Greg Glascow And Kathryn Mayer Release Disneyland On The Mountain

Published: Oct. 4, 2023, 2 p.m.

A fascinating look at Walt Disney's last, unfinished project and the controversy that surrounded it. It was going to be Disneyland at the top of a mountain-a vacation destination where guests could ski, go ice skating, or be entertained by a Disney Imagineer-created band of Audio-Animatronic bears. In the summer, visitors could fish, camp, hike, or take a scenic chairlift ride to the top of a mountain. It was the Mineral King resort in Southern California, and it was Walt Disney's final passion project. But there was one major obstacle to Walt's dream: the growing environmentalist movement of the 1960s. In Disneyland on the Mountain, authors Greg Glasgow and Kathryn Mayer provide an unprecedented look inside the Mineral King saga, from its origins at the 1960 Winter Olympics to the years-long environmental battle that eventually shut the development down. The fight, which went all the way to the Supreme Court, reshaped the environmental movement and helped to put in place long-reaching laws to protect nature. Although the court battle, coupled with Walt's death in 1966, meant the end for the Mineral King resort, the ideas and planning behind it permeated throughout the Walt Disney company and the ski tourism industry in ways that are still seen today. Published during the 100th-anniversary year of the Disney company, with firsthand interviews and behind-the-scenes details, Disneyland on the Mountain offers access to a part of Disney history that hasn't been thoroughly explored before, including Walt's love of nature, how the company changed after Walt's death and, of course, the story of the Disney ski resort that never was. It's a tale of man versus nature, ambition versus mortality, and how a gang of scrappy environmentalists took on one of America's most beloved companies-and won.