Kristina Stevens
Photos by Kristina Stevens
Green, Jello-like "Alien Moon Goo" that threatened the Tucson sanctuary for fairies and gnomes, known as Valley of the Moon, has been fought diligently by the power of kindness and is no longer a danger to the houses and ponds of the magical land.
So the volunteers at the centrally located children's attraction would have you believe.
Valley of the Moon, located at 2544 E. Allen Rd., is a place remembered fondly by those who visited from the 1930s to 1960s. The site is a theme park, on a small scale, featuring gnome homes and fairy houses, dragon's teeth and wizards, secret tunnels and caves, built by George Phar Legler, originally an electrician for the railroad, in the 1920s and 1930s.
Legler built the site on the principle of spreading kindness to all, even the earth, according to Randy Von Nostrand, the current president of the George Phar Legler Society that runs the property now.
Nostrand said that Legler spent nine years constructing the site before opening it in 1936, using recycled materials and reinforced concrete, something uncommon of the time period.
"George was recycling before there even was such a word," Nostrand said.
One of the features at the park is a "magic snake," created in 1945 and made up of used, cylindrical oatmeal containers and concrete that winds up a hill and is covered in paint.
Nostrand also said that 800 sacks of Sears, Roebuck and Co. mail-order concrete and 200 tons of stone from various places were used to build the foundations for Valley of the Moon.
Legler used chicken wire, stones and other metals to fill the concrete, giving it more structural support. Nostrand said this is common practice now, but that then, Legler was ahead of his time.
The park was built as a place to inspire children and adults to be kind to one another. Legler was originally inspired by a young girl who he visited at the Tucson Medical Center's sanitarium for tuberculosis patients. The girl was suffering from "consumption," and so Legler built a small diorama of a fairy mountain, complete with a pond, ladder and garden, outside her window to cheer her up.
"Every day, she could climb up the ladder in her imagination," Nostrand said of Legler's intention. He said that Legler believed that "over half of health is thought, and he understood the connection between the mind and the body."
Legler wanted to make a place for people to let their imaginations run wild. He was a "master storyteller," according to Jill Cummins, a volunteer who helps to restore structures on the site.
Legler dressed up as a wizard, performed "magic" tricks with the help of a sophisticated pulley system and told stories of mystery and fantasy to the visitors that passed through. He called himself the "Mountain Gnome," according to Nostrand, and even lived in a cave house underneath part of the park.
Cummins said that sometimes during the performances, he would duck into a small opening in the side of a rock wall in what appeared to visitors as a hill, going down secret stairs into his cave house and popping out at other places to add to the mystery of his story and character.
Legler's theme of kindness was illustrated by the "Golden Key of Happiness" that visitors were in search of, or the "magic stones" that protected visitors from evil and the pennies in Penny Land.
If one found a penny in Penny Land, which Nostrand said was something Legler made possible by burying pennies just below the loose dirt of the ground to be found when someone brushed their feet across it, they were allowed to take the penny for good luck. But if they took two, that was greedy.
"George was trying to save the world, one person at a time," Nostrand said.
Legler made his gnomes and fairies out of small sculptures and his own creations. There are three original gnomes left on-site that Legler created, using Halloween masks and rubber kitchen gloves as molds for the concrete forms.
They are in pieces, only the faces surviving along with a broken hand or chipped torso. Cummins said that they would probably remain that way, left unrepaired, as a symbol of what Legler created.
Nostrand said that Legler, due to his age and his lost faith in the kindness of the world, closed the site in 1967. Weeds took over the property, trash gathered and hippies squatted inside the park's different structures.
A few years later, Nostrand said, inspired by what they claimed was a shared dream about a magical land of fantasy, several students from Catalina High School in Tucson hopped the fence and started to look around the shut-down property. Legler, still living there, confronted them. The kids told him that they were there to help, not vandalize as so many had done before.
Legler gave them a tour of what was left and the students decided to fix up the place. The "Valley of the Moon Restoration Association" was born. The students came out regularly to work on the site, and brought Legler food as well.
Shari Murphy never went to Valley of the Moon as a kid, but started to go in 1982, after it was reopened to the public. She said that she had moved into the neighborhood and that her father had seen it on a map and so they decided to check it out.
