actually was thinking about renaming the park [to] Frontier Funland, but cooler heads prevailed. He also bought a bunch of steel rides and hired a younger staff. Don Enz, former Legend City employee: There were good changes. They did away with things that weren’t effective to spend money on, like some of the river boats and rides. It took a lot to make the water clean, so I don’t think it was healthy having people in canoe rides. Mike Delamater, former Legend City employee: A lot of the new rides coming in were from an old amusement park in California called Pacific Ocean Park. The [Satellite] Sky Ride came from there, which is why the [gondolas] look like diving bells, because that was the theme of Pacific Ocean Park. They hired a lot of children of U-Haul employees, and my mom was a legal secretary there. Frost: In the summer of ’69, they ran an ad at ASU’s employment office looking for college kids to work. My wife worked in the hat shop and I got hired as a security guard. I’d catch a lot of fence-jumpers and keep the peace, but my biggest thing was guarding Wallace and Ladmo and particu- larly keeping the kids from killing Gerald. They’d go nuts when he came out and would try to get to him. Enz: I was working security and one of the unpopular things I had to do was go put bumper stickers on the cars in the parking lot. It didn’t go over very well. Delamater: The first job I had was as a Courtesy of John Bueker and never really recovered. Lou Crandall Jr.: My father said [1963] was the coldest fall and winter they’d had in Phoenix in a long time. So after the summer, it got really cold and people weren’t coming out. Bueker: There was also some financial malfeasance by some of the people involved, but not Louis. He was a completely honest individual, the sweetest guy you’d ever know, and a creative, talented man. But he was not a businessman. He just wasn’t suited to running the park. Lou Crandall Jr.: He just didn’t have enough running capital. He went to all the investors and said, “We need more money,” and they told him it wasn’t there. They orig- inally had enough for two phases but pretty much spent all of it on one phase. My father wanted to get the second phase of the park started because he felt it was going to take off the next spring and summer. No one would give him any money to run the park. He went to the investors. He even went to [then-Arizona Governor Paul Fannin]. The answer was always no. Bueker: By late ’64, Louis was gone. He gave over control of the park to the board of [directors] and left for Utah. Janie Crandall: Dad got commissioned to go up to Provo and build a ski resort, so that’s what he did. He was sad and really regretted he couldn’t keep it going. Ventriloquist and entertainer Vonda Kay Van Dyke with her dummy Kurley-Q. Bueker: [The board] tried stabilizing things by selling more stock and securing more loans. Ironically, for the next year or so, revenues went up. But it wasn’t enough to stave off the creditors and they went into bankruptcy. Dixon: So my stock wound up nothing but a worthless piece of paper. It was a tough lesson. It’s probably worth more now as paraphernalia. More Owners, More Rides Legend City closed in September 1966 and was ordered to be liquidated by a bankruptcy court. It went dark for two years with no hope of rescue. Enter Sam Shoen, the late entrepreneur behind U-Haul, who bought the park in 1968 for less than $1 million and began making changes. When it reopened a year later, things were different. The Western elements were dialed back or ditched altogether. New rides were added to the mix as it became more of an amusement park. And waves of teenagers and college kids were hired as employees. Bueker: That’s really what saved Legend City and why we had it as long as we did. Sam Shoen sunk a lot of money into it, repaired and repainted everything, and was clearly trying to rebrand the park. He ride operator. One thing I learned as a ride operator was when people puked, you’d stop the ride and hose it down, giving you a break. So the goal then became, see how many people you could get sick. And the guy who operated the Tilt-A-Whirl figured you could make the cars spin faster by turning off and on the motor. So he and I used to have contests to see who could make people sick [the fastest]. Paul Michaels, Legend City patron: The cool part was you could stand under all the thrill rides at Legend City and collect change that fell out of people’s pockets. That’s how you’d get soda and snack money at the park. But you also wanted to be careful because people were throwing up, too. I think they called that part of the park “Barf Row.” Andréa Leona, former Tempe resident: Tempe back then was just small and dusty. So Legend City was the default place to go, especially for teenagers. It was always hopping. There wasn’t a lot to do. You had to make your own fun. My whole family used to go or my older sister would take me. And when I got older, I’d hang out there with my boyfriend. It was the only hotspot in Tempe back in that era for younger people. It was something you could do every weekend. Michaels: I started going with my family in 1970. It was just one of those family places to go and a hell of a lot cheaper and easier than going to California. So Legend City was like the budget Disneyland. Bueker: They still kept a bit of the Western stuff. The river ride was rechris- tened Cochise’s Stranglehold. They still had gunfights and stunt shows. But for once, the park was successful. In 1973, Legend City was sold again, this time to Continental Recreation, a Japanese- owned ride manufacturer. It wasn’t long before the park changed hands. Bueker: My understanding is Continental just wanted to use the park to promote and try out their amusement rides and weren’t really interested in running Legend City on behalf of the locals. It didn’t last very long, understandably. The next owner, Bill Capell, came along in 1975 and bought the place. He continued the trend toward making it more of a general amusement park and away from Louis Crandall’s original vision for Legend City. They added more of the carnival-type rides and the Sidewinder, which was a world-class roller coaster. Frost: [The Capells] were from a carnie background. They bought [Legend City] and turned it more into a carnie kind of operation. Neil Bourque, former Tempe resident: The one ride I loved was the Musicfest, which lots of amusement parks have. It was this fast-moving kind of carousel-y [Matterhorn-type ride] with cars moving on a circular track, but they’d blare rock music really loud. All the stoners and burnout kids would be on it, so you’d be afraid to ride, but it was cool. Deb Dunlap, former Legend City employee: It was a fun job in high school. I started out in the ticket booth, which sucked, and then I went to rides, and that was fun. I probably did the bumper cars the most. We’d go on our day off during the week because weekends were busiest; you got in for free, rode for free, and got in front of the lines. Delamater: A lot of crazy stuff went on at the park. Dunlap: I was working the [Satellite] Sky Ride one day and there’s this bad wind- storm and we had to get everyone off. And as I was doing that, these kids were crying about how someone had fallen off. I guess the wind had blown one of the gondolas off the track, it had dropped down, the door flew open, and a kid almost fell out but his parents caught him by the arm. Not every mishap on Legend City’s ride had a happy ending. On August 10, 1977, a door on the Zipper ride opened, causing 12-year-old patron Esther Urbalijo to fall to her death. Her sister Inez, then 15, was also injured. Their family was awarded $1.3 million from a lawsuit over the incident. It wasn’t the first ride-related fatality at Legend City — an 18-year-old student nurse fell to her death in 1969 — but portended the downward trajectory the park was headed on in its twilight years. Dunlap: I was there when the girls fell off the Zipper. The door was latched with a cotter pin and there were no seat belts. They tried to say the ride operator was drunk and threw the cotter pin. I testified at the trial and said I’d seen him >> p 23 21 phoenixnewtimes.com | CONTENTS | FEEDBACK | OPINION | NEWS | FEATURE | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | FILM | CAFE | MUSIC | PHOENIX NEW TIMES SEPT 29TH–OCT 5TH, 2022
