This color aerial gives us a bird’s-eye view of what Disneyland looked like in 1963. It’s a reminder that 8 years after it opened, the place really wasn’t that big—at least, not compared to the two-park behemoth it is these days. Past that vast parking lot, it looks like a lot of that Anaheim land was still empty. And if you look near the bottom left corner, you can see a road breaking the perimeter tree line. Surely people couldn’t just walk in the back door like that?
Kirk H says: “Disneyland owned that land behind the berm by then. It was the site of a former Anaheim street, Winston Road.”
Susan M says: “In the early years of the park, that dirt area was where the passenger helicopters landed from LAX. You used to enter the park through a service road by those hedges. But by ’63, the helipad had been moved over next to the Disneyland Hotel.”
Here’s a current satellite image for the Disneyland/California Adventure complex from roughly the same angle:
The monorail servicing facilities had to go in outside the original park area to the left here (out of frame). Just guessing, that road became the access way to the complex? By the time of this shot, they were up to monorail three (the yellow one) and might have expanded the work area.