Rewind: June 2, 2026

History of the Magic Forest

By Jackson Stanclift

            If you are currently over 16 and grew up in the Lake George Area, you’ve almost certainly at least heard of Magic Forest, which was on Route 9 right between The Great Escape and Fort William Henry. It might have been in Storytown’s shadow since the beginning, had a bunch of creepy fiberglass statues all over the place (don’t worry, we will get to those soon), and had an abandoned feeling during the last few decades of its existence. But nonetheless, it was a place where quite a few childhoods were made until it closed down and rebranded over the final years of the 2010s. And while there is not too much information about the little park’s history, what information there is paints a rather interesting story.

            Arthur Gillette (the creator of Magic Forest) started out in 1947 as a humble travelling salesman selling rides, booths, and carnival games to local county fairs. But one day in the 50’s, he got sick of life on the road and decided that his skills would be best used opening a theme park, considering that those were all the rage back then (especially in the Lake George area). So, he built an amusement park in the late 1950’s (the details of said park having seemingly been lost to time) where Lake George’s Holiday Inn now stands.

             However, the rent simply got a bit too high for Gillette. So, in 1963, he packed up and moved to a well-situated location about ¾ mile south on Route 9. In the early days, Gillette’s park was a Santa-themed one called “Christmas City USA,” which had live reindeer and attractions, but seemingly no rides due to Gillette hoping that Santa alone would draw in consumers. Needless to say, it didn’t. So, Christmas City was soon rebranded to Magic Forest, a park with a fairy tale theme. And over the next few decades, it finally got the rides and statues (known as “Muffler Men”) that the place was known for.

             And of these “Muffler Men”, there was one who lorded over them all: a 40 foot tall statue of Uncle Sam. Often claimed to be the largest statue of Uncle Sam in the world (a claim that is unfounded and likely unverifiable), the Magic Forest got ahold of it, alongside many of the other statues that dominated the park, from a closed fairground in the city of Danbury, Connecticut. For the next 37 years, Uncle Sam would stand tall at the center of the park, beckoning tourists closer in a way not too different from how Lady Liberty was a beacon to those seeking refuge in the New World.

            Another iconic attraction of Magic Forest was a place where you could see the state’s only Diving Horse, which was trained to dive into water for spectators. Diving Horses were not a Magic Forest invention, as they were a quite popular attraction from the late 1800s and into the first half of the 20th century, with the most popular of which being at Steel Pier in Atlantic City, New Jersey. By the time Rex (the original Magic Forest horse) started doing his thing in 1977, the practice had already gone out of style due to scrutiny from animal rights groups. But that didn’t stop Magic Forest, and Rex (and later, Rex’s son Lightning) would become renowned as the world’s only Diving Horse and be one of the top reasons to go to Magic Forest.

            But Magic Forest was never going to last forever. By the 2010s, it had already started to look nigh-abandoned. And as that decade came to a close, Jack Gillette (Arthur’s son who took over the family business after his father passed away) would ultimately sell the park to local contractor Ruben Ellsworth, who rebranded Magic Forest into Lake George Expedition Park, which had both a part of the park that was akin to classic Magic Forest, but without the statues, and Dino Roar Park, a new area with dinosaur animatronics everywhere. And many would say that, in spite of the Magic Forest being a bit of a fossil, the revamp took away most of the charm and turned the park into something much more generic.

             One interesting aspect of the fall of Magic Forest is what happened to Uncle Sam afterwards? The original plan was for it to be sent to the real Uncle Sam’s hometown of Troy (there was also a proposal to send it to the office of this very historical society, but the executive director shot that down because it was taller than the entire building), but someone was not going to let that happen. Then-mayor of Danbury “Big Poppa” Mark Boughton decided to personally  drive 200 miles to Magic Forest, offered Jack Gillette an amount of money he couldn’t refuse, bought Uncle Sam, and placed it in the heart of Downtown Danbury in 2019. When asked, Boughton’s communication’s coordinator said that “Big Poppa Boughton” bought the statue because the people of Danbury missed Uncle Sam and figured that the citizens deserved to have it back now that Magic Forest was out of the picture. Odd priorities for the mayor of a city with over 85,000 people; but it just goes to show how Magic Forest did indeed mean a lot to so many people.

Jackson Stanclift is a summer intern at the Warren County Historical Society.  He is a student at Champlain College where he is a Writing and Publishing major.