The Enchanted Forest was Maryland’s answer to Disneyland—opening just a month later in August 1955. Located in Ellicott City, it was a low-tech, high-charm storybook park filled with nursery rhyme scenes: Cinderella’s Castle, the Old Woman’s Shoe, and Willie the Whale. At its peak, it drew 300,000 visitors a year. But by the late ’80s, it was fading fast. The park closed in 1989, and for years its decaying structures sat behind a shopping center. Thankfully, in the 2000s, Clark’s Elioak Farm began rescuing and restoring the original figures—giving this fairy tale a second chapter.