Skyforest

For anyone who wants to take a trip down memory http://www.alamedainfo.com/santas_village_ca.htm

If you are looking for more information check out this thread...
http://rimoftheworld.net/discuss/26/18059

A Christmas wonderland melts away
Santa's Village was a major San Bernardino Mountains tourist draw in its day, but it couldn't survive societal changes.

In its heyday, Santa's Village was one of Southern California's biggest tourist attractions — a place to catch the holiday spirit even in July. It opened on Memorial Day weekend 1955, more than a month before Disneyland.

But after 43 years of delighting young and old in the San Bernardino Mountains, the 15-acre elfin theme park — with fanciful, life-size gingerbread and doll houses, a candy kitchen and a toy shop — fell on hard times and closed in 1998.

Over the last nine years, the log cabins of Santa's Village have deteriorated, becoming a veritable ghost town. Its parking lot was used for a jazz festival and by locals for sledding and snow play until it became a way station for bark-beetle-infested trees on their way to a sawmill.

But Santa's Village isn't forgotten.

"The Arrowhead Chamber of Commerce still gets calls to see if it is still open," said J. "Putty" Putnam Henck, 88, a retired general contractor who built the park on land his family owned.

Henck's links to Southern California extend more than a century. His father, Joseph, was born in Los Angeles in 1888. "He was kind of a jack of all trades," Henck said in an interview. "He mined the platinum and gold for his future wife's wedding ring and ran a mercantile store at 6th Street and Broadway, called Henck and Martinez."

His future wife, Mary Putnam, was born in Wisconsin and arrived in Los Angeles with her family in 1890. A 1903 graduate of UC Berkeley, she taught school in Los Angeles and later became the first female vice principal at Manual Arts High School.

"She was six years older than my father," Henck said. "My father always told me that women his age were too stodgy."

Their first child, "Putty," was born in Los Angeles in 1918. That same year, they paid $10,000 for 440 acres in the San Bernardino Mountains, planning to build a resort someday.

In the 1920s, the Henck family moved to an orange ranch in Hemet. "My mother helped start the first Ramona pageant in 1923," Henck said.

They moved to the mountains in 1923, to the future Santa's Village property. Henck's mother had one demand: that their home have running water.

"It had water," Henck said. "But no electricity."

In the area of Lake Arrowhead known as Skyforest, the elder Henck began subdividing 160 acres for development. With a pick and shovel and the help of a few locals, he built a water system and roads. He also opened a general store selling everything: nails, bread, even dynamite.

"He also became the area's first fire chief and insurance agent," Henck said. "My mother was the first postmaster."

Mary Henck also opened Lake Arrowhead's first schoolhouse, with 13 students. Today, Lake Arrowhead intermediate school carries her name.

The younger Henck and his three sisters grew up in the mountains, hiking, horseback riding, skiing and helping their father repair telephone lines. (Residents often would do it themselves rather than wait weeks for phone company crews to get up the mountain.)

Henck went to his mother's alma mater, UC Berkeley, and earned a civil engineering degree. Later he married and moved to the San Bernardino area, where he worked as a general contractor.

In 1953, Southern California developer H. Glenn Holland proposed Santa's Village after reading a Saturday Evening Post story about a similar project called North Pole in New York, Henck said. Holland set up a corporation that funded the amusement park, and the Henck family leased the land to Holland.

Holland opened two more Santa parks in the United States — one in Scotts Valley near Santa Cruz and the other in Chicago. Both are closed.

Putty Henck brought in a crew to build the 15-acre park on 220 acres of family land. Trees cut to clear the land were used to build the fantasy log cabins with rooftops covered in fake snow, giant candy canes, candles and gingerbread men.

When Santa's Village opened six weeks before Disneyland, Henck said, "traffic was backed up all the way down the mountain."

At first, the park was open year-round. During most of its life, it was open weekends for nine months, closed April, May and June, and open full-time during the Christmas season. It had kiddie attractions, including a small bobsled, a monorail, a petting zoo, a wishing well and chats with Santa. Young and old alike enjoyed the enticing aroma of gingerbread wafting from the bakery, as well as visits to the dollhouse, candy kitchen, toy shop and live reindeer.

In 1978, the original group of investors went bankrupt and the Henck family took over.

