COMMENTARY: Saving Arto, It’s Not Magic

By Peter Slocum, Adirondack History Museum President

The magical imaginative world of Arto Monaco – America’s post World War II theme park creative genius – is preserved and protected, rescued from a devastating Adirondack near-hurricane, thanks to grants from the United States Government’s Museum and Library program. That program is now being swept away like the children’s-sized castles, riverboat, and stagecoaches in Monaco’s Upper Jay Land of MakeBelieve that were ravaged by Tropical Storm Irene.

Fortunately, the Monaco heritage is safe–and on public display–at the Adirondack History Museum in Elizabethtown.

Not all pieces of the Land of MakeBelieve could be rescued and restored, but thanks to the work of local community organizations, talented restoration and collections people, the Museum was able to rescue and recover more than 500 items from the park, and opened a permanent exhibit displaying many of the objects that often drew 100,000 people annually to the theme park from 1954 to 1979.

The Museum won grants in 2014 and 2016 from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to rescue and preserve the collection. Those grants totaled $50,000. Fortunately for the Elizabethtown Museum, home of the Essex County Historical Society, it is not currently counting on such grants for projects.

But many institutions are, for instance, the Underground Railroad Education Center in Albany, which celebrates a hub of abolitionist/Underground Railroad activity, a location that helped escaping ex-slaves make their way north, is losing grants that were already promised for a Teen Studies program and creation of new Interpretive center. Many other Adirondack museums – including Historic Saranac Lake and the Adirondack Experience – have used these grants in the recent past.

In many cases, the IMLS grants provide funding and expertise that allow small, modestly-funded institutions to undertake special projects, bringing in expert specialists who are not otherwise on staff, to handle unique challenges, like the restoration of Arto Monaco’s magical world.

Monaco was born and grew up in Essex County, went to the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn to exercise his artistic talent, and then to Hollywood in the 1930s, working as a creative set designer for a number of major studios. During World War II, he turned his set designing skills to military purposes, helping to prepare soldiers for street fighting in real world German villages.

Returning to Upper Jay after the war, he launched a toy design business, which
eventually evolved into the post war tourism phenomenon known as the theme park. He designed and created the Land of MakeBelieve, and Old MacDonald’s Farm in Lake Placid, Frontier Town in North Hudson, and Santa’s Workshop in Wilmington, which opened in 1949 as one of America’s first, and is still operating today.

Arto Monaco was the Pied Piper of Adirondack family tourism in the mid-20th
Century. His legacy is alive and accessible today, thanks to the partnership of the Essex County Historic Society and the United States Government’s special museum grant program. That partnership was spurred by a regional community idea, and supported by federal expertise and tax dollars.

Losing that sort of cooperation will have a dramatic effect on the ability of local communities to research, explore, and celebrate their cultures and history. That will be our nation’s loss.

Photo at top: Land of MakeBelieve promotional photograph.  For 25 years, the park operated along the banks of the Ausable River in Upper Jay. Photo Credit: Adirondack History Museum.