If you love theme parks, you go to Orlando. If you love spooky abandoned theme parks, take a visit to Holy Land USA in Waterbury, Connecticut. Situated on a hill with a 52-foot cross, overlooking the town, Holy Land’s rundown miniature structures of biblical sites and tablet with biblical verses look like the setting for a horror film. In fact, it was the location of a murder in 2010. That tragedy and the ruins left behind, of course, were not in the original plans. It was designed to inspire good will and bring people closer to religion.
Yale Law School grad, John B. Greco, began building Holy Land in 1956. By the sixties, it was pulling in 40,000 visitors a year from all across America. As a 1978 article explained, Greco left his downtown Waterbury law practice early every afternoon for twenty years to continually develop the park.
“Working steadily, daily, Greco fashioned the small buildings by hand, using papier-mâché, concrete, chicken wire and scrap metal, anything he could find,” the article described. “After years of teaching God’s word on street corners and Roman Catholic catechism in the classroom, Greco decided that words were not enough. ‘You have to write a whole book to say what one picture, one sculpture does,’ he says.”
Holy Land USA closed in 1984 and began its descent into shambles. Greco died two years later at age 91. The dilapidated park was reopened to curiosity seekers in 2014, but as RoadsideAmerica.com wrote, “Visitors explore with caution (and with an up-to-date tetanus shot).”
