Growing up kind of poor but not knowing it, I always got to live through my friends vicariously, who would go on a big family vacation to Disneyland or some other theme park each summer. Our family didn’t seem to ever have the money to travel far, and even if we did, we weren’t the traveling kind of family, at least beyond Lincoln City, Oregon.
That’s not to say I never got to go to a theme park. As any kid in Western Washington knew back in the day, there was always Santafair. With three Merry-Go-Rounds, four Ferris Wheels, sky, boat and auto rides and an “authentic” Muckleshoot Indian Mission, Santafair was located on the major highway between Portland and Seattle.
No, I’m not talking about I-5. It didn’t exist yet. Neither did Enchanted Village. Santafair was on Highway 99, just north of what is Sea-Tac Mall today. It was part theme park, part circus and part shopping center.
In fact, if you ever skated at the skating rink in Federal Way, that’s Santafair. Well, at least it was Santafair. The last remnant of Santafair, Old World Square, was torn town in the 1980s ending a long legal dispute with the guy who dreamed it all up, J.R. Cissna.
None of this mattered to a little boy in 1963, though. To me, Santafair was a wonderland of fun and adventure. Who couldn’t love a place with 75 rides, restaurants, an aquarium (OK, so it was just a couple seals in Old World Square), a singing fountain, a train, and oh, did I mention rides?
I was too young to go on the scary ones. I made due with the rather sedate adventures there – a boat ride where you propelled yourself by turning a crank in front of you, the helicopters (I never went up or down – just straight), the merry-go-rounds (which make me dizzy even thinking about these days), and the shows.
It was a maze of magic to little boys and girls growing up in Seattle-Tacoma. It even had a circus, the Hapsburg Society Circus was there. They would do shows in the one ring circus. The circus featured a sensational dog act, seals, Candy the chimpanzee and a clown, Wee Willie.
Years before there was ever a World Showcase at Epcot, or even an Epcot for that matter, there was Old World Square.
The buildings were a reproduction of a European village square and each building was from a different part of Europe. In the center was the Singing Fountain of the Four Children. The fountain had been shipped in from Paris and it would light up and play music. The whole thing was designed by Heinz Ulbricht. If the name doesn’t ring a bell, he designed 95% of Leavenworth. Thankfully, I took a photo of the square in 1979, a year before it was unceremoniously torn down.
There was even an exact replica of Edward Lloyd’s (think Lloyd’s of London) Coffee House from the 1700s. Each of the 100 windows cost $300, a lot of money back then, and there was a reproduction of William Shakespeare’s Stratford Studio where you could host a birthday party. It was one of 20 themed party rooms there.
Yes, it was quite a place and I fondly recall all the good times we had there. For $10 my father and mother could take all four of us boys there and let us wear ourselves out on the rides.
One of the star attractions of the place was a rocket to the moon. It stood in the middle of the Auto Skill Drive outside. To a little guy, it looked as if it were a couple hundred feet tall. My brothers used to climb all the way to the top up the ladders. Me, I was scared to death of the thing and could barely make it to the first level. Eventually, I made it to the top, wanting to be brave like my brothers.
I also liked the Magic Mirrors. Oh, you know the ones. They make you look fat or skinny, short or really tall. Kind of tame as an adult, but as a kid they were indeed magical.
While my brothers continued to get their fix of the thrill rides, my mother would take me on the narrow gauge train ride that went around the shopping center. It would stop at the Old Line Historic Park. There, you could see the original Denny Cabin, which had been moved from Queen Anne to the park and a blockhouse from the San Juan Islands. As a kid, I got to ride shotgun on a Wells Fargo stagecoach and venture into the Indian Village where the first mission for the Muckleshoot tribe was. Yeah, they weren’t called Native Americans back then and looking back, it was a terrible portrayal of these people whose culture was and is far richer than that of the White Man.
I don’t really remember some of the other areas of Santafair. There was a Magic Theater, Farm Fair, Sports Fair with batting cages and such and Space Age Fair.There was also an ice show spectacular and a Hootenanny of all things.
There was also TV. I know that doesn’t sound very cool. But this TV was connected to Telstar, which had been launched in 1962 and relayed back the first television photos by satellite.
Sadly, finding anything about Santafair these days is really hard. Outside of the few photos I have as a kid, the ones I shot when I was a photographer at Green River Community College and a great piece of research by the Federal Way Historical Society, most of Santafair is just memories of a bunch of little kids who were so lucky to live at such a glorious time when anything seemed possible, even if you did have to violate zoning ordinances, bilk some investors out of money and get thrown in jail for a time.
Out on the Treasure Coast, thankful that J.R. Cissna did all that for a little boy from Renton,
– Robb