Henck, by now the family patriarch, and his wife, Pamela, were determined to turn the mom-and-pop park around. They left San Bernardino, where they had lived for 25 years, and moved into his parents' Skyforest home. The whole family and a few investors pooled their money to buy the park.

Henck handled maintenance and finances; his wife wrote scripts for the puppet show, hired performers and handed out lollipops to the children. Other Henck family members worked at the park too.

"It never really made any money until my wife and I took it over," Henck said. "A television commercial is what brought people up here. And we added a merry-go-round and Ferris wheel and other rides."

Children loved the Magic Train ride down Storybook Lane, which included painted characters in scenes from the Old Woman's Shoe, Humpty Dumpty, Jack and Jill and more.

The park drew nearly 180,000 visitors a year, Henck said.

But in the 1990s, the recession took a toll. Then Pamela Henck died after a long illness.

"It was an end of an era," Henck said. "The young generation began to over-program their kids to where they had so much stuff to do, and not enough time for a four-hour or longer round-trip drive up the mountain."

Santa's Village closed in 1998. Three years later, the 220-acre property sold for $5.6 million to Thomas Plott, owner of Plott Family Care Centers in Riverside and San Bernardino.

Plott planned to reopen the park. He refurbished some of the buildings, but that's as far as he got. "Plott died last year, and all the buildings have been left deteriorating," Henck said.

The park's movable goods were sold at public auction. Today, the pastel-colored toadstools, Santa's sleigh, giant candy canes and a clock with months rather than numbers decorate homes and stores in and around the mountains.

But Henck doesn't seem nostalgic — not even on Christmas Eve.

"I don't dwell on the past," he said. "When it's over, it's over. It was fun at the time."

L.A. Times 12/24/2006

Putty's kewl!! My business is the original model cabin for the first 13 cabins in that area. It was built and owned by Putty's dad and his family. He comes in all the time. To me, he's a legend! I love his stories about life up here. He's 88-89 yrs old and he will drive a quad to our deli. He said he likes to still drive (4 wheel) the back trails around S.V. but since the lumber company has taken it over they don't maintain them, so it makes it difficult to get thru.

Gemini - Thanks for the article.

Magua - It's great to know he's still out there kickin' around the mountain. Sure wish they could re-open the old place. I'm sad that my grandson will never see it.

I went there as a child in 1964 and took my kids there in 1985.

We used to come visit Santa's Village in the late 50's and early 60's when I was a child. When we moved up here in 1981 I brought my son there often. When my daughter was born the same year we moved up, I brought both children there. When she was 3 she joined a dance class. I believe she was about 5 (or maybe a little older) when the dance class would go and perform on the little stage outdoors in the summer. I took my youngest son there when he was little. He's almost 16 now. I have 4 grandchildren and I would have loved to take them there.

TErickson - Yes, it's tragic that we can't keep carrying on the beloved tradition of taking our children, grandchilden or even great-grandchildren to such a whimsical and enchanting place like Santa's Village. I wonder if we got a petition going if they might reconsider reopening the place. They could still hold concerts there and that would bring in even more money. I mean, it seems the more I mention Santa's Village the more I hear people say that they wish it was still open. It sounds kind of silly that they won't reopen the park when there's so much interest in the place.

Have you checked out my link with all the photos? It's really cool. Check it out. http://www.alamedainfo.com/santas_village_ca.htm

I have often wondered what will become of what's left over from Santa's Village, once all the logs are finally removed. Some of the main buildings can be used for something, maybe exhibit halls, shops, a Chinese Restaurant, something....

Would love to see a Chinese restaurant. A few years back there was an article in the paper about some new owners who planned to renovate the whole area. I often wonder what happened there.

AnnH, I think they were probably offered quite a bit of money to use the space for (much needed, although very sad) log storage and .......

Maybe somewhere down the road, excuse the pun, that whole area can go back to a fun touristy spot. Then again, people always complained about the traffic in and out, so maybe not?

Thank you for sharing this memory. I can remember being very young and living in Redlands and coming up the mountain to Santa's Village. It was good times all around and I am sad that societal changes have caused this delightful place to no longer exist. I'm even sadder that it has been turned into a lumber dump. I miss the good 'ol days.