Skyforest, California: Santa's Village

Some former buildings from Santa's Village in the San Bernardino Mountains have a new home in Carlsbad, California. This display has the guardhouse, some mushrooms and other assorted props from the former property.

The roof is coming off of the main entry building at Santa's Village in Skyforest, CA. Piles of broken lumber and cement chunks defile the parking lot. Pilfered fading concrete mushrooms hunker in front yards of local residents for miles around. The north pole has melted. Santa's Village is a shadow of its former self. To witness the sad scene, take Rt. 18 north way up onto the mountain from San Bernardino (which itself is about an hour east of L.A. on I-10). Info requests to the local newspaper went unanswered, but one local said some folks still hold hope that Santa's Village will be resurrected.

Small mention was recently made in the Los Angeles Times that Santa's Village will be closing in a matter of months. It's a tragedy that such a paragon of kitsch will be bulldozed, especially amid such the otherwise humdrum natural splendor surrounding the park. It's fantastically creepy, run down and has been for some thirty years.

Though it's been years since I've made the pilgrimage, even then all the rides looked ancient and hazardous (though the more intrepid were getting on them anyway). I guess they couldn't resist riding sky buckets in the shapes of rusting, creaking giant bees or a seemingly tame roller coaster with cars like sleighs led by banged-up fake reindeer. Especially memorable was a walk-through Alice in Wonderland attraction featuring dusty, cobwebbed and stunningly amateur dioramas.

Until her recent death, the elderly Lollipop Lady would skip down to a stagnant pond where her husband, the owner of Santa's Village, a real Burl Ives wannabe (CDs available) awaited to sing songs, presumably to 'enchant' the children as his wife handed out, appropriately, suckers to them.