Disneyland

The concept for Disneyland began one Sunday, when Walt Disney was visiting Griffith Park with his daughters Diane and Sharon.  While watching his daughters ride  Griffith Park Merry-Go-Round he came up with  idea of a place where adults and their children could go and have fun together. His dream would lie dormant for many years. Walt Disney's far helped build the grounds of the  1893 World's Fair in Chicago. This perhaps gave to Disney the creative spark whence Disneyland originated.  The fairgrounds for  World's Fair were a cheaply constructed set of individual "Country" areas from around  world and areas representing various time periods of man; it also included many "rides" including  first Ferris wheel, sky ride, a passenger train that circled  perimeter, Wild West Show, etc. Although in 1893 World's Fair was meant only to last a summer in Chicago, in Southern California the wear was accommodating to a "Fair Grounds" of stucco buildings that would orthewise disintegrate in the rain, snow and ice of other climates.

 While people wrote letters to Disney about visiting the Walt Disney Studios, Walt realized that a functional movie studio had little to offer to visiting fans, and began to foster ideas of building a site near the Burbank studios for tourists to visit. His ideas evolved to a small play park with a boat ride and other themed areas. The initial concept, the “Mickey Mouse Park”, started with an 8-acre (3.2 ha) plot across Riverside Drive. Walt started to visit other parks for inspiration and ideas, including Tivoli Gardens , Efteling, Greenfield Village, Playland, and Children's Fairyland. He started his designers working on concepts, but these would grow into a project much larger than could be contained in 8 acres (32,000 m2).

Walt hired a consultant, Harrison Price from Stanford Research Institute, to gauge the area's potential growth. With the report from Price, Disney acquired 160 acres (0.250 sq mi; 0.647 km2) of orange groves and walnut trees in Anaheim, southeast of Los Angeles in neighboring Orange County.

Difficulties in obtaining funding prompted Disney to investigate new methods of fundraising. He decided to use television to get  ideas into people's homes, and so he created a show named Disneyland which was broadcast on  then-fledgling ABC television network. In return, the network agreed to help finance  new park. For the first five years of its operation, Disneyland was owned by Disneyland, Inc., which was jointly owned by Walt Disney Productions and ABC. In 1960 Walt Disney Productions purchased ABC's share. In addition, many of  the shops on Main Street, U.S.A. were owned and operated by or companies who rented space from Disney.

Construction began on July 18, 1954 and would cost 17 million USD$ to complete, and was opened exactly one year later. U.S. Route 101 (later Interstate 5) was under construction at  same time just to  north of  site; in preparation for  traffic which Disneyland was expected to bring, two more lanes were added to  freeway even before  park was finished