Tom Sawyers Island--Disneyland History--TMS-534

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00:00It is viewers like you that make videos like this possible.

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00:09Behind the gates of Frontierland is the inspirational America of the past century.

00:15Here is the treasure of our native folklore.

00:18The songs, tales and legends of the big men who built the land.

00:22Walt Disney never produced the movie based on The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,

00:33but he certainly had an affinity for the novel and shared a Midwestern background with its author Mark Twain.

00:38Both men were alive concurrently.

00:40Disney was born in Chicago, about 350 miles from Twain's Florida, Missouri birthplace.

00:46Disney was 8 when Twain died in 1910, and both men grew up in small Missouri towns.

00:52Marceline and Hannibal.

00:54Both men also created an island in the middle of a river.

00:57Twain's Tom Sawyer did not include a place called Tom Sawyer's Island,

01:01but it did have a fictional Jackson's Island, about three miles long and a quarter mile wide,

01:07out in the middle of the Mississippi River.

01:09On the island, Tom, Huck, and their friend Joe Harper could cavort as pirates and escape civilization.

01:16Reaching the island via log raft, the three boys eagerly roamed the woods

01:20and found plenty of things to be delighted with.

01:23Once Disneyland was up and running in early 1956,

01:26Walt Disney turned his attention to the incomplete, visible, but unvisitable island out in the middle of the rivers of America.

01:33Early ideas for the area included a Mickey Mouse island or a treasure island based on Disney's 1950 movie.

01:40Once Tom Sawyer's concept was settled on, Disney did what he typically did for new attractions.

01:45He turned over the actual creation to an individual designer who used his boss's general suggestion to map out the details.

01:53Tom Sawyer Island, however, got some extra attention from Walt Disney.

01:57The island was the only early Disneyland attraction personally designed by Disney himself.

02:03Disney did let master planner Marvin Davis have first crack at it, but the results weren't satisfactory for him.

02:09Disney took Davis' drawings and worked on them for hours in his Red Barn workshop.

02:14The next morning, he laid tracing paper out on Davis' desk and said,

02:18Now, that's the way it should be.

02:20The island was built according to his design.

02:23The result is something close to Twain's Jackson's Island,

02:27just as Twain's Island was 12 times longer than it was wide.

02:31So, too, is Disney's Island, long and narrow.

02:34Tom Sawyer Island reaches 800 feet from top to bottom

02:38and varies in width from a tram 50 feet in the middle to about 250 across the northern end,

02:44totaling almost three acres.

02:46The surrounding shore, most of it belonging to Frontierland,

02:50is 80 to 100 feet away, with wraps to Tom Sawyer Island conveying guests back and forth.

02:55When the island finally opened in July of 1956,

02:58two winners of Hannibal's most typical Tom and Becky of the Year contest attended the dedication ceremonies.

03:05At first year, guests could not use any of their A, B, or C tickets to enter the island.

03:10They had to buy a special 50-cent ticket for admission.

03:13There is little to no elevation change in the caves on Tom Sawyer Island.

03:18The reason for this is because of economic and safety concerns.

03:21The caves are simply buildings that were built and then covered with mouths of dirt.

03:25The hills that are on the island are a result of covering these buildings.

03:30One of the better examples is the hill that the rock-like playground is on.

03:34When you stand on this hill, you are standing on the ceiling of one of Tom Sawyer Caves.

03:39Epoxycrete, the same compound used for rocks in other attractions,

03:43were used in combination with concrete to cover the inside walls of these buildings.

03:47If you look carefully, you notice that there is lighting and ventilation systems in the caves.

03:52Some of the vertical rock outcropping are support pilings or pillars.

03:57Disney also uses the elevation of the ceiling and the closeness of the walls

04:01to trick the mind into thinking there is an elevation change in the cave.

04:05Due to the 1970s gas crisis, the flames in the burning cabin were turned off.

04:10In the hail area, this

04:14we can dig for

04:19from at least nine years ago and this is the

04:21ascender to the walls of the Hall & atmosphere.

04:24If it was discovered that there is an smallest damage coming,

04:28let's see which point the town has east ofë is not an affection and an upstream home.

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