The Many Roads to Oz
Far-flung Wizard of Oz museums could make for grand tour
Cities and towns all over America have sought to capitalize on their connection to someone or something famous — there’s a Laurel & Hardy Museum in Harlem, Georgia, an It’s a Wonderful Life Museum in Seneca Falls, New York — so it shouldn’t surprise anyone to learn that there are not one but two Oz museums in the tornado-alley state of Kansas.
Wamego is home to The Oz Museum, and Liberal, Kansas, has Dorothy’s House and Coronado Museum, which centers around a 1800s farmhouse like Uncle Henry and Auntie Em’s.
But there are others. In fact, an Oz-ophile could make a month-long vacation, a pilgrimage, out of driving the circuit. No yellow brick roads, but lots of two-lane blacktop.
Grand Rapids, Minnesota, where Frances Gumm was born, has the Judy Garland Museum, which made national news recently when its pilfered pair of ruby slippers was finally recovered.
Wausaukee, Wisconsin, which sometimes refers to itself as Wozsaukee, has a Land of Oz Museum. The Wizard of Oz had its world premiere at the Strand theater in nearby Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, on August 12, 1939, three days before it was shown at the Chinese Theater in Los Angeles.
Chittenango, New York, where L. Frank Baum grew up, is home to the All Things Oz Museum.
The newest, most unlikely and impressive Oz edifice, however, is somewhere Dorothy Gale never landed and Baum never set foot: Port Canaveral, Florida, most often associated with NASA and space shots.
Like the other Oz museums, it showcases memorabilia — costumes, props, scripts, first edition Baum books, toys. But it’s also an “immersive” experience like those popular multi-media attractions that envelope visitors in the works of Vincent Van Gogh or Salvadore Dali. Thirty projectors create the illusion of, for instance, Dorothy Gale’s perspective as cows and characters sail past a window by her high-flying, cyclone-spun house.
Owner Fred Trust opened The Wizard of Oz Museum in 2022. He aims to have something to appeal to every age group and interest level, from Oz neophytes to Baum scholars.
“Wizard of Oz appeals to visitors for various reasons, multiple ways,” Trust said. “I witnessed people crying after visiting our museum, enthusiastic and wanting to read the books, and excited to learn that there was more than the MGM movie. The goal of the museum is to discover some interest in each visitor and expand their knowledge and curiosity about specific aspects of OZ that interest them most, be that a person like Baum or Michael Jackson or a subject — art, cinema, history, politics.
“I love to share my knowledge of Oz with the public and I am eager to learn something new from them,” Trust said. “A few months ago, I learned that Frank Baum used the image of a magician Harry Kellar (Houdini’s mentor) for the Wizard on the front cover of the book Magic of Oz.”
Follow the yellow brick roads.
Noel Holston’s books include As I Die Laughing: Snapshots of a Southern Childhood (2023) and OZmosis: The Enduring Appeal and Ongoing Artistic Influence of The Wizard of Oz, to be published this spring.
