The All Things Oz Museum, open on Saturdays only, is a delightful collection of almost 15,000 items of Baum and Oz history, one of the three largest public Oz collections. The Erie Canal north of Chittenango used to be bustling with activity in the 1800s. Chittenango Falls, the same height as Niagara Falls If you haven’t already, read my previous post about The Wizard of Oz’s impact in literary history and American culture.Ĭhittenango sits snugly in central New York, between the Finger Lakes region and the Mohawk Valley, surrounded by pastoral beauty, lakes, rivers, and waterfalls. We spent Saturday in Chittenango and “Oz,” and Sunday in Syracuse, where Baum lived for a few years of childhood and as a young man. So in mid-June I drove to Ithaca to visit my friend Nancy. This is the largest and oldest Wizard of Oz themed festival in the world.Īs a huge Baum and Oz fan, I had planned to attend the Oz-stravaganza this year but had to delay my trip by two weeks. The Oz-Stravaganza grew from a simple Baum birthday event in 1978 to a three-day festival hosted by Oz historian John Fricke, hosting since 1990. They are planning a big surprise for next year (2019), the 80th anniversary of the MGM movie The Wizard of Oz. The town hosts the annual Oz-stravanza the first weekend in June. Over a century later, as a tribute to Baum, another Yellow Brick Road winds through downtown Chittenango on Genessee Street.

Later, he grew accustomed to seeing the yellowed hemlock plank road that carried salt barrels to Salina, possibly the inspiration for Oz’s Yellow Brick Road. He spent his first five years in Chittenango, his birthplace. The small town of Chittenango, New York is proud to embrace their hometown boy, L.

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