In 1988, Pioneer Village celebrated its Jubilee year with a week full of music, contests and demonstrations from pioneer life. Although Pioneer Village opened at Lagoon in 1976, it originally opened in Salt Lake City in 1938 by Horace Sorenson, owner of the old Southeast Furniture store who had amassed a large collection of pioneer […]
Category: Pioneer Village
Frightmares has been an increasingly popular Halloween event at Lagoon for over 20 years now. But before Frightmares, Lagoon tried out a short Christmas event. In November 1994, possibly for the first time ever, Lagoon opened its doors to the public for a post-season holiday celebration. The three-day Pioneer Holiday was basically a community event […]
There’s an old documentary about amusement parks called America Screams which aired on PBS in 1978. It was an hour long, but was later whittled down to a half hour when it was released on VHS. This edited version can be seen on YouTube. (The Lagoon sequence starts at the 7:30 mark and ends about […]
Pioneer Village began in the East Millcreek area of Salt Lake City in 1938. Furniture store owner Horace Sorenson collected pioneer-era buildings and artifacts as others were tearing them down or throwing them away. He opened his collection to the public and eventually turned it over to the Sons Of Utah Pioneers who operated it […]
Lagoon’s Pioneer Village stars in Christmas Land, airing on Hallmark Channel beginning in December 2015. After cleaning up from Frightmares, Pioneer Village was transformed into a winter wonderland to serve as the backdrop for this two-hour TV special. The old Rosie’s Cantina sign (last used in Lagoon’s Guns & Garters Whoop-De-Doo Roundup in 2003) was […]
Anyone who has been on the authentic Carousel at Lagoon and who has looked closely at the band organ may have noticed the name “Freedola” painted on the bottom. It’s understandable if you assume this is a small reference to the Freed Family who has been operating the park since the 1940s, because that was […]