Biography | Walt Disney — He Read the Dedication at Town Square Before the Park Was Finished

The public date on the tickets was 18 July 1955. The day Walt Disney dedicated the park was the 17th. Construction had started about a year and a day earlier on roughly 160 acres of orange grove in Anaheim. Period reports put the cost near seventeen million dollars. ABC, a part-owner, carried a live broadcast that Sunday. Estimates of the television audience range from about seventy million to ninety million. The figures were never a census. An invitation-only preview was planned for a much smaller gate. Counterfeit tickets and crashers pushed the crowd far past the plan. Fresh asphalt took women's heels. Rides failed. Water fountains were short. The Mark Twain listed with too many people on deck. At Town Square, at the flagpole where the dedication plaque still sits, Disney read the inscription that remains on the bronze. The plaque's first lines run: To all who come to this happy place — Welcome. Disneyland is your land. No other Disney park was dedicated by him in person. The pin is Town Square, at the south end of Main Street, not the castle on the postcard. Photo: photographer unknown, public domain (published 17 July 1955 without a copyright notice). Opening day at Disneyland. Via Wikimedia Commons.