Walt Disney Hometown Museum, History museum in former railway station at Marceline, United States.
The Walt Disney Hometown Museum occupies a restored railway station building and displays family correspondence, photographs, and personal possessions from Walt's time in Marceline. The space also houses remaining components from the original Midget Autopia ride that once operated at Disneyland.
The building is the restored Santa Fe Railway Depot in Marceline, now home to the Walt Disney Hometown Museum, which opened in 2001. It displays memorabilia from the Disney family farm, where they lived from 1905 to 1909, and from Walt Disney's return to the town in 1946. The museum also holds railroad artifacts, including ATSF 5008, an EMD SD40 built in 1966.
The museum keeps the wooden school desk Walt used in Marceline and a recording of him asking his parents about their life. Ruth Flora Disney Beecher, his sister, donated many of the letters and photographs, so the family story is told through items the Disneys themselves kept.
The museum occupies the restored Santa Fe Railway Depot, a two-story red brick building with "MARCELINE" lettered across its facade and a black bench on the paved walkway outside. The entrance is recessed under a dark overhanging canopy on the ground floor, while the upper level has five tall, narrow white-framed windows. Look for the building by its brick front and rooftop parapet rather than a station platform.
The museum holds the only surviving parts of a Disneyland ride operated outside Disneyland: the Midget Autopia, donated by Disney when the attraction was dismantled. Marceline ran it from 1966 until 1977, when insurance costs and missing parts closed it; a restored car is displayed and was the centrepiece of a 2015 Kickstarter to rebuild the ride.
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