Saturday, September 7, 2013

Lagoon's Pioneer Village may Be History one day ...



Pioneer Village has been a mainstay at Lagoon since 1976.
However, the Village is also Lagoon Park's most costly maintenance nightmare. Plus, the rising generations do not seem to care about this historical treasure.
In fact, Pioneer Village resembles more of a ghost town these days, because of a lack of patrons.
There used to be fabulous old west gun battle shows in the Village and now they are long since gone, due to a lack of interest.
The only thing Pioneer Village is good for to most Lagoon goers these days is to be a travel path to the Log Flume and Rattlesnake Rapids rides.
Once the oldest of Lagoon's owners, Peter Freed, is gone, I would bet that's when Pioneer Village will be in serious danger of being closed, sold and moved away.
(Peter Freed turned 94 in 2015.)
The rest of the Freed family doesn't appear to share Peter's fascination with history and the Village.
So, enjoy Pioneer Village while you can.
Even though Lagoon is America's largest family-owned amusement parks these days, the Village may not survive the next generation ...
My prediction is it will be closed and gone by 2022 ...
Pioneer Village was relocated from Salt Lake County in the mid-1970s.
Whether the nearby Lagoon Zoo and Wild Kingdom Train would remain is unclear.

-NOTE that some things in Pioneer Village are on loan from various places. Also, some components/displays in Pioneer Village are too Utah, or LDS Church oriented to end up outside Utah. These items would likely be handled separately, from the general old west items on the village.