It’s a story with roots reaching back more than half a century, when a young Maggie Valley, N.C. couple – Hubert and Alaska Presley – teamed up with a South Carolina developer named R.B. Coburn to conceive and build a $1 million theme park on Buck Mountain.
Ghost Town in the Sky, touted as “North Carolina’s mile-high theme park,” opened in 1961 and featured a dazzling array of roller coasters, a chairlift, carousel, bumper cars, circus and kids’ rides and an Old West town complete with saloons, can-can dance girls and regular cowboy shootouts.
Ghost Town was an instant hit, and soon became one of North Carolina’s most popular tourist destinations, attracting more than 600,000 visitors a year, capitalizing on a more innocent time when John Wayne movies and TV shows like “Bonanza” and “Gunsmoke” were cultural icons.
The park had a good run of fun and of boosting the Maggie Valley economy, but by 2002, a combination of changing public tastes, escalating maintenance costs and mismanagement – including a couple of embarrassing incidents in which the park’s chair lift stuck – forced it to close. It sat empty, in eerie echo of its name, for the next five years.
End of an era?
So it seemed, especially after a series of events including a $50 million infusion to reopen in 2007 led to a 2009 bankruptcy filing, a mudslide that closed off the entrance road in 2010 and foreclosure in 2011.
And who should emerge from all that rubble to take up the cause?
None other than one Alaska Presley, now in her eighth decade.
Distraught over the decline of something she helped create, Presley purchased the park for $2.5 million at a public auction in early 2012.
“It had been part of my life for so long,” she says. “And I just felt like Maggie Valley needed it.”
Over the past year, Presley, who lives about two miles from Ghost Town, has invested millions in everything from new wiring, plumbing and land excavation to repairing old rides and installing new ones.
“Ghost Town is a huge asset to Maggie Valley, Haywood County and all of Western North Carolina for that matter,” says Maggie Valley Alderman Mike Matthews. “It’s great to see a person like Alaska Presley so willing to give back to her community and expect nothing in return. Like everyone else in Maggie Valley – including my kids – I can’t wait for opening day.”
Overseeing the park’s renovations and development is Larry Elliott, who has a house in both Maggie Valley and Tallahassee. Elliott first visited Ghost Town about 40 years ago, and later took his own kids to the park. He and Presley both owned RV parks in Maggie Valley, and when he learned she was planning to reopen Ghost Town, he agreed to help her.
The change is nothing short of phenomenal.
When people come to the park this summer, they’ll be greeted by a renovated welcome center/gift shop at the bottom of the mountain. From there visitors can ride the chair lift 3,500 feet up Buck Mountain to Western Town (bus rides will also be available). Here they’ll be able to enjoy dozens of new and restored kiddie rides, a museum, and three ziplines – the park’s newest attraction – including one that stretches for 480 feet, providing panoramic views of the Smoky Mountains.
There will also be two restaurants and about eight stores, and of course can-can dance girls and cowboy gunfights. A roller coaster is scheduled to open next year, and developers are also building nature trails along the wooded 260-acre site.
“It’s going to be bigger and better than before, but in the tradition of what Ghost Town used to be,” says Elliott.
Presley and Elliott are also working on the park’s final phase, called Holy Land, which will include a replica of Jerusalem, scheduled to open in 2014.
“This had been the hardest time of my life, and the happiest time of life,” says Presley. “Maggie Valley is such a fine place. I’ve prospered here, and I’m just so glad to be in this position where I can give back.”
