Today in Disney History: Plans Announced for Walt Disney’s Make-Believe Land

On this date in 1952, the Burbank Daily Review published an article about Walt Disney’s plan to build an amusement park. The headline read, “Walt Disney’s Make-Believe Land Project Planned Here,” and highlighted his plan to build a $1.5 million park next to the Disney Studios in Burbank, California. Some of the original ideas for that park, including scenes from a small midwestern town at the turn of the century, an old Mississippi paddle wheeler and a frontier western town eventually made their way into Disneyland in Anaheim, California but the amusement park in Burbank never got off the ground.