One day, when the gate was open, Murphy wandered inside and was greeted by a movie crew, filming a scene in "Princess Lydia and the Magic Orb." They asked her if she wanted to put on a costume and be the "Thing by the Bridge." She hesitated, then did it, and has been participating at Valley of the Moon ever since.
Murphy has worked in Public Relations and has been the Membership Secretary. She has also volunteered in shows, most famously as "Dr. Hack 'n' Chop," an evil doctor who takes "shills," or performing kids in the audience posed as regular visitors, behind a white screen and, through shadow play, appears to dissect them. Murphy said she had a great time adding things to the act, such as pulling a frog out of a child's throat or a giant "booger" out of his nose.
Murphy said that they incorporated the magic stones from the past into the show, handing them out to the visitors before they arrive at the shadow-play screen. The children who are secret actors don't take the stones, loudly insisting they don't need the luck or magic. Then, when these same children are being "hacked" or "chopped" in the shadow scenes, it makes the rest of the audience believe they were protected by their own magic stone's powers.
Murphy is the one who named the mysterious green fungus that killed the grass in the stage area of the site "Alien Moon Goo." She said that the previous caretakers had overwatered the grass and that, despite it being the dead heat of the Arizona summer, a thick fungus that looked like green Jello began to grow, killing it.
Murphy said that they were never sure what kind of fungus it was growing there, and that they at one time had thought about calling the Smithsonian to start an inquiry into it, believing they had discovered something unusual and unknown.
But they never did.
These days, Valley of the Moon is in a state of constant repair. Many of the features of the park are now closed to the public, including the "Enchanted Garden," that Cummins said is a replica of the fairy diorama Legler built for the girl with Tuberculosis.
The garden area still exists and still has fairy and gnome sculptures all around it, but is closed off to the public due to structural issues. Legler's home of caves was built underneath part of the garden area and it is no longer safe for the constant footsteps of the public to pass over.
Cummins is never in the shows. She said that she doesn't feel comfortable with acting in them, but she regularly arrives at Valley of the Moon at 7 a.m. to paint or repair structures there. Her current project is repainting the large tree with the brand-new glowing eyes that Valley of the Moon recently received from the former Magic Carpet Golf putt-putt attraction on East Speedway Boulevard.
The park has received this and three other sculptures from the closed location, including a red, blue, yellow and green castle, a spider web wreathed in flowers and a pygmy hut that was recently repainted by Cummins into a large gnome home.
A walk around the area reveals caution tape over doorways, crumbling concrete wizard towers and a sagging roof on one of the houses. The shows are intended for night viewing and hide the pieces of aging architecture that those in charge don't want the public to see. Ponds that used to hold fish and frogs are now empty concrete troughs holding only leaves and debris.
Last year, Valley of the Moon was threatened to be shut down due to lack of funding and the need for volunteers. But they are still open, still performing events like their two-hour Halloween show, which runs for 13 nights, a Spring show and "moon strolls."
Murphy said that they only charge admission twice a year, for their Halloween and Spring shows. She said that the site runs as a non-profit and totally on volunteer work. She said that they try to give back to the community and have special shows where the visitors are required to bring donations for the Community Food Bank.
The future of Valley of the Moon depends on the very "magic" that created it. Legler's wish for "kindness to all" may be what the park relies on to get back its strength and be what it was in the beginning. The volunteers and members of the George Phar Legler Society may need to follow in Legler's footsteps. According to Cummins, he was not rich, but he was resourceful.
The site is in the middle of a small, suburban street near Prince Road and Tucson Boulevard. It sits behind a tall, chain-link fence that rolls open and shut and is somewhat hidden by the tall weeds that grow along the fence and the interior fence just past the parking lot.
It lacks the pomp and circumstance of modern theme-parks. There are no blinking lights and no signs leading the way down the street. At one time it was the only Halloween show in town. Now it constantly competes with those hosted by churches and fire departments all over town.
The park survives on a memory and a dream. The only thing keeping it alive is "magic."
Experience the magic with the Halloween tours taking place Wednesdays-Sundays October 14-30, 6pm-9pm. Tours leave the gate every half hour. Admission: $7, adults; $5, children 7-13. Food bank Wednesdays offer a discounted admission with the donation of a non-perishable food item. Visit their website at www.TucsonValleyoftheMoon.com.
