A Trip to Marceline, Missouri

 One of these days we may run out of places to go and things to do in Missouri, but just not yet!  So what is in Marceline?  A man once said that he was just a farm boy from Missouri who hid behind a mouse and a duck.  I will give you another clue; this man, born in 1901, was the animator of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.  He was a creator of other cartoon characters as well as a film producer.  Of course you know him, especially if you are at least over 40 or so.  Yes, many young ones are familiar with Disney World and Disneyland- but probably not so much the entrepreneur who started those places.  His name was Walt Disney.  He lived in Marceline from 1906 until 1911, from the formative years of about 4years until age 11.    I have much to write about about those years, but will save that for my next posting.

The picture is not the greatest, but it is a scale model of main street Marceline, which we found in the Marceline museum.  It is what Disney remembers of the town when he was a young child, and what he aimed to duplicate in the Disney theme parks.  John and I had to stretch our imaginations a bit when we drove down the main street.  I never even took a picture of that stretch of the town- well I did, but there was nothing remarkable about that picture, it could have been any downtown in any small town of the United States.  By the way, back in the day the population was about 3,000- now is 2,233.  Which brings me to some of the history of the town.  In 1913 the Santa Fe railroad built a train station in the town; coal and water were available commodities in the town which made it a perfect choice.  Until about the 1970s it offered both passenger and freight service.  Walt Disney and wife Lillian returned to the town several times, starting in 1946, via the train.  The Walt Disney Hometown Museum is now located in what once was the rebuilt train station.  The trains still roar constantly through the town, now they just carry freight.  They provided quite a bit of background noise while we toured the museum.

Before I tell you about the museum, I do wish to show some pictures of the murals we found on the the town's older buildings.

I am sure you remember when coke was 5 cents a glass!  The Coca-Cola building at Disneyland is modeled after the Zurcher building in Marceline.  Zurchers were jewelers from 1903 to 1973.  One of the memories Walt Disney had of this town was the Cola sign pictured above. 

Another mural we found in the town advertised that Marceline was "Main Street, USA".  The quote from Disney on the building was this:  "To tell the truth, more things of importance happened to me in Marceline than have happened to me since, or are likely to in the future".  Disney returned to the town in 1946 when he photographed the length of the main street as a reference for Disneyland.  In 1956 he came to Marceline to dedicate the town's new swimming pool, named for him.  On the same day he had a  premiere showing of his movie "The Great Locomotive Chase" starring Fess Parker in the Uptown Theater- a theater he had visited as a youth.  He and his brother Roy greeted each child at the door.  Over the years he and a citizen of the town, Rush Johnson, worked on plans for a Disney farm to be located in Marceline-  a farm which would look similar to what he had experience when he was a young boy at the beginning of the century.  Unfortunately those plans never came to fruition.  Walt's next visit took place in 1960 when he dedicated the Walt Disney Elementary School.  He was to return to the town in 1966 when the first ride from the Magic Kingdom arrived-  a set of 10 small cars called "Midget Autopia" which were installed in the city park.  Unfortunately that was the year Disney suddenly took ill with cancer and died.  Pictured below is a photo of Disney by Ryan 'Arcy' Christenson.