Harold Glenn Holland (1918-2002) was a developer from Arcadia, California, USA, who established the first amusement parks franchise, Santa's Village.
In 1953, Holland proposed Santa's Village after reading a Saturday Evening Post story about a similar project called North Pole in New York City.
He set up a corporation that funded the amusement park and leased the land from the family of the general contractor, J. Putnam Henck.
In the early 1950s, Holland sketched his idea of a Christmas fairyland filled with enormous candy canes, animals and gingerbread houses.
[2] The first Santa's Village opened on Memorial Day in 1955, six weeks before Disneyland, in Skyforest near Lake Arrowhead in San Bernardino County, California.
While his West Coast parks stayed open year-round, with the best attendance in the weeks before Christmas, the Chicago area was too cold.