1953 Disneyland Presentation Map
Like many grand ideas, Disneyland needed outside funding to get started. In the '50s, however, you couldn't just render your idea and post it on a website. You needed to make your pitch artwork by hand. Which is exactly what Walt Disney and artist Herb Ryman did, inking a piece of vellum with a vision of what would become The Happiest Place On Earth. Vellum doesn't travel well, however, so they transferred and then hand-colored the drawing onto the piece you see here. This 1953 Disneyland Presentation Map was carried by Roy Disney to New York and used in his pitch that secured the funding for the park. It's visible in the background of several photographs of Walt from that era and was eventually given to his friend Grenade Curran, who kept it out of public view for the last sixty years. It has since re-emerged and will be auctioned off by Van Eaton Galleries on June 25th.
