Much of the Matterhorn is visible at this junction of Harbor Boulevard and Manchester Avenue.
Click here to take a brief side excursion down Manchester Avenue, and to return to this point.
This is another area on Disneyland's periphery that has its own feel, to the extent that I gave it a distinguishing name ("HMJ"), which I define as the region around Harbor Blvd. from about Disneyland's northeast corner down to the old CM entrance.
This little area around the junction of Harbor Boulevard and Manchester Avenue is characterized by clear views of the monorail paralleling Harbor Boulevard, the Matterhorn, Howard Johnson's, Mimi's Cafe, the planter in the center of Harbor Boulevard, lighted trees at night, and the eugenia-and-palm-lined sidewalk along Disneyland's fence, where there are glimpses of backstage Disneyland. I believe this little region flanking Disneyland is the least changed of all the areas flanking Disneyland, and one can almost imagine one is back in the mid-1970s when lingering here. Howard Johnson's looks much the same as it did circa 1976, and the monorail tracks and large trees surrounding the monorail tracks are likewise virtually unchanged since the 1970s. (Nearly everything south of Manchester on the east side of Harbor is unrecognizable from the '70s, though.)
I like this area. It's the main point at which Disney's visions of tomorrow, manifested in Tomorrowland's monorail, interact with the real world of our dirty, dangerous, modern-day, relatively primitive roads and freeways. That contrast fascinates me, as does the contrast of the futuristic vehicles with nature in the form of the monorail track winding through the treetops of large pines in Disneyland. I associate the obscure, future-looking song "Super Highway" (Ballin'jack, 1971) with this area. ("Simply want to reach our destination, but lately things are getting out of hand. A thousand million miles of super highways, just don't understand. There's got to be a better way to do it, a better way to go from place to place.")
I hope everybody appreciates the sidewalk that runs alongside Disneyland's fence on the west side of Harbor Boulevard, north of the employee gate. In the 1970s this sidewalk didn't exist, anybody walking on this side of the road at this point had to walk in the roadway very close to the cars, and a Disneyland employee told me that some pedestrians had gotten hit by cars there. I used to cringe every time I would see guests leaving Disneyland and walking in the roadway here, back to their motels at night, children in hand. I don't know if Disneyland eventually moved their fence back, or how the sidewalk was squeezed in there, but I appreciate it.
This sidewalk is bordered by eugenia bushes (lacking the usual berries) and Mexican fan palms. Disneyland was careful to put camouflaged green cloth over the closely woven chain link fence along here to prevent people from looking into the park. One can still see inside through tears in the cloth, and at edges of the cloth, though. A backstage road with occasional utility vehicles runs alongside this fence inside the park, at a level beneath Harbor Blvd., behind Tomorrowland. The berm and its supporting horizontal beams can be seen through through the fence at certain points here, and it has a Frontierland look due to all the trees and other vegetation growing on the berm. At one point the back of Autopia and its running cars are visible.
Unfortunately, the camera trick of using high zoom to bypass the wires of a chain link fence won't work well on Disneyland's fence in this area. The reason is that most of the backstage area here is nearby berm, which is featureless and too close for zoom photos, and the backstage areas that are distant enough are at an angle from the fence, which diminishes the effective hole size in the chain link fence to the extent that the wires would always be in the photo. The hole size here is 3 cm, the same as on Ball Road and other Anaheim streets, although the wire is woven differently.
Created: February 24, 2007
Updated: April 28, 2007