Disney's America: Mickey Crosses the Delaware

I love American history. It's a manageable subject, doesn't extend back into the mists of time (if you ignore the American Indians, which you shouldn't), and has a compelling cast of characters.

Walt Disney also loved American history, though his interests centered more on the idyllic and idealistic aspects of our past, especially small-town, turn-of-the-century America as replicated in Main Street U.S.A.

In 1993, long after Walt's death, Disney got the American history bug and announced a new theme park in Virginia tentatively called Disney's America. Imagine the possibilities: Mickey crosses the Delaware, Donald accepts Lotso's surrender at Appomattox Courthouse, hippie Chip and Dale tune in, turn on, and drop out (this one also known as the VW Micro Bus Psychedelic Thrill Ride).

Nope. According to Alain Littaye of DisneyAndMore, Disney would have played it straight.

In his short but well-illustrated article, Alain reveals what Disney had in mind for the park. Instead of another Main Street U.S.A., Disney planned to substitute a Civil War village that would serve as a hub to other lands: Native America, Enterprise (a factory town), Victory Field, and Family Farm where guests could milk cows. (Imagine the size of that herd!) Given the park's proposed location in Virginia, a state once proudly part of the Confederacy, it's not clear whether the 'Civil War village' would have been southern (to please the locals) or northern (to please everyone else).

Disney, of course, never built the park. Alain writes that "we will all miss it forever" (not really!), but Disney made the right call on this one. Putting aside the cultural politics that would have dogged Civil War villages, Native American villages, and factory towns, the concept itself wouldn't have appealed to most children (hey, Junior, want to spend your vacation learning about blast furnaces?). I'm sure, though, many parents would have loved it, and I'd have been among them.

Alain has lots of concept art and links to related articles written by others, especially Jim Hill, but he missed Sam Genawey's seminal nine-part series tracing the park's short, unhappy arc from conceptual rise to political fall. It's fascinating Disney history.

Even more fascinating are the parade possibilities: Minnie as Rosie the Riveter; Donald as Beneduck Arnold; Pluto as Patton flattening the pavement in a slow tank ride down Main Street.

I often wonder, you know, why I'm not an Imagineer...