Santa Claus Is Leaving This Town

This may be the last time there is Christmas in July.

After 42 years in the San Bernardino Mountains, Santa’s Village is closing. The towering candy canes on Highway 18 a few miles from Lake Arrowhead are entering their last season of sentry duty. The reindeer will need new homes.

For decades, the small amusement park had struggled to survive. Then in February the Lollipop Lady died. She had written the puppet show scripts and designed the elf costumes. Even when she was sick this winter, Pamela Wright Henck would put on her splendid pink dress with lollipops pinned on the hoop skirt and sit in a rocking chair handing out candy to the children.

“The kids would tell her, ‘My, you’re beautiful,’ and having once been on the stage, she loved to hear that,” said J. Putnam Henck, 78, her husband and the patriarch of the family owned park.

He has unruly white hair that seems to grow in more than one direction, cherubic cheeks and a thick white beard. Last year, when three Santas called in sick on the same day, the personnel manager didn’t have to look far for a last-minute replacement.

Without his wife, Henck says, he can’t manage the business. The park’s debts were higher than its twirling Christmas tree. So the entire far-flung Henck family had a meeting.

“Nowadays the thing is mission statements. So we made our mission statement: Keep the 200 acres together and keep the land protected,” Hencks said, waving a hand at the forest of 300-year-old Ponderosa pines surrounding Santa’s Village.

The family decided that it was time to close Santa’s Village, which provides about 250 jobs throughout the year. But Bill Grant, Henck’s nephew, an economist who returned from Casablanca to help run the park, had an idea.

He called Wildhaven, a San Bernardino rehabilitation center for endangered and indigenous animals. Members of the nonprofit organization were set to open escrow on another property, but agreed to check out Santa’s Village. The next day, the group agreed to buy all 200 acres.

And next year, bobcats, foxes, quail and raccoons will live in what is now Fantasy Forest and Pixie’s Pantry, and visitors, especially children, will be welcome for educational tours.

Santa’s Village will stop operating full time on Labor Day. It will remain open weekends until March, when it closes for good.

“Ideologically it’s a perfect match for what we wanted,” Grant said. “But it’s still hard to let go. I keep thinking of the faces of the 3-year-olds when they see Santa across the room. Their eyes get so big. They really believe.”

Santa’s Village opened Memorial Day 1955--six weeks before Disneyland opened. A teenager might find its painted toadstools and Bumble Bee monorail rinky-dink. An adult might wonder what a petting zoo of goats and bunnies has to do with the North Pole. But this slightly worn-at-the-edges fantasy land has always been for a younger audience--the ones knee-high to a Christmas elf.

“There’s nothing fancy-shmancy, razzle-dazzle about it. It’s probably run its course,” said Leslie McCullen, marketing director for the Lake Arrowhead Chamber of Commerce. “But I have pictures of me when I was little playing at Santa’s Village. And I have pictures of my kids there. It’s a shame it’s closing.”

Henck said the cost of doing business eventually killed Santa’s Village, which drew about 80,000 visitors a year. But he believes the market for a place where kids can sing with the Rainbow Man and sit on Santa’s lap never dies.

“Kids haven’t changed,” he said. “They wear different clothes. They cut their hair differently. They might be able to run computers, but they still like the fundamental things.”

Like touching the North Pole on a summer day and finding it really is made of ice. Or watching a puppet show.

On a recent day, Matthew Cortina, 8 years old and no stranger to joysticks and blockbuster movies, sat in a log cabin watching marionettes. Voices and music both blared from one tinny-sounding speaker. The only special effects were the scene changes behind an old gold curtain.

Matthew laughed, talked back to the puppets and never took his eyes from the tiny stage.

At the Good Witches Bakery, 17-year-old Jennifer Thompson of Sky Forest pulled on a pink gingham apron and a pointy gingham hat.

“My mom used to work here when I was little. I came here for my fifth birthday. My mom is heartbroken that it’s closing. She almost cried when she heard,’ she said with a teenager’s exasperated eye-roll.

Is her mom overreacting?

“Well, it is really sad,” Jennifer said. “I mean, my mom’s dad used to bring her and he’s passed away now and almost every kid on the mountain has worked here at some point. It’s just that she got teary-eyed.”

The Henck family took over the amusement park in 1978, when the original group of investors went bankrupt.

“I owned the land and I was the contractor that built the buildings. We felt Santa’s Village should keep going,” said Henck, who owned the property with three siblings and has three grown children. “The family pooled their money and Pamela and I moved in and took over the management.”

The park began to turn a profit, but it was a 12-hours-a-day, seven-days-a-week job.

“It’s a mom-and-pop business and none of the youngsters in the family want to spend their lives at Santa’s Village. But we couldn’t go bankrupt. When you’ve been in a community as long as I have you don’t not pay people,” Henck said.

His grandparents bought the land in 1919. His parents moved to Sky Forest from Los Angeles just before the Depression. They built the first roads and started the first school.

“I was 5 years old when I moved to this mountain. My parents taught me to love the forest. If Santa’s Village went bankrupt we would lose control. They could put in condos or a supermarket. They could cut down the trees.”

Earlier this month, the Hencks held their yearly reunion. Family members hiked up a mountain to take a good long look at those Ponderosa pines as a memorial to Pamela Henck.

“I looked down the mountain and I felt good,” Henck said. “The trees are safe. The memories will stay. And children will still come here. We gave her the present she would have wanted.”