During a recent visit to southern California where I grew up, I uncovered a small trove of local tourist information from the early 1960s that my family had set aside to provide for visiting relatives and others. In those days the tourist options were more moderately priced than they are today, so a family of five could afford to hit several of the highlights — maybe trips to Disneyland, Marineland, and Universal Studios — all in the same visit. Admission prices were very low and the cost of food and souvenirs were well within reach of most families. Now a trip to Disneyland or Universal Studios will set a family of five back hundreds of dollars, and most people have to choose one theme park per trip.
Of course you didn’t get nearly the amount of thrill rides and entertainment you do today, unless you find panning for fake gold entertaining, which I suspect most kids these days do not. Click on any image for a larger version.
Even Disneyland, the mother of all theme parks, was more subdued and simpler back then. The admission price during most of the time I was growing up was well under $10 and you could still hit most of the top rides and for another few bucks enjoy a faux Mexican meal at Casa de Fritos. Of course in those days the biggest thrill rides were the Matterhorn or the Submarine ride. My favorite was Autopia where you could drive small go-carts that looked like real cars.
In fact, Disneyland was small enough in those days that if you were ambitious, you could hit another nearby attraction on the same day. Knott’s Berry Farm, as I recall, was free to get into and you only had to pay for food, which consisted of lots of things with berries in them. That’s where you could pan for fake gold in a fake stream. Needless to say, it wasn’t necessary to spend a whole lot of time at Knott’s Berry Farm; once you’d seen one fake Old West shoot out, you’d seen them all. The whole “reliving the 49’er” thing lost a little luster when Gunsmoke and Bonanza finally went off the air.
Also near Disneyland was the Movieland Wax Museum, which was about as much fun as any wax museum, only it specialized in re-creating famous movie scenes. It went out of business in 2005, probably because they never added a rollercoaster or other thrill ride. You can imagine what fun it was as a kid to see dusty re-enactments of Cliff Robertson as John F. Kennedy in “PT 109” and Gloria Swanson from “Sunset Boulevard” (neither of which I’d heard of).
Further away from Disneyland there were many other exciting attractions in southern California, such as the Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, which I still find a bit too scary. One snap and, well, there you go.
This was all before Sea World was built in San Diego, so if you wanted ocean-based entertainment, you could go to Marineland of the Pacific in Palos Verdes, now long gone. There you could see Bubbles and Swifty, the trained whales. (I think Swifty died an untimely death at some point.) A little further north along the coast was Santa Monica, a beach playground, which, when I was growing up, was mostly abandoned and populated by really old people. It’s now hip and happening, but all I remember is boarded-up shops on the main street and my first glimpse of homeless people.
Hollywood was always a destination, and The Chinese Theater was up there on the list. Fortunately I never had to endure Lawrence Welk at the fabulous Palladium, though I did see the Who rock opera Tommy there when I was a little older.
Seeing the homes of the stars has always a tourist draw, though I suspect not many people these days seek out the domiciles of Bud Abbot and Lou Costello. Those houses seem modest considering the duo’s star power at the time, but even big stars didn’t get the kind of dough they do now.
I spent a lot of time at the Griffith Park Observatory, mostly because when I was a teenager they put on a laser light show called Laserium every Friday and Saturday, and it was popular to go there under the influence of whatever you could get your hands on and groove out to the lights and music.
Universal Studios didn’t have much of a tour back then, but you could ride the tram around the back lot and see such highlights as the house from “Psycho” and the harbor set from the television hit McHale’s Navy. This was a highlight for me because my father thought that was one of the truly funny shows on TV. But there were no sharks back then — the highlight would be seeing Tim Conway or Ernest Borgnine on their way to the set.
There was something more innocent about tourist attractions back then. You could pile the family in the station wagon and hit one of these places for under $20 and have a good time. We didn’t know any better — to us panning for gold or watching a couple of fake cowboys shoot it out in a manufactured ghost town was enough. You didn’t have to hang upside down on a rollercoaster or almost be eaten by a mechanical shark to enjoy yourself. And who doesn’t love a good slice of berry pie?
This article was last modified on May 17, 2023
This article was first published on February 5, 2010
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