The REAL Yellow Brick Road
By
PEEKSKILL, N.Y.-In "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz," the yellow brick road leads to happiness.
In this Hudson River town, it ends in a parking lot.
For close to a decade, city historian John Curran has been waging an uphill battle to preserve a collection of crumbling golden bricks tucked near a commuter railroad station here that he believes inspired the yellow brick road in L. Frank Baum's famous children's novel and in the movie classic based on it.
He has pored over maps, lectured visitors at the city museum he runs, lobbied the city council and even contacted the author's great-grandchildren to convince the town that the 50-foot stretch of yellow bricks he's trying to memorialize isn't just a figment.
From the Oz-Stravaganza festival in Chittenango, N.Y., to be held June 3, to a new yellow brick road on Main Street in Wamego, Kan., towns across America have long laid claim to the Wizard of Oz.
<!--[if ! lte IE 8]--> ENLARGE <!--[endif]--> Aberdeen, S.D., where Mr. Baum worked for many years as a newspaperman, boasts a fantasy park called Storybook Land. Other parks include the Land of Oz in Liberal, Kan., and Oz Park in Chicago, where Mr. Baum published his story in 1900. Drivers on Interstate 35 through Kansas can't miss the Oz paraphernalia, from shot glasses to baby bibs that read "Toto, I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore."
Not so here in Peekskill, a sleepy spot in Westchester County, where the young Mr. Baum spent two unhappy years in military school.
"You go to South Dakota, Chicago or Syracuse, and you'll find yellow brick roads and sculptures and theme parks commemorating Baum," said Evan I. Schwartz, the author of "Finding Oz: How L. Frank Baum Discovered the Great American Story." He lives in Boston and has joined Mr. Curran's band of "Ozites" trying to preserve the road. "But in Peekskill, some people don't even know the yellow brick road exists."
