Here’s your chance to celebrate Frontier Village.
As San Jose transforms, old-timers gather Saturday to reminisce about Western-style theme park
SAN JOSE » Frontier Village amusement park in South San Jose closed four decades ago, and the stuntmen who reenact the gun fights at the annual reunion picnic have bad knees and hips now. The founder of the beloved Western-style theme park, Joe Zukin, died in December.
But there’s another reason picnic organizers say Saturday’s reunion at Edenvale Park will be one of the last: The event started losing its spark when Shaughnessy McGehee, the unofficial ambassador for Frontier Village, moved to Oregon a few years ago.
“Without Shaughnessy, it’s just not the same,” said Mat Lindstedt.
Well, hold your horses, Frontier Village fans: McGehee will be riding in to save the day, towing five of the original kid-size cars he acquired over the years from the park’s original Antique Car Ride. A decade ago, McGehee gained local notoriety when he burst into tears after successfully bidding on the antique yellow car at auction.
“I’ve really got to be there,” McGehee said of Saturday’s re
union, which is open to the public. “I don’t think it’s hit me that even this will go away.”
All this might seem quaint — a picnic in a park for nostalgia seekers holding on to San Jose’s past. But the obsessions are sweet and the devotion of old fans is almost legendary — they’ve been gathering for reunion picnics for 19 years and attracted 15,000 followers to their “Remembering Frontier Village” Facebook page.
At a time when San Jose is on the cusp of a skyline-changing transformation with Google and other major developers coming to town, and when many of San Jose’s old institutions are closing — from Orchard Supply Hardware to Mel Cotton’s Sporting Goods — old- timers are clinging to comforting memories of the past. The idea that the picnic is fizzling into its final two years is another blow.
Frontier Village, founded in 1960 when the area was filled with orchards and known as “Valley of Heart’s Delight,” was a Western theme park near the historic Hayes Mansion. It catered to kids younger than 12 with the Lost Dutchman’s Mine Ride, the New Apache Whirlwind roller coaster, the rides in canoes and on the backs of burros.
After the park closed in 1980 (neighbors objected to expansion plans and Zukin sold the place) and subdivisions were built on most of the property, its legacy endured with a loyal following of souvenir collectors and enthusiasts. Some made the trip to Cameron Park outside of Sacramento to take rides on the park’s original train that was moved to a strip mall there. (It made news last year when it hopped its tracks and T-boned a minivan in the parking lot.)
And Lindstedt, another Frontier Village devotee, started the picnics for both former employees, like the gunfighters, and park lovers
McGehee was the most enthusiastic of all. He never worked there, but says his early years at Frontier Village were his first years of independence and wonder.
This is a man recognized by his handlebar mustache — and now long beard — who is so sentimental about Frontier Village he can’t even listen to the old Western soundtrack that blared through the park without choking up.
Over the years, McGehee who worked as a facilities manager in Palo Alto before moving to Oregon in 2015, collected souvenirs, including a park bench. He also built a partial replica of the park in his back yard for his four children to enjoy, including, at quarter scale, the old Saloon, a swinging bridge, the Marshall’s Office, the Trading Post and the schoolhouse.
When the mini cars went up for auction in 2008 at a fundraiser for Happy Hollow Park that had been storing them for decades, McGehee bid on the yellow car, his favorite from the old days.
“It’s almost like the Holy Grail and I’m not even Catholic,” McGehee said in an interview before the 2008 auction. “Some people look at me and say, ‘ It’s not sacred.’ And I say, ‘ It’s not inside of you.’”
Over the years, he collected five of the park’s original mini cars: two black model Ts and three Maxwells, in red, blue and yellow.
In Grants Pass, Oregon, where his family has property in the forest and he built a home and workshop, he still trots them out nearly every year. During “Fabulous ‘ 50s Week,” a San Jose native who owns a shop on Main Street parks one of McGehee’s cars in front of her antique shop and he tries to incorporate them each year into his church’s summer Vacation Bible Camp.
“One year we did a space theme and I’m like, how can we use these cars?” he said. “My wife said, ‘ No, we’re not going to use one of these cars for the space theme.’”
When he’s not showing them off, McGehee keeps the cars in storage in his workshop and pulls out the yellow one for two- and- ahalf year granddaughter, Alice, who sits behind the wheel and pats the seat for him to join her. It’s a big commitment to trailer the mini- cars to San Jose, but it’s important for him to do it.
“I feel like I’ve got to do my part. Maybe it’s the last time for people to see them,” he said. “None of us are getting any younger and there are less people around to remember it and enjoy it.”
It’s hard for him to put into words what those old cars mean to him.
“You know what? It’s just joy and happiness,” he said. “I don’t know if I can really explain it.”
When he pulls into Edenvale Park for the party at 11 a.m. Saturday and joins the crowd of loyal Frontier Village fans, no explanation will be necessary.