As I recalled to a recent poster a few weeks ago, I’ve been researching Worlds of Fun history now for more than 25 years, but I didn’t always have some obscure Worlds of Fun history fact coming out of my mouth at a second's notice. Back when I was a teenager, I spent many hours at the Missouri Valley Room at the Kansas City downtown library scrolling through old microfilm/fiche of Kansas City Star and Times articles on Worlds of Fun. One of the first articles I encountered was a tiny article titled “Worlds of Fun Park 20 Per Cent Complete” which was published July 28, 1972. I also recall tabulating at the time how old I would be when the park turned 50 years old. Oh, how old 45 felt to a 19-year-old.
The importance of the article and others around the same time can’t be emphasized enough when it comes to the history of the park. It was the summer of 1972 when the foundations of everything we now know as our park truly started rising from the ground up.
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| Lamar Hunt signs a ceremonial contract with J.E. Dunn for the construction of Worlds of Fun. Also pictured are Jack Steadman (President of Worlds of Fun), Stan McIlvaine (General Manager), Bill Dunn Sr. and Lamar Hunt. (And this is why he was called "Big" Jack). |
May 19, 1972: At Traders National Bank (Traders on Grand), the announcement was made that the general construction contract had been awarded to JE Dunn Construction company. Burns and McDonnell, a local engineering company, had already been working with Worlds of Fun and park designers Randall Duell & Associates of Los Angeles, Ca., since the park had been announced in 1971. According to William Dunn, at the time of the announcement, all construction work, including all sub-contracting, was to be completed by Kansas City area firms. Jack Steadman, Worlds of Fun President, supplied some fun statistics regarding the park:
2/12 acres of lakes to contain three ships
Twenty-two box cars of lumber
2 1/2 acres of roofing material
3 miles of plumbing
35 miles of electrical wiring
30 million pounds of concrete
50 million pounds of crushed rock
58 million pounds of asphalt.
4,000 railroad ties
6,000 feet of track
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| The Ski Heis station under construction from the Kansas City Star July 16, 1972 |
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| And depot from the same article. |
According to a Kansas City Star article by Joe Roberts published May 19, five of the 61 structures that would form the park were already under construction including the Cotton Blossom foundation, Scandinavian Sky Ride station, Victrix, Train station, and the Americana Sky Ride loading station. Two days later, May 21, Roberts uniquely explained the quick vertical growth of the park. “Sixty different buildings and at least 20 special rides and recreational features designed to be concealed by the natural contours of the Clay County hills will start appearing like mushrooms after a spring rain,” Roberts said.
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| Victrix from around August 7, 1972 |
He was right, yet some of them would be more complicated to get to rise from the ground than others. Case in point: Cotton Blossom and Victrix–two boats bought from the 1970 MGM Backlot Auction. By June 18, the 2.5-acre concrete “lake” for Cotton Blossom was complete with a base foundation and vertical construction of Cotton Blossom could commence. Jack Steadman specifically mentioned the struggles with Cotton Blossom in an article from The Kansas City Business Journal in 1983. At the time, Steadman stated it was Lamar Hunt who wanted Cotton Blossom when he saw it in May, 1970. “Hunt Saw the Cotton Blossom and something clicked,” he said. Contrarily, Steadman shared that he was skeptical about such a purchase as he doubted the ability to physically move such a large object halfway across the country (Oh to be a fly on the wall during THAT conversation!).
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| Cotton Blossom's grid-like foundation completed from around June 18, 1972. |
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| Cotton Blossom finally vertical in around October of 1972. |
Lamar Hunt would win the auction for Cotton Blossom with a bid of $15,000, beating six other bidders, including one who wanted to turn Cotton Blossom into a floating restaurant in Los Angeles. The plan was that Cotton Blossom would be methodically disassembled, with each piece labeled and noted on the blueprints. It was then moved from California to Kansas City via six boxcars and put into the caves for storage. It was almost exactly 50 years ago that JE Dunn must have realized the re-construction of Cotton Blossom wasn’t going to be a walk in the park. All those numbered pieces weren’t all numbered. Steadman’s concerns were realized, and there were some that thought that Cotton Blossom might not ever be re-assembled. Local retired shipbuilder Wyman Beardsley came to the rescue though and supervised a 35-man crew to re-construct both Cotton Blossom and its MGM neighbor Victrix.
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| Henrietta's foundation with the Sky Hi station in the background. from around July/August 1972. |
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| From around July/August time frame, the Depot track bed is visible center of the photo, with the Sky Hi station on it's left. |
Another aspect of Worlds of Fun was already there and would turn out to be just as integral a feature of Worlds of Fun: the trees. Jack Steadman himself stated that he wanted to build the most beautiful park in the world, and that included natural beauty. Randall Duell, designer of the park, was quoted in Midwest Architect's article “The Fun City Where No One Lives” describing how he originally envisioned the park. “We walked through there one morning, and we came onto the most beautiful circle of trees–the park kind of grew around them. It’s an absolutely beautiful site and we’ve worked hard to preserve it,” Duell said. Cotton Blossom wasn’t the only struggle the park had, and that included redesigning the train layout five different times so as not to lose any of the park’s mature trees. Jack Steadman even went on record stating, “I told the workmen if I saw anybody touch a tree I would personally strangle them” (A New Northland Attraction). I believe that the original tree grove mostly still exists if hampered not by the owners of the park but by Mother Nature herself. It’s still the center of the park to this day.
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| From August 30, 1972, in it can be plainly seen the giant grove of trees at the center of the park. |
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| And a recent Google maps aerial of Worlds of Fun, in which can still be seen the same large central grove of trees. |
If anything is obvious about the details mentioned is that Jack and Lamar weren’t planning just for 1973 but for the long term. As we can see by the following two decades the park grew and doubled in the number of attractions, and acreage, including an additional park, too (Oceans of Fun in 1982). I will share one final quote from Jack Steadman which epitomizes this concept: “We will never stop building. We have almost 500 acres and every year we will build more and more rides, more and more family attractions, and will have a greater number of activities.”
Yes, you did Jack, and we who grew up with it will never forget the park and the memories you gave us.
Special Thanks to James Carter for Proofreading!
A New Northland Attraction, Jack Steadman: A Kid at Heart. (1973, May 30). Dispatch-Tribune, 2.
Big Showboat’s a Comin’ . (1972, June 18). Kansas City Star, 104.
Cotton Blossom docks at KC’s Worlds of Fun. (1972, June 18). Olathe News, 3.
Gosa, G. (1972, November 5). ‘Worlds of Fun’ Playland is Taking Shape Swiftly . Kansas City Star, 2B.
In the Fun City ... Where No One Lives. (1972). Midwest Architect, 1(4), 18–21.
Ramstack, T. (1983, June 1). Who is Jack Steadman? Kansas City Business Journal, 49–57.
Roberts, J. (1972, May 19). Fun Park Contract Signed. Kansas City Star, 42.
Roberts, J. (1972, May 21). Building Variety in Big Fun Center. Kansas City Star, 1G–2G.
.Worlds of Fun Park 20 Per Cent Complete. (1972, July 28). Kansas City Star, 7.