History and Development
The opening of Disneyland in 1955 created a boon of tourism in the Anaheim area. Walt Disney had originally intended to purchase additional land to build accommodations for Disneyland visitors; however, the park's construction drained his financial resources and he was unable to acquire more land. Entrepreneurs eager to capitalize on Disney's success moved in and built hotels, restaurants, and shops around Disneyland and eventually boxed in the Disney property, and turned the area surrounding Disneyland into the boulevards of colorful neon signs that Walt Disney had tried to avoid. The city of Anaheim, eager for tax revenue these hotels would generate, did little to obstruct their construction.
In the 1990s, while Disneyland was undergoing a significant expansion project surrounding the construction of Disney California Adventure Park, the city undertook a project of its own in the area surrounding the Disney property and Anaheim Convention Center. The project included removing the colorful neon signs and replacing them with shorter, more modest signs, as well as widening the arterial streets in the area into tree-lined boulevards. The name "Anaheim Resort" was coined to refer to the area.
Read more about this topic: Anaheim Resort, Anaheim, California
Famous quotes containing the words history and/or development:
“Man watches his history on the screen with apathy and an occasional passing flicker of horror or indignation.”
—Conor Cruise O’Brien (b. 1917)
“This was the Eastham famous of late years for its camp- meetings, held in a grove near by, to which thousands flock from all parts of the Bay. We conjectured that the reason for the perhaps unusual, if not unhealthful development of the religious sentiment here, was the fact that a large portion of the population are women whose husbands and sons are either abroad on the sea, or else drowned, and there is nobody but they and the ministers left behind.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)