A few days ago, Albuquerque television station KRQE produced a story about Little Beaver Town, a long-gone western-themed amusement park on the city’s east edge on Route 66 that went bust after just three seasons during the 1960s.
Roland Penttila, who has done a lot of research on Little Beaver Town, figures prominently in this segment:
Little Beaver Town was the brainchild of Albuquerque resident Fred Harman, the artist and co-creator of the Red Ryder comic strip that ran from 1938 to 1965. The popular comic spawned a slew of products that included comic books, radio shows, several dozen movies, lunch boxes and toys.
By the time Harman started his Wild West amusement park in 1960 near the mouth of Tijeras Canyon, however, the comic strip and entire western genre already were on the wane.
The University of New Mexico’s digital collections had this information about it:
Little Beaver Town was a tourist attraction just east of Albuquerque and west of Tijeras Canyon. Tourists traveling in the late 1950s on Route 66 (The Mother Road) could visit the park and see mock gun battles, take a stagecoach ride and see Fred Saunders and Troy Vicente portray Red Ryder. Fred Harman, the creator of the famous Red Ryder comic strip, and Howard Hull, a local entrepreneur envisioned a western theme park that would rival Disneyland.
After Little Beaver Town went bankrupt in 1964, it was renamed Sage City and briefly used as a venue for movie shoots and rock ‘n’ roll concerts. It eventually succumbed to fire and vandalism. It now is part of the city’s Route 66 Open Space nature program. Atlas Obscura reports:
Despite a handful of volunteer-led cleanups and plans for a system of hiking trails, nothing substantial has been done with the property. Little Beaver Town exists today as nothing but an empty lot of curious concrete foundations, littered with broken glass and unchecked cacti, waiting like the highway it sits on for another chance at glory.
Despite the robotic narration, this video produced by The Mountain Voice provides a lot of good information about Little Beaver Town, including home-movie footage:
Atlas Obscura reports the ruins of Little Big Town can be accessed along Central Avenue east of Tramway Boulevard between Believers Center of Albuquerque and the town of Carnuel, just past Carmellia Drive.
(Images of Little Beaver Town courtesy of 66Postcards.com)