Closed since 1980, the Land of Oz theme park only opens for one October weekend annually. The rest of the time it looks like it’s been abandoned 35 years.

Joel Handwerk of Lithium Photo visited the “Creepy Land of Oz” and if anything, he’s understating the oppressive atmosphere of doom and decay that permeates the former theme park. One wonders how the park’s skeleton staff manages to freshen up the place so visitors arriving on the first weekend of October each year don’t immediately turn their cars around and burn rubber in a frenzied effort to escape!

While Handwerk may be better known for his infrared images – what his friends refer to as “those nuclear winter photos” – this choice selection of shots definitely casts the mainly abandoned Land of Oz theme park in a stark and uncritical light.

You read that right: “mainly abandoned”… time for some backstory goodness. The Land of Oz theme park was planned, built and opened in 1970 by Grover Robbins and was situated in the North Carolina ski resort town of Beech Mountain. In related news, North Carolina has (or had) a ski resort. Who knew?

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Yellow Brick Ode The Mainly Abandoned Land Of Oz Theme Park

Amusement parks are a big part of most peoples’ childhoods, with fond recollections of roller coasters and snow cones dancing in our memories. But what happens to those amusement parks after they have lived out their lives? For artist James Dive of The Glue Society, one amusement park from his past was turned into a creepily touching piece of art.

The sculpture, entitled Once, contains an entire amusement park compressed into a single four-ton cube. Dive’s treatment of the park is gentle and reverent while being inherently violent. To prepare for his unusual work of art, Dive first did the exact opposite of his ultimate goal: he carefully cleaned, painted and restored every bit and piece of the park.

Over the following two weeks, a 28-ton excavator smashed and crushed the entire amusement park into a neat, gigantic cube. Parts of the park’s former life can still be glimpsed – a brightly-painted sign here, a string of lights there, some creepy dolls scattered about. The feeling Dive tries to evoke with this exceptionally odd sculpture is “the finality of a missed moment. And how brutal that can sometimes be.”

The irony of this piece lies largely in its finality, given that the pleasures of an amusement park are so transient and fleeting. In this sculpture they become more permanent, all compressed into one strangely savage yet sentimental four-ton cube. Once was installed as part of the Sculpture By the Sea program in Aarhus, Denmark.

An abandoned power station that has been an iconic part of London’s skyline since 1933 is transformed into a playground and museum in the “Architectural Ride London” proposal by Atelier Zündel Cristea. The concept makes use of the Battersea Power Station, which was decommissioned in 1983, preserving its history while making it both an educational and recreational attraction.

The former coal-fired power station (which has been featured in a number of films and music videos) is notable for its original Art Deco interior fittings and decor, but throughout the thirty years of its abandonment, its condition has deteriorated severely. Former owners considered making the station an indoor theme park in the 1987, and work began on converting the site, but lack of funding brought the project to a halt.

The new proposal revives this idea, making it even more grand with a roller coaster that winds around the building itself, making it the center of attention during the ride. Paths created by the scaffolding-like support of the roller coaster offer opportunities for walking tours. The design took first prize in the ArchTriumph Museum of Architecture competition.

“Our project puts the power station on centre stage, the structure itself enhancing the site through its impressive scale, its architecture, and its unique brick material. Our created pathway links together a number of spaces for discovery: the square in front of the museum, clearings, footpaths outside and above and inside, footpaths traversing courtyards and exhibition rooms. The angles and perspectives created by the rail’s pathway, through the movement within and outside of the structure, place visitors in a position where they can perceive simultaneously the container and its contents, the work and nature. They come to participate in several simultaneous experiences: enjoying the displayed works, being moved by the beauty of the structure and the city: river, park, buildings.”

If your office was a pirate ship, would you be more or less likely to slack off? The incredible offices of Inventionland design factory in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania look more like a theme park or movie sound stage than a workplace, keeping their employees inspired to come up with creative ideas of their own. Inventionland invents nearly 2,000 new items every year, putting out one product every three days.

The 70,000-square-foot space is divided into 16 different ‘sets’, each with a unique theme of its own. There’s a race track with a distinctive checkered pattern, elevated like a miniature arena, with the desks in the center. Caves provide peaceful work spaces for those who need isolation to perform at their best.

A massive castle has a sense of highly polished Disney-esque luxury, while a treehouse and a waterfall offer tranquil getaways of the sort most cubicle-dwellers only dream of.

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Inventionland Offices From Tree Houses To Race Tracks

Gulliver’s Kingdom Theme Park, built in the shadow of Japan‘s Mount Fuji with oodles of government stimulus money, was a sprawling white elephant that existed for only 10 years. Today there’s little if any trace of the abandoned theme park, its ruins, or Gulliver himself but the eerie and unsettling images captured by a legion of intrepid “haikyo” explorers.

