Park Profile
Nestled among North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains, Tweetsie
Railroad in Blowing Rock has been creating memories and offering
family-friendly Wild West adventures since 1957. Paul Ruben visits the American state’s first theme park
Tweetsie Railroad North Carolina’s Wild West Adventure
onsisting of five themed areas spread over 30 acres (12.1 hectares) Tweestie Railroad features 12 amusement rides, the Deer Park Zoo, live shows and a signature train ride that loops around the park’s 200 undeveloped acres.
C Tweetsie rides
The park’s almost all-American selection of rides and attractions includes the following: •Drop Tower (Moser Rides) •Round Up (Dartron) •Tornado (Wisdom) •Carousel (Allan Herschell) •Tilt-a-Whirl (Sellner) •Ferris Wheel (Eli Bridge) •Tweetsie Twister (Eli Bridge Scrambler)
•Chairlift (Goforth Industries) •Turnpike Cruiser (Streco Manufacturing) •Mouse Mine (Tweetsie Railroad) •Kiddie Boats (Allan Herschell) •Planes & Helicopters (Allan Herschell) •Locomotives (Baldwin Locomotive Works)
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Guests enter onto Main Street, then can wander to explore Tweetsie Junction, The Hacienda, Country Fair and Miner’s Mountain. Many choose to hop aboard the train for a scenic three-mile ride through the mountains. They can also spend the day walking the streets of a turn-of-the-century town, learning about the lives of cowboys, Indians and craftsmen of the past, or take a scenic chair lift ride to Miner's Mountain and pan for gold. “Tweetsie Railroad is old-fashioned and low-tech,” promises the park’s president and CEO, Chris Robbins. “But it is also clean, accessible to kids, uncrowded, highly interactive and just plain fun. It is designed primarily for families with young children. We build an immersive world for kids, where they can use their imaginations to become a Wild West character and enjoy attractions designed just for them.”
Justice Prevails Tweetsie’s Wild West Adventure – the park’s train ride cum live show – is a trip back in time, complete with cowboys, train robbers and marauding renegades stirring up trouble: “Our train show is pretty much the same as it has always been," says Robbins, “a mixture of excitement, action and comedy. It's a spoof of all the popular characters from the Old West. Nobody gets hurt, and justice always prevails.” The name “Tweetsie” was given to the railroad by local folks who became accustomed to the shrill “tweet, tweet” train whistles that echoed through the hills. The name stuck, and the train was known as Tweetsie ever since.
In an era of large, corporate-owned theme parks,
family-owned Tweetsie Railroad continues to thrive. “We don’t try to compete with the large theme parks,” admits Robbins. “We have a market niche that we’ve perfected over 55 seasons of operation. Tweetsie’s dedicated staff understands our mission, and constantly looks for ways to improve our operations. We are seeing our second, third and even fourth generation of visitors.”
Chris Robbins, president and CEO of Tweetsie Railroad
A general view of the amusement area APRIL 2012
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