Harold Glenn Holland (1918-2002) was a developer from

Arcadia, California Arcadia is a city in Los Angeles County, California, United States, located about northeast of downtown Los Angeles in the San Gabriel Valley and at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains. It contains a series of adjacent parks consisting of th ...

, USA, who established the first

amusement parks An amusement park is a park that features various attractions, such as rides and games, as well as other events for entertainment purposes. A theme park is a type of amusement park that bases its structures and attractions around a central ...

franchise Franchise may refer to: Business and law * Franchising, a business method that involves licensing of trademarks and methods of doing business to franchisees * Franchise, a privilege to operate a type of business such as a cable television p ...

, Santa's Village.

Early life

Holland grew up during the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

and his parents died before his eighteenth birthday, leaving him to care for his younger sister.

Santa's Village

In 1953, Holland proposed Santa's Village after reading a ''

Saturday Evening Post ''The Saturday Evening Post'' is an American magazine, currently published six times a year. It was issued weekly under this title from 1897 until 1963, then every two weeks until 1969. From the 1920s to the 1960s, it was one of the most widely c ...

'' story about a similar project called North Pole in

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. He set up a corporation that funded the amusement park and leased the land from the family of the general contractor, J. Putnam Henck. In the early 1950s, Holland sketched his idea of a

Christmas Christmas is an annual festival commemorating Nativity of Jesus, the birth of Jesus, Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a religious and cultural celebration among billions of people Observance of Christmas by country, around t ...

fairyland filled with enormous candy canes, animals and gingerbread houses. Holland developed this idea into a working plan and sought

investors An investor is a person who allocates financial capital with the expectation of a future return (profit) or to gain an advantage (interest). Through this allocated capital most of the time the investor purchases some species of property. Type ...

for his project. He traveled the country promoting his Santa's Village concept and selling $45 stock shares, and eventually listed his company, Santa's Village Corporation, on the

California Stock Exchange California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

. Around the same time,

Walt Disney Walter Elias Disney (; December 5, 1901December 15, 1966) was an American animator, film producer and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. As a film p ...

was building

Disneyland Disneyland is a amusement park, theme park in Anaheim, California. Opened in 1955, it was the first theme park opened by The Walt Disney Company and the only one designed and constructed under the direct supervision of Walt Disney. Disney in ...

. Holland contacted Disney, and they reportedly corresponded for a time. While Disney was already wealthy from his films, Holland was an unknown. Holland was also friends with

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and

Maurice McDonald Richard McDonald (February 1909 – July 14, 1998) and Maurice McDonald (1902 – December 11, 1971), together known as the McDonald Brothers, were American entrepreneurs who founded the fast food company McDonald's. They opened the original Mc ...

. The McDonald brothers told him about their business idea with

Ray Kroc Raymond Albert Kroc (October 5, 1902 – January 14, 1984) was an American businessman. He purchased the fast food company McDonald's in 1961 and was its CEO from 1967 to 1973. Kroc is credited with the global expansion of McDonald's, turnin ...

for their eponymous chain of fast-food restaurants. The story inspired Holland to franchise his parks. The first Santa's Village opened on Memorial Day in 1955, six weeks before Disneyland, in Skyforest near Lake Arrowhead in

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, California. It closed in 1998. A second Santa's Village opened in 1957 near

Scotts Valley Scotts Valley is a small city in Santa Cruz County, California, United States, about thirty miles (48 km) south of downtown San Jose and six miles (10 km) north of the city of Santa Cruz, in the upland slope of the Santa Cruz Mount ...

in Santa Cruz County, California, staying open until 1979. The last Santa's Village opened in 1959 in the

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name ...

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of East Dundee and closed in 2006. The park reopened under new ownership in 2011 and continues to operate to this day as Santa's Village. The Skyforest, California location was reopened in late 2016 and renamed

SkyPark at Santa's Village SkyPark at Santa's Village is an outdoor adventure park with year-round mountain biking, hiking, fly fishing and open air activities in the Skyforest section of Lake Arrowhead, California. It opened on December 2, 2016, on the site of the former S ...

. Holland had planned for the Dundee Park to be the hub of a nationwide chain of Santa's Villages. The other two, in

Richmond, Virginia (Thus do we reach the stars) , image_map = , mapsize = 250 px , map_caption = Location within Virginia , pushpin_map = Virginia#USA , pushpin_label = Richmond , pushpin_m ...

, and

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, were never built. Despite the park's early popularity, Holland had not planned for the freezing weather in

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolita ...

. While his West Coast parks stayed open year-round, with best attendance in the weeks before Christmas, the Chicago area was too cold. Eventually, Santa's Village in East Dundee was in the odd position of being closed at Christmas. The miscalculation helped lead to the collapse of the company. Finances were stretched thin. By 1965, investors rebelled. Holland left the company, and the parks were sold. "Where he made the error was going on and doing the final one in Illinois. It was just not financially a good idea," said Reece, his daughter. "But he knew he had touched people with the parks. It was the most special thing he felt he had ever done." Holland later became a

real estate Real estate is property consisting of land and the buildings on it, along with its natural resources such as crops, minerals or water; immovable property of this nature; an interest vested in this (also) an item of real property, (more general ...

developer and died in 2002 at 84.

References

External links

Santa's Village memories and history web page

"The Story of Santa's Village"
Santa's Village Amusement & Water Park

Erin Saunder, Chicago Tribune {{DEFAULTSORT:Holland, Glenn 1918 births 2002 deaths Businesspeople from California People from Arcadia, California 20th-century American businesspeople