Silver Dollar City Grand Opening

I recall visiting Silver Dollar City in the early 1960s when it was just a reconstruction of a small nineteenth century village situated on the grounds of Marvel Cave Park, and admission was free. I don't recall the exact date or even the exact year, but it couldn't have been terribly long after the place opened because, as I say, there wasn't much to it at the time. The grand opening occurred on Sunday, May 1, 1960, and I'm guessing that this might have been a year or so after that.
Silver Dollar City was completed in April of 1960 by Mary Herschend and her two sons, Jack and Pete, who jointly owned and operated Marvel Cave. The village was represented as an "authentic reproduction of a little village that once occupied the very same spot."

The place was designed by architect Russell Peterson. He had also built Frontier City on the outskirts of Oklahoma City and was nationally known for his reconstruction of pioneer communities. When Silver Dollar City opened on the first of May, it consisted of a general store, a miner's shack, a candy store, a stage coach inn, and a print shop, along with authentic facades of a doctor's office, a gun shop, a barber shop, a courthouse, and a jail. Some of the structures were actual buildings moved log by log from their original locations in the Ozarks. An old country church and a rural schoolhouse were also in the process of being dismantled, moved timber by timber to the site, and reconstructed as part of Silver Dollar City. Plans called for a few of the buildings to be turned into businesses. For example, a Springfield restaurateur was opening up an eating place in the stage coach inn.
About 300 area motel and resort owners participated in a mass ribbon cutting to kick off opening day ceremonies, and an estimated 8,000 people visited Silver Dollar City throughout the day. At one point, cars waiting to enter the park were backed up for a mile in each direction along Highway 76. The place continued to draw "tremendous crowds" throughout the summer. One person who visited during July was Lucille Morris Upton, legendary Ozarks author and columnist for the Springfield Daily News. She was struck the welcoming and smiling faces of the folks who ran the reconstructed village, and she called it "the cutest attraction you can imagine." I wonder what she would think of Silver Dollar City if she could see it today?
The newspaper photo above is from the Springfield Leader and Press. It was published on the day of the grand opening and presumably taken a day or two before.