My old photos

DollarCityBoy · November 12, 2010, 09:40:34 AM

Also for one or two Christmas's they had "The Night Before Christmas" displayed in lights that were sequinized to music and a narrator. This was placed on a platform in front of the waterfall. It is now used as one of the props during the train ride, but just stays lit up.

Ozark Outlaw · November 12, 2010, 10:13:41 AM

Quote from: Junior on November 12, 2010, 08:18:53 AM
There was a period for about two or three years in the early/mid 80's that the pond at the waterfall was used to stage very popular lumberjack log rolling contests. Aunt Judy's (the storyteller) husband, Richard Young, a fine SDC entertainer, emceed the log rolling contests. The dock at the pond was used by Richard and it was a place the log rollers got on and off the logs.

Very interesting! I saw Aunt Judy during my last trip, and now I am going to have to catch her again on my next trip to ask her about her husband's log rolling adventures years ago!

Junior · November 12, 2010, 04:20:29 PM

A few years ago when my wife and I visited the park, Richard was doing crowd control, that is, entertaining on the line...for the saloon. Don't know what he's doing nowadays. He and his wife are both retired educators, and they authored many, many books about storytellling and Ozarks folktales in the later 1980s and into the early to mid 1990s. They were published by August House of Little Rock, some are still in print, but many are not.

saladdays · November 17, 2010, 10:28:01 AM

My brother and I used to love the Shanty Town. Too bad it had to go when it did.

slow_walker · November 18, 2010, 08:41:44 PM

rubedugans · November 18, 2010, 10:08:29 PM

Awesome find!

Junior · November 19, 2010, 06:37:07 AM

The White River Shipping Company photo is a view of the diving bell in 1983. I wish he would have taken a picture of the front of the building and of some of us Juniors entertaining the crowd. That would have been a cool picture to see.

Ozark Outlaw · November 19, 2010, 12:18:19 PM

Wow, those are awesome pictures slow_walker!

Looking at those pictures of Silver Dollar City is like looking at a photo of your grandparents when they were in their twenties. It looks like Silver Dollar City, but so many things are different.

After looking at the Lucky Silver Mine Restaurant photo, I never realized how much of the front square still looked like a parking lot in 1966.

Thanks for the nice contribution!

sanddunerider · November 19, 2010, 03:35:49 PM

great pics! I like the way the bridge and saloon line still look the same today!

betamike · November 19, 2010, 05:02:43 PM

Great pictures! Wow....that is one seriously overloaded Stagecoach!!!

Junior · November 19, 2010, 06:14:08 PM

Did you notice the loading stairs the city built to get everyone up on the top of that stagecoach? Man, you could not get away with putting folks on top of a coach like that now!

betamike · November 19, 2010, 08:05:41 PM

I did! I vividly remember riding the hot cramped bumpy inside of the Butterfield, but I totally do not remember the makeshift stairs

Ozark Outlaw · November 20, 2010, 09:46:05 AM

The stagecoach picture is great. I just hope those two animals didn't get spooked, or that gentlemen in the plaid shirt would have walloped to the ground!

Also, I just noticed those two horses in the picture as well! Besides the obvious reason of high cost, and up keep, I wonder why Silver Dollar City doesn't have many horses now? A town in the 1880's without horses? Say it isn't so!

Junior · November 20, 2010, 01:55:32 PM

On a thread somewhere on this site somebody said the reason you don't see the horses and mules on the streets as in the old days is because it is cost prohibitive to insure the horses/mules. Something like a few thousand bucks a year per animal. Everybody is sue happy nowadays. Too bad, as I remember those days when mules pulled wagons around the park, the Rainmakers wagon, a delivery wagon, the one mule swing, and so on.

sanddunerider · November 20, 2010, 02:43:06 PM

oh yea! A horse drawn buggy/carriage/wagon around the outskirts of SDC. How cool would that be.

"over the hill and through the dale"...