Enchanted Forest

The development firm building the Enchanted Forest Shopping Center and amusement park says it is moving at a brisk pace to lease shops in the Howard County site.Jack Pechtner, a partner in Towson-based JHP Development, said the shopping center on Baltimore National Pike in Ellicott City is 75 percent leased. More than one-third of the 138,166 square feet of store space will be occupied by a Safeway grocery store.Safeway will relocate from its store near the site at 10111 Baltimore National Pike.

Not all of the real estate from nursery rhymes and fairy tales is created equal. Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater's bright-orange abode, where he keeps his Marie Antoinette look-alike wife, is so light that one person easily rolled it into place on a recent workday at Clark's Elioak Farm in Ellicott City. Even the Gingerbread House that Hansel and Gretel long ago discovered on a trek through the forest slid easily off a flatbed truck, with just a few pairs of hands and a two-by-four guiding it to its cozy resting spot amid the white pines.

About two dozen people -- at times nostalgic, angry and enthusiastic -- attended the first meeting of the Friends of the Enchanted Forest last night at Cafe Bagel in the Lynwood Square shopping center in Ellicott City.The group wants to find ways to revive the abandoned amusement park on U.S. 40 in Ellicott City.The meeting last night gave some who attended an opportunity to share memories of trips to the park as children or parents."It was like coming out to the country to come to a park made for us," recalled Lori Pearson, an Ellicott City resident whose parents drove her to Enchanted Forest from Washington about 30 years ago. "It was special."

I am suspicious of clowns. First of all, they don't say anything, ever. We're supposed to guess what they're trying to communicate - and yet their makeup frequently belies their true emotions. What's more, their costumes seem to be designed to obscure faces and genders. I don't think I have coulrophobia, which is the intense fear of clowns, because I can be in the presence of clowns. I am just more baffled by their appeal, and perhaps even a little bored by them. Great. Now a convention of clowns is going to descend upon me to prove they are neither baffling nor boring.

Plans to develop a shopping center next to the Enchanted Forest amusement park in Ellicott City are moving closer to approval from Howard County planners, which could set the project on course for a 1992 opening.Marsha McLaughlin, chief of the county's community planning and land development division, said most of the technical problems that delayed approval of the site development plan have been resolved and the project only needs the endorsement of county health and public works officials.

Clark's Elioak Farm will celebrate the Enchanted Forest's 51st birthday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Aug. 12 to 13. The farm has adopted many of the features of the now-defunct amusement park - giant fairy tale figures of Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Alice in Wonderland and recently, the newly renovated Old Woman's Shoe and Three Bears' House. Farm animals to pet, hayrides and pony rides will be available, as will face-painting by Laura Renee Davis of Nouveau Face Painting, CJ's Country Catering pit beef and vintage Enchanted Forest photos.

A letter in a local weekly newspaper has ignited an energetic movement in Howard County to resurrect the Enchanted Forest amusement park on U.S. 40 in Ellicott City.Since Barbara Sieg's call for action was published in Ellicott City 21042/3 on Feb. 18, the weekly has received more than 150 e-mails, letters and phone calls from parents and children offering to help revive the amusement park, which closed in 1989 and briefly reopened in 1994 before closing again.Several community activists have formed the Friends of Enchanted Forest, which will hold its inaugural meeting at 7: 30 tomorrow night at Cafe Bagel in the Lynwood Square shopping center in Ellicott City.

As Howard County officials consider beautification plans for the U.S. 40 retail strip in Ellicott City, others are pondering the fate of a tiny corner -- the Enchanted Forest, the former storybook-themed amusement park that holds a fond place in the memories of many local adults. Only 2 or 3 acres remain of the site, which opened in the mid-1950s as "Maryland's answer to Disneyland on the East Coast," according to a 1955 Variety account. Attendance at the park, which originally featured rides and attractions for younger children based on nursery rhymes and fairy tales, peaked at 300,000, but later declined in the 1980s.

About two dozen people -- at times nostalgic, angry and enthusiastic -- attended the first meeting of the Friends of the Enchanted Forest last night at Cafe Bagel in the Lynwood Square shopping center in Ellicott City.The group wants to find ways to revive the abandoned amusement park on U.S. 40 in Ellicott City.The meeting last night gave some who attended an opportunity to share memories of trips to the park as children or parents."It was like coming out to the country to come to a park made for us," recalled Lori Pearson, an Ellicott City resident whose parents drove her to Enchanted Forest from Washington about 30 years ago. "It was special."

The "NO TRESPASSING" sign hanging on the doors of the Enchanted Forest amusement park, Howard County's longtime children's attraction, will remain in place for at least another year -- leaving businesses in a nearby shopping center adrift without an anchor attraction.Officials of Towson-based JHP Development Inc., owner of the park and its namesake shopping center, said last week that the Ellicott City theme park will not reopen this year.Jeffrey Pechter -- who bought the park and its surrounding 32 acres along U.S. 40 in 1988 for more than $4.5 million -- declined to comment further on the park's status last week.

