Santa's Village Lake Arrowhead California

Santa's Village was opened in May 1955. It was the first franchised amusement park, one of three built by developer Glenn Holland. The others, also defunct, were in Scotts Valley, California and East Dundee, Illinois. The East Dundee park reopened in 2011 under new ownership as Santa's Village AZoosment Park. Opening more than a month before Disneyland, the 230-acre (0.93 km2) park was one of Southern California's biggest tourist attractions. It had kiddie rides, including a bobsled, monorail, and Ferris wheel. It also had a petting zoo, live reindeer and shops including a bakery, candy kitchen and toy shop. Reduced attendance and revenue shortfalls caused the park to close on March 1, 1998. The property sold three years later for $5.6 million and served as a staging area for logging operations. The faded candy cane signpost and dilapidated buildings became a ghost town along the Rim of the World Highway. In June 2014, the park was sold to a new owner who planned to operate it as a year-round tourist destination called SkyPark at Santa's Village. After renovations of 18 original Santa's Village buildings and restoration projects in the surrounding forest, it reopened on December 2, 2016, as an outdoor adventure park: SkyPark at Santa's Village. General manager: Bill Johnson Santa's Village at Lake Arrowhead was a popular theme park from 1955 to 1998 and reopened in 2016. It was the first franchised one in the United States, with two others in the Santa Cruz Mountains and Ohio. Lake Arrowhead is an unincorporated community and a census-designated place (CDP) in the San Bernardino Mountains of San Bernardino County, California, surrounded by the San Bernardino National Forest, and surrounding the eponymous Lake Arrowhead Reservoir. Lake Arrowhead consists of 6 communities including Lake Arrowhead, Twin Peaks, Blue Jay, Cedar Glen, Skyforest, and Rimforest. The population of the CDP was estimated at 12,424 in the 2010 census. It was formerly called "Little Bear Lake", until around 1920, when a group from Los Angeles, the Arrowhead Lake Company, bought the lake and the land surrounding it, and changed its name to Arrowhead Lake. Tourism is the primary economic generator for the area, contributing several million dollars per year to the county and providing hundreds of full-time and part-time jobs for local residents. The area is host to over 4 million visitors a year. There are 400 guest rooms in hotels, motels and bed and breakfasts, vacation cabin rentals, condos, and rustic cabin lodges and resorts. The Lake Arrowhead community is home to the Lake Arrowhead Country Club and Golf Course, Lake Arrowhead Yacht Club, and SkyPark at Santa's Village. The area is also popular for business conferences.