This website is dedicated to Arthur L. Bensen's vision of a theme park where visitors could see American history come to life before their eyes -

Frontier Town, North Hudson, NY

This is the inside of the Frontier Town brochure which I used to pour over incessantly. Click on the picture for a full-size rendition (~500K JPG)
Frontier Town is closed - in fact, the last time that Frontier Town was open was during the summer of 1998. Since it closed for the season that year it has not re-opened.

This website celebrates what was, through the memories of those who visited, and worked, there.

Special Announcement - 12 January 2017
It's back.

This website, that is. (Though as of January 2017 there may be hope that Frontier Town itself will make a comeback of sorts. Do a websearch for "andrew cuomo frontier town" to learn more about that.)

I ran this website from 1998 until 2014.

When I started the website in 1998, just as Frontier Town was closing for the final time, Frontier Town had no other presence on the web so I created one because I did not want people to forget this wonderful place.

I took it down in the summer of 2014 when I became so busy with the other things in my life that I no longer had the time to properly maintain it.

By then there were a couple of Facebook pages that were serving the purpose I originally created it for, and serving it better.

And Jennifer St. Pierre and Tammy Whitty-Brown are doing a wonderful job keeping people aware of Frontier Town.

See their Frontier Town Then and Now Facebook page

Recently in my work I have started to work in "the cloud". The ease with which websites can be set up in "the cloud" has inspired me to bring this website back, not as something I actively add to but as a historical record of what people shared with me over the 16 years it was active.

As I was re-activating this website I realized just how many memories I was privileged to have had people share with me over those years.

I hope you enjoy this tribute to a magical place as much as I do.

End of Update
My name is Steve Gross. I grew up in northern Vermont during the sixties. Art Bensen opened Frontier Town on July 4, 1952. My first visit came ten years later, prompted by the Magic Tom television show on CFCF-TV out of Montreal. For the next ten years, my family and I would make a trip to Frontier Town each summer.
Though anyone could buy a paper announcing that they had captured an outlaw, I was lucky enough on a couple of my visits to be in the right place at the right time and be chosen to actually catch a stagecoach robber. This is a picture of me at the trial of that robber from our 1967 visit.
Each year I would get to take one friend with me to Frontier Town. Through the years I took a number of different friends but one in particular came for a number of years. He and I created a 'Frontier Town Club'. I wrote to Art Bensen to tell him about the club. I still have the letter Mr. Bensen sent me in reply.
I think that 1971 was the last year my family went to Frontier Town. After graduating from high school in 1974, I took one solo trip to Frontier Town. I did not go back again until 1990, when I took my wife to see this place that had meant so much to me as a kid.
Kids today do not have the exposure to westerns that we did in the sixties. Think of all the television shows that portrayed the west - 'Gunsmoke', 'Bonanza', 'Rawhide', 'Death Valley Days', 'The Big Valley', etc. And local television played a lot more western movies - John Wayne, Roy Rogers - than syndicated programming in those days.
I took my kids to Frontier Town in 1996 and 1997, though I don't think it meant as much to them as it did to me thirty years earlier. Here is a picture of my kids and me in front of the blockhouse from our 1996 trip.
I bought the sign pictured to the left at the Frontier Town contents liquidation auction at Gokey's Trading Post in North Hudson on 9 October 2004. It appears as if it might have originally been at the bottom of a larger sign, as the top of this sign is rough cut and not beveled like its other sides. Now, however, it graces the door that leads from my dining room to my living room - I only wish that Frontier Town really were on the other side of the door.
History of Frontier Town Park Map Daily Park Schedule
Picture Galleries Memories Guest Book
The People of Frontier Town The Passing of an Era Frontier Town Day
Airpark Past Updates Links
Where to see some of Frontier Town today
This site is not associated with Frontier Town but is the personal endeavor of Steve Gross. I can be reached by email - frontiertownfan at hotmail dot com.