This story is part of our July 2025 Young Professionals issue, photographed at Bradshaw Animal Shelter. To learn more about adopting at Bradshaw, click here.

Once upon a time — 1959, to be precise — Fairytale Town opened at 3901 Land Park Drive in Sacramento, just four years after Disneyland debuted in Southern California. While the latter made the sleepy town of Anaheim morph into, for a while, the fastest-growing city in America, there’s no evidence to suggest that Fairytale Town had a similar effect on population figures for California’s capital. But almost immediately it was acknowledged, year after year, as one of the region’s top five family amenities — and still is. (The Sacramento Zoo, just across the street, holds the No. 1 spot.)

Fairytale Town is also one of the survivors of an era when storybook-themed parks were all the rage. The 1950s was a relatively peaceful decade in America — no wars, a solidly growing economy and a war hero president, Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower, who rarely aroused prolonged controversy. People drove bus-length, gas-swilling, fin-adorned cars, the majority of moms were full-time homemakers, and the makers of Camel cigarettes actually claimed their product could soothe your sore throat.

Today, Fairytale Town, which welcomes more than 100,000 kids a year — plus their parents or guardians, which brings its visitor numbers up to more than 250,000 — has hung onto its retro and wholesome vibe. At 3 1/2 acres, its attractions are scaled for kids (as is Disneyland’s Main Street, where the buildings are about 3/4 size) and this deceptively amusing admonition is posted at the entrance: “No adult will be admitted without a child.”

One of Fairytale Town’s secret assets since the late 1990s has been Francie Dillon, a Sacramento State professor as well as a singer-songwriter and children’s educator. When kids visit the park’s 26 play sets at the park — stations devoted to a storybook character or story itself, rendered in ceramics, Fiberglas, concrete and other materials — they listen to songs that Dillon wrote or co-wrote.

Her lilting narration provides the basic story arcs of Mother Goose, Jack and Jill and the shoe that “little old lady” lived in, as well as the park’s popular “crooked mile.” This is a walking path reminiscent of the famed yellow brick road leading to the Emerald City and “The Wizard of Oz.” But it’s hardly as long as a mile. “Its exact distance is top secret,” Dillon says, smiling impishly, “but I was curious, so I measured it one afternoon.” So, is it close to a mile? “My lips are sealed,” she says, laughing.

For more than five years, Kevin Smith-Fagan has been the executive director of FTT (as it’s affectionately known). He spent five years before that as the assistant general manager of KVIE, the regional PBS-TV affiliate. He has also worked as director of development for Jesuit High School in Sacramento. At 60 years old, with his shaved head, athletic build and constant smile, he seems as if he’d be every kid’s favorite uncle.

As it is, he and his wife of 34 years, Nancy, have three grown sons. He recalls that as a visual aid for his Fairytale Town job interview, he showed a photo of him taking son Aidan at age 4 to the attraction. “I never dreamed I’d end up here,” he says, then adds, “but I’m so happy I did.”   

One recent spring day, Smith-Fagan led his visitor through the park’s immaculate grounds, which include tall trees, artfully shaped and maintained bushes and hedges and, of course, the “play sets” that feature storybook characters and sculptures such as a representation of the carriage Cinderella rode in to the ball. The carriage has stood immobile for the park’s entire history, which is a significant point to Smith-Fagan.

“Parents who haven’t been inside the park sometimes ask at the entrance or on the phone if there are rides,” he says as he and his guest sit on a shaded patio from which one can see the park’s whimsical entrance gate (featuring a sculpted and teetering Humpty Dumpty prior to that great fall) and one of FTT’s newer attractions, a story center.

This self-contained, multi-purpose structure, which Smith-Fagan and his board of directors saw through from inception to completion, opened in 2022. It features a few indoor quadrants where kids can stage a play, quietly read books, paint and draw or create their own stop-motion animation video with toy dinosaurs and the like, the only high-tech option at FTT. (Stop-motion animation is how the original film of “King Kong” was created in the early 1930s; it involves photographing an object one frame at a time; then, when played back, like a flipbook, the object appears to move.)

Smith-Fagan says the park’s budget is $2.8 million, all of which comes from donations and their relatively inexpensive ticket sales, which are $10 per person, with kids under 2 provided free admission. You can rent out the park for parties, weddings and business events.

As for that crooked mile: “It’s maybe a 10th of a mile,” Smith-Fagan confesses with a conspiratorial wink. “That’s where imagination kicks in. When you’re only 45 inches high, walking it is like doing a marathon.”

–

Stay up to date on business in the Capital Region: Subscribe to the Comstock’s newsletter today.