Now Autumn at Oz is an annual fall event that has grown from one opening weekend to three.

In the early 2000s, owners opened the event to the public because of growing interest in visiting the park.

Autumn at Oz began in the 90s as an event for former park employees, also known as “Ozzies.”.

The abandoned land of oz theme park was victim to vandalism and decay in the years it was closed.

A new management company rebuilt the park, but it never fully recovered and closed permanently as a year-round attraction in 1980.

In 1975, a fire destroyed several buildings and many of the costumes.The original museum held props from the movie, including one of Dorothy’s dresses.Visitors could ride in an artificial hot air balloon on a ski lift to get a birds-eye view of the park.Land of Oz was the most successful theme park on the East Coast the year it opened.Actress Debbie Reynolds and her daughter Carrie Fisher were part of the ribbon-cutting on opening day.Developers used 44,000 painted bricks to replicate the famous yellow brick road.Guests could pretend to be Dorothy and experience each part of her journey, from the tornado in Kansas to picking up new friends on the road to the Emerald City.The Land of Oz theme park opened in the 1970s in the ski resort town of Beech Mountain as a seasonal attraction for fans of the Wizard of Oz.They enlisted Jack Pentes, an architect from Charlotte, to envision a park that would take visitors away from the turbulent 1960s.

In the 1960s, Grover Robbins and his brothers Harry and Spencer Robbins (owners of Tweetsie Railroad, among other attractions) bought land at the top of Beech Mountain.

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