Marceline

This location has such a rich and interesting history that I'll save this for a full episode in the future.

But you should know that it's likely the only building on Main Street that was inspired by a real-life building in Walt Disney's childhood home of Marceline, Missouri.

Fun fact, when the workers installed the red and white light

bulbs at refreshment corner, they miscalculated the spacing.

Retirement didn't end Bob's connection to Disney history.

He remained active in Disney-related events, helped organize a monthly breakfast club for retirees, and became known as the Keeper of the Flame for Club 55.

He also promoted the Walt Disney Birthplace Museum in Marceline, Missouri, connecting Walt's early roots with the legacy of Disneyland.

His window was installed on July 31, 1997, shortly after his retirement.

He wanted it to celebrate the experiences, memories, and ideals that had helped shape his life.

Main Street, USA was inspired in part by his memories of Marceline, Missouri.

Its architecture and atmosphere evoked the American small town at the turn of the 20th century, and in Town Square stood the American flag.

During Disneyland's opening day ceremonies, members of the United States Armed Forces participated in raising the flag.

Yes, that is true.

The popular story, the popularized story from the company is that Main Street USA and Disneyland was, and it is inspired by a town called Marceline, Missouri, which is where Walt Disney lived for, I think, four years when he was a kid.

However, Harper Golf is, is the person who drew the original, the first sketch of an artwork of Disneyland.

And he grew up in Fort Collins.

And so, yes, you are correct.

And that's a little known... outside of probably Fort Collins, Colorado, because you have, you know, this story of kind of the company creating the person and the lure around the person.

And, you know, let's, yeah, it is inspired by Marceline Missouri in his mind.

However, you know, Harper Goff living in Fort Collins, he designed a lot of what, what Main Street USA is by his experiences in Fort Collins.

Walt Disney's love of trains has really hit my heart here in recent years.

After going and visiting Marceline, Missouri and seeing Walt Disney's boyhood town and getting to walk and talk with the people that are still there and the hometown museum and their team and seeing how much Walt Disney's admiration for his uncle and the train passing through town and how much that affected his life.

And this iconic image of the Disneyland and the Disney World trains, even still to this day, all because he just loved running out to the edge of town, meeting up with the Santa Fe that his uncle was a conductor on, and he would race that train.

And I love that because it makes it so human and so real.

Bob Chapek and Walt Disney were both born in Chicago.

Walt was born to a hard-working Congregationalist family and moved as a small child to Marceline, Missouri, just six hours from Chicago.

His father had many jobs, including farmer, newspaper delivery route owner, and soda company investor.

He was a hard worker and instilled the same value into his children.

Walt delivered newspapers, often falling asleep in class as a result.

Walt's father was a strict man who used physical punishment on his children.

Walt describes his time in Marceline as the happiest in his life.

so happy, in fact, that he later designed Main Street USA as a tribute to it.

They're big enough to like crawl on and things like that.

But the really cool thing about the dreaming tree is it is a tribute to the real cottonwood tree in Marceline, Missouri.

that's referred to as the wishing tree.

And that is where that's the tree that you can visit in Marceline, Missouri, where Walt Disney, when he was a child living in that small town, he would sit and draw and kind of think up his ideas to to entertain his family and entertain the kids um around there and so I think that one's a really cool one that it's because it is like a tribute to the real tree in Marceline and a lot you know Disney fans know that um In Walt's vision of Main Street USA, he was thinking of Marceline, Missouri.

And then in Harper Goff's vision, he was thinking of Fort Collins, Colorado, and they kind of merged.

So it's real neat that you have these kind of details that keep going back to personal ties to his life when he was growing up.

At Disneyland, it was one of the original lands when the park opened in 1955, and Disney describes it today as a setting filled with turn-of-the-century nostalgia.

Its roots reach back to Marceline, Missouri.

Disney says Disneyland's Main Street was partially inspired by Walt's memories of Marceline, although it was never intended to be a literal reconstruction of the town.

And then the question that we're going to start with, when you enter Main Street, USA, Do you think of it as an attraction or as a means to get to the rest of the attractions?

I have to plead guilty on this one a little bit.

I was nervous about it, but I really liked it.

So let's go back a little bit and let's talk about...

Marceline, because that's where the story begins.

... almost pulled the trigger to drive down.

But you know, they, uh, they talked very seriously about putting some kind of Disney theme park or attraction in St. Louis, Missouri for a long time because Walt, of course, you know, his formative years took place just about three hours from me in Marceline, Missouri, a place that I love and have been to a ton of times, where you can see the original Main Street USA.

So what does it look like if you have a Midwestern theme park where we get some cold weather? I think we have some examples of that over in Paris, you know, where they deal with the cold weather, uh, much more than you would in, say, in Anaheim or in Orlando.

So it's just really cool, I think, that we can kind of allow our creativity to flow and our Disney nerddom to flow in trying to get all this history too.