Fictional Expedition Theme Park Videos/The History of Carwardine Colony and the Carwardine Mines - Expedition Carwardine

Cold Opening
With the 1973 oil crisis taking a toll on American leisure, several local entrepreneurs started to capitalize on smaller radiuses, but none of these start-up entrepreneurs were as successful as Christopher R. Carwardine.

* Segment from 1985 Ad*

First "Chapter"
Christopher Roger Carwardine was born in North Dakota, but moved to Pennsylvania when he was 15 years old. He then moved to Virginia to attend university, then moved again back to Pennsylvania, and then back to Virginia. Initially, Christopher was a real estate agent, but, in 1973, the oil crisis emerged. One day, Chris saw a news story about how a family spent a lot of money on gas to get to a theme park in Salem, Virginia. This gave Chris an idea, build a theme park that was relatively close to Richmond, Virginia's major city.

* Interview with Chris Carwardine from 1995*

When he was unable to find a location in or around Richmond, he settled for a disused landfill on reclaimed land in Newport News, in the Hampton Roads region. After purchasing the landfill and an area around it, over a 2-year period, he and his wife Hiroko, along with their college buddy Marv Simpleton, cleared the landfill and began building the theme park. The trio worked 12 hours a day, every day, reassembling a vintage Flying Turns coaster that had last operated in Georgia, as well as working on theming for a new attraction inspired by Runaway Mine Train and the former Mine Train Through Nature's Wonderland at the Disney parks. Midway through 1979, Dean Joe Fawkes, a prominent showman on the east coast, joined the Carwardine couple and Simpleton as a partner in the creation of the park. However, every new thing to be added had the final say on it come from Christopher. He was incredibly picky on how the park would look and feel, with themed areas being entirely rebuilt if they weren't quite right.

* Segment from 1980 Ad*

Opening in May 1980, with the Governor of Virginia of the time, John N. Dalton, on hand, Carwardine Colony was designed as the East Coast answer to Disneyland. The park initially employed 230 employees and operated from Monday to Saturday, with the park being closed on Sundays for maintenance work. Reportedly, fellow Virginia theme parks Busch Gardens Williamsburg and Kings Dominion were so interested in what their competition was building that staffers from the aforementioned parks would visit the park in disguise to scope it out. Carwardine Colony's original star attraction was the mine train ride that was mentioned earlier. And today, it is the focus of this video.

Second "Chapter"
The Carwardine Mines was built by Arrow Development, and cost $2.1 million to install. Arrow Development was founded in 1945 in Mountain View, California by Karl Bacon, Ed Morgan, Bill Hardiman and Angus Anderson, who met while working at the Hendy Iron Works in Sunnyvale. Arrow Development originally sold used machine tools and made replacement parts for trucks, which were scarce after the war. Their first big job was building test run-in furnaces for the US Navy. They also performed machining and assembly work for Luscombe, Hewlett Packard in the 1950s, and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in the 1960s, and helped the NASA Ames Research Center develop 25 balloon-suspended capsules for high altitude research with monkeys, in preparation for the Mercury Program. Between, 1953 and 1971 Arrow would be instrumental in designing and developing over a dozen ride systems and vehicles for the Disney parks and were awarded multiple patents for their designs.

The Carwardine Mines opened with Carwardine Colony in 1980. The ride arrived at the park during construction in mid-1979 on 7 semi trucks. Carwardine Colony sparked new life into the amusement park scene on the East Coast and in the South, with the Carwardine Mines serving as a star attraction along with Flash Forward, a Schwarzkopf Shuttle Loop, the aforementioned Flying Turns, the Ladybug Tivoli, and Toboggan, a Chance Toboggan that once operated on the Northwest US fair circuit and at Austria's famous Wiener Prater.

Third "Chapter"
In 1988, the ride's big bar was replaced with individual "R-bars" for added safety and to lower the height requirement from 42 inches, to only 38. This change meant younger kids could have something to do other than purely kids coasters and flat rides.

In 1997, Garner Holt was hired to come in and replace the entirety of the show scenes with newer, updated technology, Creative Engineering delivered a Beach Bear skeleton to be retrofitted into a miner who's holding a gun instead of a guitar.

Video Information

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