Main Street, U.S.A.

Every visit begins the same way. You pass under the railroad through one of two short tunnels and come out in a small town at about the turn of the last century. Two blocks ahead, at the far end of the street, stands the castle (D23 Disney A to Z). Main Street is the one land every guest walks twice, once coming in and once going home. It is also the only one Walt Disney lived on.

The story of the street

Walt wanted a main street people would remember, not one that had actually existed. Disney's own archivists name Marceline, Missouri, where he spent the boyhood years he talked about all his life, as the likeliest model (D23). Art director Harper Goff brought a second hometown. He had photographs taken of downtown Fort Collins, Colorado, where his father had run the newspaper, and showed them to Walt. He later told The "E" Ticket magazine that "Disneyland's City Hall was copied from Fort Collins," and the bank too (AllEars). A third influence was Henry Ford's Greenfield Village in Michigan, which Walt visited twice in the 1940s (Wikipedia: Main Street, U.S.A.).

Then there is the trick of scale. Each story of a Main Street building is built smaller than the one below it, so the façades look taller and the street still feels close. The sources do not agree on the exact numbers. D23 puts the ground floors at about seven-eighths scale. Wikipedia gives three-quarters, then five-eighths, then one-half on the way up (Wikipedia: Disneyland). Underfoot, the street is paved with resilient asphalt, mixed with rubber to go easy on tired feet.

Over each tunnel hangs a small plaque: "Here you leave today and enter the world of yesterday, tomorrow and fantasy" (Disneyland Public Affairs). Eddie Sotto, a former Imagineering executive who has seen the original memo in the archives, says Walt corrected the wording in his own hand. In Walt's version, guests were invited to "visit the worlds" rather than enter one, and the plaques did not go up until a few years after opening (blooloop). Some accounts say the plaque was there from the first day. This guide goes with Sotto, who cites the document.

The layout works like a film's opening: the tunnels are the curtain, the windows are the credits, and the castle is the first shot.

Walt's apartment and the lamp

The fire station was among the first buildings finished, for a practical reason. Walt had an apartment built upstairs and slept there during construction. Afterward it became the family's place to stay when they visited. Disney's own signage says that when Walt was in, a lamp burned in the front window so the staff would know (WDWNT, with the full text of the sign). It has stayed lit ever since. The lamp in the window today was put there in 2022, and at Christmas a small tree takes its place. The apartment is about 500 square feet, with two hide-a-beds and a kitchenette (Disney Parks Blog). Guests can see it only on a guided tour.

Attractions, past and present

Dates are from TouringPlans and Wikipedia unless linked.

The railroad. The steam trains that stop at Main Street Station have a chapter of their own. See Part IV.

Shops

For its first ten years, much of Main Street did not belong to Disney. Disneyland, Inc. could not afford to run every shop and restaurant, so outside companies leased the space and ran it themselves. After the 1960 buyout and the 1961 loan payoff, Walt began taking the leases back as they ran out (Yesterland). The Emporium is now the park's biggest store. The window above it honors Walt's father, Elias. D23 notes it as one of the few windows on the street for someone who neither built nor ran the park.

Dining

When the Red Wagon Inn reopened as the Plaza Inn in 1965, Walt walked a newspaper columnist past the revolving salad stands. "This is California," he explained. "So we're stressing salads" (Yesterland, quoting the Los Angeles Times).

Parades and entertainment

The parade route runs down Main Street, so nearly every parade in the park's history belongs partly to this land. These are the landmarks.

And every evening, a security detail lowers the American flag in Town Square in a military-style retreat while the Disneyland Band plays.

Famous visitors on Main Street

On June 14, 1959, Vice President Richard Nixon brought his wife, Pat, and their daughters to dedicate the new Monorail. They rode up Main Street in horseless carriages, had lunch in Walt's apartment, and wrestled with a pair of ceremonial scissors until Walt stepped in to help (Disney Parks Blog). Seated near them was Meredith Willson, whose Music Man was still running on Broadway. Art Linkletter called him up as a band of 76 trombones came marching down the street playing his song, and the drum major handed Willson the baton for the finale. Willson's verdict on his host was overheard on the broadcast: "when he does anything, he does it right."

On November 18, 1993, Mickey's 65th birthday, Walt's nephew Roy E. Disney unveiled the Partners statue at the Hub. Among the guests were John Hench, Marc and Alice Davis, and the voices of Mickey, Minnie and Goofy (MousePlanet). Eight years later, on what would have been Walt's 100th birthday, Richard M. Sherman sat at a piano beside the statue and played "Feed the Birds."

Fun facts: Main Street

1. Oldest building. The Opera House is the oldest building in the park. Before it was a theater, it was the construction lumber mill.
2. Real antiques. The cannons in Town Square are French army pieces from the 1800s that never fired in battle. The gas lamps came from St. Louis, reportedly bought for 3 cents a pound (Wikipedia).
3. A street on the map. Main Street, U.S.A. is listed as a real street in the Orange County Thomas Guide.
4. Windows as credits. The upper-floor windows name the people who built and ran the park as owners of make-believe businesses. On July 17, 2005, a window was added honoring every cast member.
5. The Partners statue. Blaine Gibson's statue makes Walt 6 feet 5 inches tall, seven inches taller than he was. His tie carries "STR" for Smoke Tree Ranch, his Palm Springs retreat (Wikipedia: Partners).
6. How big is Mickey? The statue's Mickey is sized from one moment in the 1939 cartoon The Pointer. While recording Mickey's voice for it, Walt held out his hand at about three feet off the ground, the only time his animators saw how tall Walt imagined Mickey to be (MousePlanet).
7. A first and a fake. In August 1960 the Red Wagon Inn reported what wire services called the park's first holdup, a $10,000 theft. Police found $9,600 in a linen closet two days later, and the cashier was booked (Yesterland).
8. A reversal. In 1995 Gibson argued that no Audio-Animatronics figure could capture Walt's expressions. Thirty years later, Imagineering built one for the 70th anniversary.
9. Leaning in. The Walt figure is the first all-electric Audio-Animatronics figure to rise from a lean to a standing position. Imagineers styled him as he looked around 1963 (Disney fact sheet).
10. From the apartment. The Walt Disney Family Museum lent more than 30 artifacts to the Opera House lobby exhibit for the 70th, including items from Walt's private apartment that had never been shown in the park.

Quotes

"Main Street is everyone's hometown. The heartline of America." — Walt Disney, as quoted on Disney's fire-station signage (WDWNT)

"Look what we've accomplished together." — Blaine Gibson, on what his statue of Walt is saying to Mickey (Wikipedia: Partners)

"From now on you can get three symbols of Disneyland in one photograph." — Marty Sklar, president of Imagineering, at the 1993 dedication (MousePlanet)

"The only Disney park Walt ever walked in." — Tom Fitzgerald, Walt Disney Imagineering, on why the Walt figure belongs at Disneyland (Disney fact sheet)

Quote watch. The plaque beneath Partners attributes to Walt a line about Disneyland as a happy place where parents and children have fun together. Wikipedia notes that Walt never said that exact sentence. The plaque splices his real remark about wanting Disneyland to be a happy place with words from an unrelated interview (Wikipedia: Partners).