Category: Amusement Park

Where Chattanooga Plays

A vintage ad for Tennessee’s Lake Winnepesaukah Amusement Park found inside This Week In The Land of the Smokies and The Southern Highlands; despite this vintage travel guide’s title of “this week,’ this issue is dated “Events For The Month Of May 1963.”

Here There Be Bears

Vintage “Royal Road” map with cute icons from a promotional travel guide of the Chequamegon District of Upper 13, the scenic highway of Northern Wisconsin; circa 1942. This center map has other cute graphic icons for fishing, hunting, golfing, swimming, etc.

The World’s First Atomic Refuge

According to this vintage brochure for Meramec Caverns, the caverns had geological formations which would “give the greatest protection against atomic shock and radiation. A modern Noah’s Ark is anticipated.”

Up-Inspired Floating House

National Geographic was inspired by Disney’s Up, as reported by Eugene at My Modern Met:

Yesterday morning, March 5 at dawn, National Geographic Channel and a team of scientists, engineers, and two world-class balloon pilots successfully launched a 16′ X 16′ house 18′ tall with 300 8′ colored weather balloons from a private airfield east of Los Angeles, and set a new world record for the largest balloon cluster flight ever attempted. The entire experimental aircraft was more than 10 stories high, reached an altitude of over 10,000 feet, and flew for approximately one hour.

The filming of the event, from a private airstrip, will be part of a new National Geographic Channel series called How Hard Can it Be?, which will premiere in fall 2011.

Thirteen more photos at My Modern Met!

“He Does This Just For Fun”

Nick Janson, a 22-year-old locksmith who calls himself an “amateur escapeologist” re-creates a Houdini favorite, escaping from the straight jacket while hanging upside-down. Another cagey trick: escaping out of a locked padded cell.

Another scan from that 1954 issue of People Today.