Big Thunder Strikes!
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Tony Baxter art for
Big Thunder Mountain
A lone tumbleweed is blowing across
the deserted mine train track as black storm clouds billow above the mountain. Lightning
flashes and a ghost train appears, racing at break-neck speed over the track. "BIG
THUNDER STRIKES! ONLY at Disneyland!"
-- Description of commercial promoting the new Big Thunder
Mountain Railroad 20 years ago
On January 2, 1977, the Mine Train Thru Nature's Wonderland ceased operation after 16 1/2 years. In its place would soon rise Disneyland's third rollercoaster, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. After six years of design, construction and preparation, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad made its official debut in Frontierland on September 2, 1979. Twenty years later it remains one of the more popular attractions at Disneyland and has spawned younger siblings in all four "Magic Kingdoms" around the world. It is, as Tony Baxter said, "the only mountain I know of that exists in four locations around the world!"
Big Thunder Mountain Railroad came out of a need
to increase the popularity of Frontierland which had dwindled as the Mine Trains' Thru
Nature's Wonderland became dated. Tony Baxter is Senior Vice President of Creative
Development for Walt Disney Imagineering and the designer of Big Thunder Mountain. He
said, in an interview in the Winter 1995 issue of E-Ticket Magazine, "There are people at the Park and elsewhere
who simply can't evaluate a ride based on its nostalgic appeal. They have to look at the
charts showing this year's ridership against last year's, which they assess against ride
capacity." Baxter went on to say "This was the late 70's and Disneyland was
being hit for the first time by other competing parks and their thrill rides. At the time
that Big Thunder Mountain was designed, we had only the Matterhorn Bobsleds. Space
Mountain opened during Big Thunder's design process."
So the go-ahead was given to Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Alastair Dalls, an Imagineer at the time of Big Thunder's development, contributed the following background information to LaughingPlace.com:
I didn't work on Big Thunder, but it was on the drawing boards while I was working on EPCOT. A great guy named Joe Navarro managed the architectural drawing project (he was what Disney calls the Job Captain) and I remember that Lee Congiardo of the Interiors Department was the guy who collected the authentic props that are strewn about, particularly along the second lift. Of course, it was Tony Baxter's project start to finish. I'll bet Don Hilsen designed the track-he did for Space Mountain, which I worked on in 1976.
Marc Davis had done sketches for an upgrade to the Mine Train ride along the lines of the Jungle Cruise re-do he'd just done (the python, the gorillas in the camp) and they ended up using some of his new stuff on Big Thunder (the opossums, etc.). I'm not sure who came up with the dinosaur bones and the false splash down-the bones. Seems like Marc Davis, a little.
One thing I'll say for Tony [Baxter]; he has a great sensitivity for Disneyland Park. I remember talking with him on the big employee opening night. We were standing on the main walkway looking at the back side of Cascade Peak. Either I complimented him or he mentioned that he was proud of it, but we commented on the way the old mine train tracks now dangled over the calm water that used to be Bear Valley. It looked so peaceful; so real. It was as if it started out Mark Twain, with all Huck Finn's superstardom, and ended up Sterling North, the author of Rascal, a story about a boy and his raccoon in country that grown-ups keep telling him used to be a wilderness, but now is just the country.