Frontierland

Frontierland is designed to be a journey through time and distance, celebrating America's great westward expansion following the Louisiana Purchase. Frontierland's story begins where Liberty Square ends, and takes you on a journey from St. Louis in the early 1840s to a ghost town after the gold rush boom in the 1880s. Each building moves you further west through the use of different architectural styles and materials. In addition, the building addresses themselves are clues to the year many of the building facades were erected.

The first building in Frontierland is, appropriately, Liberty Square's Diamond Horseshoe Saloon, a grand show palace common in St. Louis in 1830, when St. Louis was known as the gateway to the American west.

Moving westward (figuratively), time passes into the 1850s. Here we find a northwoods union hall featuring the Country Bear Jamboree. Further down, the Town Hall came in 1867 and Pecos Bills Saloon is dated 1878. The Frontier Trading Post is owned by "Texas" James Slaughter, a real-life person and Disney TV character from the 1870s. Turning the corner, we come to Splash Mountain, set in the antebellum South.

The last stop on our westward journey is to the little mining town of Big Thunder. The mountain is influenced by the peaks of Monument Valley and the designers have used forced perspective to make them seem larger.

Since our journey was from the east to the west, it is appropriate that the last thing you see in Frontierland is the Walt Disney World Railroad train station. The Rivers of America and the Liberty Belle Riverboat are a symbolic link between Liberty Square and Frontierland, highlighting the importance of rivers and canals to the start of the American expansion. The Railroad station, in contrast, represents the completion of the transcontinental railroad and the end to the great expansion.

There is one more design element unique to Frontierland: the use of multiple pathways to provide variety to your experience. You can walk along the raised wooden plank sidewalk along the building frontier facades, in the street with the great masses migrating "west," or get a taste of the rural life by walking along the boardwalk at the edge of the Rivers of America. Not only does this provide a set of options for the guests, it creates huge capacity to move people without looking like a giant sidewalk.