In a smattering of gunfire, I become a kid again. The last 35 years went up in smoke. And I might as well be three years old – and about three feet high – at Ghost Town in the Sky.

The view from the Red Dog Saloon, c. 1961 photo courtesy Ghost Town in the Sky

BANG! BANG! Cowboys scurry. And one man – called a “preacher” – turns out to be a con man, waving a pistol at the sheriff. Somebody fires again. The preacher falls over, left for dead.

Yes, this is only make-believe, as Conway Twitty would sing. But don’t try telling me that – not as I’m standing here in the 1800s and flashing back to the 1970s. Long ago, before I went to kindergarten, I toddled around the North Carolina mountains, visiting Land of Oz and Tweetsie Railroad. Yet the theme park I remember most vividly is this – Ghost Town in the Sky, with shoot-’em-ups on the streets and fall guys dropping off buildings.

“The gunfight? That’s what people come up to see,” says Tara Tucker, one of 2007’s dancing can-can girls at the park’s Silver Dollar Saloon.

People are coming to this western-themed park by the vanload and shuttling themselves up 4,600-foot-high Buck Mountain on an 18-minute-long chair lift ride. Ghost Town re-opened in 2007, and in 2008 is born again for good, with rides on its rebuilt roller coaster, the Cliff Hanger (formerly the Red Devil).

None of this was easy, says marketing manager David King, who recalls several months of scrubbing away ghosts of the past after Ghost Town had been boarded up and left to rot for several seasons. Then, a new management team’s decision to reverse history required retooling every part of the park:
“Basically, every building was gutted to the studs and then built back and painted. We had to bring everything back up to code from the 1960s.”

First opened in 1961, Ghost Town hit its peak about the time I visited in 1972 or ’73. For a while, the park attracted guest gunfighters in Burt Reynolds, Tony Dow (Wally on “Leave It to Beaver”) and Dan Blocker (Hoss on “Bonanza”) – all firing off blanks with the best of ’em.

Shootouts are standard fare at Ghost Town, a throwback to earlier days of tourism as well as to the days of the American frontier. Photo by Joe Tennis

Robert Bradley remembers those years. Now in his 60s, Bradley has been at Ghost Town since the 1960s, when he originated a role as a gunfighter called the “Apache Kid.” These days, thankful that the park’s hiatus is over, Bradley is shooting down cowboys who are young enough to be his grandchildren.

Yes, it’s only make believe, all for fun and show. But that’s the reason Bradley feels so at home. “And,” he says, “it’s like one big family up here now.”
Ghost Town in the Sky is open May to November. 828-926-1140,
ghosttowninthesky.com.