Time and Tied

(images via: Spechtrograph and Michael John Grist)

Gulliver’s Kingdom was a failed theme park located near Kawaguchi-machi, Yamanashi prefecture, Japan. The park opened in 1997 and typified the “bridge to nowhere” construction projects Japan’s government and banking sector championed in the 1990s.

(images via: UER and Kuroneko)

Though intended to boost the economy out of its post-bubble doldrums, white elephants like Gulliver’s Kingdom created some short-term construction jobs but little permanent employment.

(image via: Spechtrograph)

Gulliver’s Kingdom was backed financially by the Niigata Chuo Bank, which later collapsed into a sea of red ink and toxic, non-performing loans. As it morphed into a so-called Zombie Bank, the Niigata Chuo Bank was ordered to clear its books of unprofitable assets, of which Gulliver’s Kingdom was one: they had lent the venture around $350 million. In October of 2001, the unpopular theme park shut its Brobdingnagian doors for the last time.

Cult of Poison-ality

(images via: Spechtrograph and Dreamin’ Trip Salad)

On the face of it, Gulliver’s Kingdom had a few things going for it. Its location, for one thing – nestled in Kamikuishiki village at the foot of Mount Fuji. About 25 million tourists descend upon Mount Fuji’s environs each year and as beautiful as it is, how long can one look at a dormant volcano?

(images via: K3N’s Blog and Spechtrograph)

And about that location… Mount Fuji has a dark side, most notably the Aokigahara area where seemingly oblivious project planners decided to build Gulliver’s Kingdom. Ranked sixth by the website Cracked.com on their list of The 6 Creepiest Places on Earth, Aokigahara is Japan’s “suicide forest” – said to be the second most popular suicide location after San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. On the bright side, if the kids are driving you nuts after an afternoon spent at Gulliver’s Kingdom… well, perish that thought.

(image via: MutantMandias)

Bad enough Gulliver’s Kingdom had a suicide forest as its neighbor, the park’s other neighbors were much, much worse. Kamikuishiki village is notorious for being the location of the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday cult’s headquarters and nerve gas production facility.

(image via: UER)

Remember Aum? They’re the whack-jobs who carried out Sarin gas attacks that killed 19 people, including 12 on the Tokyo subway. On March 22nd, 1995, the cult’s compound was stormed by over 1,000 police officers decked out in full-face gas masks.

(images via: Michael John Grist and UER)

Three years later (and one year after Gulliver’s Kingdom opened), residents living nearby were still being reminded of Aum Shinrikyo’s monstrous crimes. “I can still smell the chemicals sometimes when I take a walk in the morning,” said 69-year-old Norie Okamoto, who lives just 100 meters (330 ft) from one of the cult’s former Sarin production facilities. Now Robert Duvall might love the smell of napalm in the morning, but you and your family out for some fun at Gulliver’s Kingdom? Not *cough* so much.

Gulliver Unravels

(images via: Michael John Grist and K3N’s Blog)

The exposure of Aum Shinrikyo was pretty much the straw that broke the back of Gulliver’s Kingdom, though there was really so much wrong with the park on so many levels one might say it was clearly doomed from the start.

(images via: UER and MutantMandias)

Gulliver’s Kingdom wasn’t actually a Six Flags style park, by the way. The closest things to the usual amusement park rides and rollercoasters were a bobsled track and a luge course – not exactly ideal for the kiddies.

(image via: UER)

We don’t recall Gulliver’s Kingdom as being a stop on the World Bobsled Tour (if there is such a thing), but maybe that whole nerve gas factory proximity thing put organizers off scheduling events there.

(image via: MutantMandias)

Let’s not forget the immobile star of the show, a 45 meter (147.5 ft) long statue of Jonathan Swift’s epic character. Even the name of the park was a misnomer. If it’s Gulliver’s Kingdom, what’s the big guy doing securely pegged to the ground? No way to treat a king, now is it? Those are just some of the questions we’ll never know the answers to… and here’s one more: what’s inside the doors cut into Gulliver’s body??

(images via: MutantMandias)

All that’s by the by, by the way, since Gulliver’s Kingdom is no more… and I mean literally. After a thorough demolition in 2007, all one can see are some exposed foundations and the odd tuft of asbestos insulation snagged on twisted rebar.

(image via: UER)

If not for these vivid and disturbing photographic images, few would be the wiser as to what came and went at the foot of Mount Fuji almost as fast as the 2010 movie Gulliver’s Travels appeared and then vanished from your local marquee. Both, as it happens, were in 3D.

(image via: National Geographic)

Nothing remains of Gulliver’s Kingdom today but a rough concrete scar, and even this basic foundation is gradually being subsumed by dirt, dust and windblown sand. Was it all a dream? Perhaps it was… and if any lessons can be learned by Gulliver’s Kingdom’s rise, fall and disappearance it’s that if one must dream, at least dream big.