Thursday, June 29, 2006

Five Views of Fowlers Harbor Frontierland

Taking inspiration from Gorillas Don't Blog post of June 27, here are four different images of Fowlers Harbor. The first three are 1955 or early 1956 with not much growth or scenery surrounding the harbor. One of the photos is actually captioned Shantytown on the river. Fowlers Harbor was named after the Construction Manager and later Operations Director Admiral Joe Fowler. During construction the story goes that Admiral Joe convinced Walt he would need a harbor to work on the Mark Twain. Walt was not happy about the added construction cost but did listen to his employees and built the harbor, naming it after Admiral Joe. The harbor is one of those places that most people do not even notice or think about. The last image is from approximately 1960. It is interesting to see the changes especially in landscaping from the top images to the bottom image.

Dan Goodsell sent me this scan to show five views. This one appears to be late 1957 or early 1958 as the Columbia is being built. The background on this is great showing the Disneyland and Santa Fe Railroad tunnel and the tunnel to the Indian Village. Thanks Dan for sharing the image!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am early this morning d&g went 2 b early this morning next time I go I will look for this

Major Pepperidge said...

Nice! What a great grouping, it's really interesting to see the little changes in landscaping. I always like to see the Keelboats as well, look at that image in which the boat has one window...kind of unusual.