Disneyland opened with five major lands, but after its initial success plans were immediately set in motion for many new attractions and multiple additional lands to be added on to the park.
Today we are discussing one of these lost land's, Edison Square.
Welcome to Never Built Disneyland where we explore lost lands and attractions from Walt Disney's original theme park. To check out the rest of this series be sure to go here.
Edison Square was to be a land built off the hub in between Tomorrowland and Main Street USA. It would have showcased the rise of electricity in America in the early 20th century. It would have transitioned the small town USA of Main Street into an American city culdesac from the turn of the century.
This would have in practice extended Main Street USA, giving the classic vehicles of main street a new section to explore, and extending the Americana into a new part of the park. Only the more modern vehicles would venture into Edison Square. No horse-drawn carriages, only streetcars, and omnibuses.
The entire land was designed around a cleverly disguised show building for the land's only attraction, Harnessing the Lightning. It was designed to look like a traditional dead-end street with a park in the center, but the buildings surrounding it held multiple audience sections and sets.
This land was in active (and public) development throughout much of the late 1950s and early 1960s having been officially announced and was being regularly put on the park map and in promotional material. Eventually, it would be permanently shelved when Disney shifted its focus from new attractions at Disneyland to the 1964 World's Fair in New York City. Harness the Lightning, the attraction from this land, would not die with the land, being turned into one of the rides Disney would design for the fair.
That is the attraction we are going to be looking at in next week's Never Built Disneyland, and the attraction that would eventually develop into Carousel of Progress. Be sure to come back for that and check out all the rest of that series here.
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