Entering Clark's Elioak Farm, one immediately notices that this is not your typical children's petting zoo. Instead, eye-popping colors and shapes that include a gigantic purple shoe, a huge orange pumpkin coach and a crooked house jump out at you. If the items seem vaguely familiar, you're right. They all came from the Enchanted Forest, a well-known storybook theme park in Ellicott City that closed in the late 1980s and later fell into disrepair. Over the past three years, Martha Clark has been restoring items from the former theme park and transporting them to her 540-acre Ellicott City farm and petting zoo for the next generation of children to climb on, explore and enjoy.

Clark's Elioak Farm will celebrate the Enchanted Forest's 51st birthday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Aug. 12 to 13. The farm has adopted many of the features of the now-defunct amusement park - giant fairy tale figures of Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Little Red Riding Hood, Alice in Wonderland and recently, the newly renovated Old Woman's Shoe and Three Bears' House. Farm animals to pet, hayrides and pony rides will be available, as will face-painting by Laura Renee Davis of Nouveau Face Painting, CJ's Country Catering pit beef and vintage Enchanted Forest photos.

It was not a prince, but farm owner Martha Clark who rescued Snow White from her imprisonment in a dark, cold trailer at the defunct Enchanted Forest amusement park in Ellicott City this winter. Thought to be lost, sold or stolen long ago, the fairy tale figure -- made of wire, newspaper and papier-mache -- was discovered along with Robin Hood, an armor-clad villain, three fairies and some dwarf-size beds in a trailer tucked behind a stand of bamboo on a remote corner of the property. The figures will be on display for the first time in 12 years when Clark's Elioak Farm opens for the season tomorrow.

For more than three decades people of all ages enjoyed the Enchanted Forest storybook theme park in Ellicott City. Since the park opened in 1955, legions of children frolicked in Cinderella's Castle, in the Gingerbread House and around Jack climbing the Beanstalk. After the park closed in 1986, Kim-Co Realty Co. purchased land surrounding the park, and the Enchanted Forest Shopping Center was built. Old King Cole standing atop the shopping center sign and the castle gate were the only remnants of the park the public can still see. Although the new owners didn't destroy the park, they closed it up and put "No Trespassing" signs on the fence.

Enchanted Forest Ellicott City's defunct Enchanted Forest theme park is the subject of a new exhibition at Antreasian Gallery. Wendy Wallach's hand-painted photographs depict the park from about 10 years ago, while Briana Bainbridge's photographs show it in a more recent setting. The exhibit, Enchanted Forest, opens Wednesday and runs through Dec. 10 at Antreasian Gallery, 1111 W. 36th St. There will be a reception 5:30 p.m.-8:30 p.m. Dec. 2. Call 410-235-4420 or visit antreasiangallery.

China Legend, in the Enchanted Forest Shopping Center, has long been a reliable takeout choice for my family. But with my sister visiting (and a review to write), the time had come to actually sit down for a meal in the dining room. "This is enchanting," said my sister, playing off the name of the shopping center as we walked in the front door and past a vestibule with a small, tinkling fountain. I told her that the shopping center, named for the now-defunct Enchanted Forest amusement park, was the thing that was supposed to be enchanting.

Geraldine C. Harrison, co-founder of the Enchanted Forest, the Howard County storybook theme park, died Wednesday at Copper Ridge nursing home of complications of Alzheimer's disease. She was 80 and had lived on the grounds of the Howard County attraction. In 1955, she and her husband, Howard E. Harrison Jr., who died in 1988, created a wholesome, low-tech land of Rapunzel and Snow White using concrete, stucco and paint. Although faintly reminiscent of a Walt Disney production, it had a picnic-grove sweetness to it -- at a 25-cent admission price.

Martha Clark had just finished digging a hole outside the store at her Ellicott City petting farm when 10 people came trudging out of the nearby woods carrying a giant, rust-covered metal candy cane on their shoulders. The group made its way up the hill and carefully lowered the end of the cane into the hole. After several shovels full of dirt - along with a pause to scoop a wayward toad out of the way - another piece of the former Enchanted Forest amusement park had reached its new home.

The Ellicott City Business Association will hold "A Dogs Day in Ellicott City," with contests and pet adoptions, Aug. 20 on Main Street in Historic Ellicott City. Contests will include the first "Pet-Owner Dress-Alike Contest," in which owner and pet wear matching clothes, and "The Best Bandana Contest," in which contestants present homemade bandanas modeled by their pets. Animal Advocates will conduct pet placements at Pet Pals Inc., a pet-sitting service above the Yuppy Puppy Pet Boutique, which sells upscale apparel for dogs and cats.