweetsie Railroad theme park, 2007 seemed impossibly far away.
"In 50 years, we'll be flying around in gyrocopters to the moon," joked Robbins, 50, who literally grew up at Watauga theme park and is now its general manager.
There are no gyrocopters and man hasn't been back to the moon since the early 1970s. But SUVs, minivans and station wagons still fill Tweetsie's parking lot on U.S. Highway 321 each summer, as families come to see the shows, feed the animals and ride the Tweetsie, the little steam engine that once carried passengers through the high country of the southern Appalachians between Boone and Johnson City, Tenn.
Tweetsie opens for its 49th season this weekend, but its future is in question as the leases near their expiration.
Much of the park, which over the years has expanded over a mountainside just south of Boone, is on land that Robbins and his immediate family do not control. And in booming Watauga, land values have done nothing but zoom upward in recent years.
"At one time, this (site) was way out there" in a no-man's-land between Boone and Blowing Rock, Robbins said. "Now, we're right in between, and there's a huge demand for good, buildable land."
Randy Baker, a Charlotte architect, is the nephew of Blowing Rock native Grover Robbins Jr., who founded Tweetsie Railroad with his brothers Harry (Chris Robbins' father) and Spencer in 1957. He represents DeeArthur Properties, a group of descendants who hold one of the two leases not directly controlled by the Tweetsie Corp.
Baker said in a telephone interview this week that he and the other leaseholders in DeeArthur want to renew.
Terms still have to be negotiated, Baker said, but "the way I look at it, Tweetsie is a part of the mountain community. We'd really love for that whole area to be turned into Tweetsie Village. We have an interest in making sure Tweetsie survives."
Mike Lentz, a representative of the Broyhill family, which owns the third lease, declined to be interviewed for this story.
Although dressed up as a Wild West theme park, Tweetsie has legitimate historic roots in the area. In 1881, the Eastern Tennessee & Western North Carolina Railroad began operations on 50 miles of narrow-gauge track through the rugged mountains that separate northwestern North Carolina and northeastern Tennessee.
Eventually, the railroad connected Boone and Johnson City, offering passenger service and a way to transport lumber out of the mountains. Locals named the train the "Tweetsie," after the shrill steam whistles that echoed through the hills.
Highway construction improved access to the mountains and by the 1930s and '40s, Tweetsie was suffering from competition from trucking companies. In 1950, the ET&WNC Railroad ended narrow-gauge operations and the last of the locomotives - Tweetsie No. 12 - fell into the hands of Hollywood star Gene Autry, who intended to use the train in cowboy films.
Grover Robbins, developer of a number of other Southern tourist attractions (including the Dollywood forerunner Rebel Railroad in Pigeon Forge, Tenn.), had another idea. In 1956, he bought No. 12 from Autry and the following summer he and his brothers opened the Tweetsie Railroad on its present site. The park purchased a second steam locomotive, No. 190, in the early 1960s from an Alaskan railroad.
Over the years, the Robbins brothers developed a theme park around the excursion railroad, expanding the track into a three-mile loop and adding the Wild West theme, along with a Main Street, a petting zoo, a chairlift that takes visitors up the mountainside and other attractions.
Opening at the height of the Western craze - Davy Crockett, the Lone Ranger and "Gunsmoke" were all on TV and coonskin caps perched on the heads of many Baby Boom youngsters - Tweetsie was an exercise in cornball nostalgia from the start.
"Tweetsie was the first of the Western parks in the South," said Tim Hollis, author of "Dixie Before Disney," a look about Southern roadside attractions of the mid-20th century. "All of those Western parks were tied to the Westerns on television."
Fifty years later, the Western genre exists only to be revived every few years for the sake of irony or revisionism. And the ET&WNC Railroad that was a living memory for so many of Tweetsie's first patrons has receded into the mists of history like train travel in general.
Now, Tweetsie has itself become the nostalgia trip, a living link to the "Dixie Before Disney" era of piling the kids into the station wagon for a two-week ramble to see the sights.
"We're seeing third-generation visitors, fourth-generation visitors," said Robbins. With entertainment aimed squarely at the 3-to-12-year-old demographic, "It's a lot more family-accessible than Carowinds and Six Flags."
And for parents and grandparents who grew up on cowboy-and-Indian stories that today would be branded politically incorrect, riding the Tweetsie, with the stops for a staged "train robbery" and a view of Indians attacking a fort, is like boarding a time machine.
"It's a caricaturized depiction of a Wild West that never existed - except in popular culture," Robbins said. "We sort of celebrate it and parody it at the same time."
Running a family-operated theme park is a tough business - particularly in the mountains, where a rainy Independence Day weekend can ruin an entire summer.
Robbins said Tweetsie has been profitable in recent years and can continue to be, although he has hedged on making major capital investments because of the park's uncertain future, instead focusing on maintenance and upkeep.
If lease renewals cannot be secured, he said, there are other options. Neighboring counties have expressed interest in being home to the Tweetsie, although that raises the question of whether tourists would follow the park to a different location.
"That's definitely a fallback position for us," Robbins said. "It would be better to move Tweetsie than just have it fade."
Last year, Tweetsie acquired a Pennsylvania-based locomotive repair shop and moved its operations on-site. Robbins believes the repair facility could be spun off as a standalone business, servicing steam trains in use at theme parks and other attractions around the country.
"Some mornings, I feel like 80 percent" that Tweetsie will remain in business at its present location, Robbins said. "Some mornings I feel like 10 percent."
Randy Baker is confident a solution will be found that keeps the Tweetsie whistling and the cowboys fighting off their Indian attackers well into the 21st century.
"Let's face it: Tweetsie is a landmark now," he said. "That's where it needs to be. That's where it all started, from Boone to Johnson City. That's where Tweetsie made its course."
***********************************************************
From <a href='http://www.wral.com/news/4434614/detail.html' target='_blank'>WRAL.com</a>.
It seems that all the little parks are disappearing around the south. Miracle Strip and Ghost Town are gone, the MBPavilion's situation doesn't look good, and now Tweetsie Railroad is having problems.
I hope Tweetsie manages to work out its situation. I have many memories of visiting the park over the years, and it is most certainly a landmark for the state of North Carolina. Hopefully TRR can continue to operate in its current location.
<a href='http://www.tweetsie.com' target='_blank'>www.tweetsie.com</a>
