Long before Florida tourism became dominated by sprawling theme park resorts and carefully engineered entertainment districts, a trip through the state could mean pulling off the highway for an attraction that promised something completely unexpected. In the 1950s and 1960s, Florida was filled with roadside attractions built around everything from natural springs and reptiles to mermaids, tropical gardens and unusual museums. Just east of Ocala, along State Road 40 near Silver Springs, one of the most ambitious of those attractions transported visitors somewhere that seemed about as far removed from Florida as possible: the American West.
Six Gun Territory opened on February 2, 1963, offering families the chance to step into a recreated frontier town filled with cowboys, saloons, steam locomotives, staged robberies and gunfights in the street. Spread across roughly 200 acres, the attraction became one of Central Florida's best-known destinations during the years before Walt Disney World changed the state's tourism industry forever. For anyone who grew up visiting Six Gun Territory, however, it was more than simply another roadside attraction. For a few hours, Ocala really did feel like the Wild West.
Bringing the Wild West to Florida
The idea for Six Gun Territory came together during an era when Western television programs and movies were enormously popular in American culture. R.B. Coburn of Western Heritage U.S.A. Corporation announced plans for the attraction in 1962, choosing a location near the already famous Silver Springs attraction. The strategy made sense. Families traveling to see the glass-bottom boats and natural beauty of Silver Springs could easily add another major attraction to their visit without traveling far.
Six Gun Territory was designed by Russell Pearson, who had experience creating Western-themed attractions and was also associated with the design of Ghost Town in the Sky in Maggie Valley, North Carolina, and Silver Dollar City in Missouri. Rather than simply putting a few Western facades beside the highway, Six Gun Territory was intended to create the feeling that visitors had traveled into another place and another time.
That illusion began before guests ever reached the center of the park. Visitors entered through a building designed to resemble a Southern Railway station and boarded the Southern Railway & Six Gun, a narrow-gauge railroad powered by a wood-burning steam locomotive. Instead of walking directly from a parking lot into the attraction, guests traveled by train toward the Western town, making the journey itself part of the experience. The park's 1963 promotional material described the ride as a trip back roughly a century into the days of the "roaring west."
For a child arriving at Six Gun Territory, that train ride must have felt like crossing a boundary between everyday Florida and the world they had seen on television. The park even incorporated staged action into the transportation experience, with outlaws and frontier characters becoming part of the adventure. A gondola-style sky ride provided another way to see the property from above and was already being featured in archival promotional footage by the mid-1960s.
A Frontier Town Built for Exploration
Once the train reached town, Six Gun Territory opened into a surprisingly elaborate Western environment. Visitors wandered streets surrounded by a courthouse, jail and sheriff's office, bank, schoolhouse, church, blacksmith shop, hotel, general store, trading post and other frontier-style buildings. There was an O.K. Corral, a fort, specialty shops and multiple restaurants, creating an attraction that visitors could explore rather than simply watch from a distance.
The Palace Saloon and Theatre became one of the park's signature destinations. Guests could watch live can-can performances accompanied by the atmosphere of an old Western saloon, although Six Gun Territory remained firmly aimed at families. Another elaborate section recreated a Mexican border town with a market, cantina, casino and village buildings. Elsewhere, visitors encountered a Mystery Shack, amusement rides and additional entertainment spread throughout the grounds.
The park also included an area that contemporary promotional material called an "Indian village." Like many Western attractions of the period, it presented Native American culture through the simplified conventions of mid-century Western entertainment. Archival photographs and films nevertheless make clear how extensive the park's live entertainment program was, with performers, dancers and costumed characters appearing throughout Six Gun Territory rather than being confined to a single stage.
Food and souvenirs were part of the experience as well. Over the years, visitors remembered places such as Miss Kitty's Ice Cream Parlor and other Western-themed restaurants and shops scattered around the property. It was the kind of attraction where families could spend much of the day wandering between shows, rides, meals and storefronts rather than racing from one major ride to another.
When Gunfights Broke Out in the Streets
What truly separated Six Gun Territory from a conventional amusement park was its live action. At almost any moment, the quiet of the frontier town could be interrupted by trouble. A bank might suddenly be robbed. An argument could develop in the street. Outlaws might appear, followed closely by the marshal and his deputies. Before long, gunfire would echo between the buildings as another staged showdown unfolded.
The gunfights became some of Six Gun Territory's most remembered attractions. Rather than watching everything from theater seats, visitors stood along the town streets as performers acted out robberies, duels and confrontations around them. The entertainment blurred the line between show and environment, creating the sense that something was always happening in town. Florida's State Archives contain numerous photographs of the gunfighters in action, evidence of just how central those performances were to the park's identity.
The train itself wasn't necessarily safe from the outlaws either. Train robberies became another memorable part of the Six Gun experience, reinforcing the idea that simply moving around the attraction could become part of the story. For generations raised on television Westerns, it was an opportunity to walk directly into a world normally experienced through a television screen.
Six Gun Territory leaned into that connection with popular culture. A surviving promotional brochure from 1963 featured endorsements from Bonanza stars Dan Blocker, who played Hoss Cartwright, and Lorne Greene, who played Ben Cartwright. Their presence in the advertising says a great deal about the era in which Six Gun Territory was created. Westerns weren't a niche interest. They were among the dominant forms of American entertainment, and Six Gun Territory was offering families the chance to experience that world firsthand.
Six Gun Territory at Its Peak
By the late 1960s, Six Gun Territory had become a significant part of the tourism economy surrounding Ocala and Silver Springs. The Florida Department of State notes that the attraction became popular enough that nearby restaurants, motels and other businesses adopted Western themes of their own in an attempt to benefit from its popularity.
For many Florida families, a visit to the area could include both Silver Springs and Six Gun Territory. One offered clear spring water, glass-bottom boats and the natural Florida landscape, while the other offered dusty streets, steam locomotives and six-shooters. Together they represented an era of Florida tourism that existed before vacation planning revolved almost entirely around Orlando's major theme parks.
A retrospective published by Ocala Style described the attraction at its peak as drawing thousands of visitors on busy days, with crowds gathering for gunfights and saloon performances. Whether visitors came specifically for Six Gun Territory or added it to a trip to Silver Springs, the park had become an established part of the region's identity.
And unlike modern theme parks, much of the charm came from relatively simple experiences. There didn't need to be enormous roller coasters or sophisticated projection effects. A steam whistle, wooden storefronts, a train robbery and a cowboy falling dramatically into the dirt after a shootout could be enough to create a memory that lasted decades.
Florida Tourism Begins to Change
The world surrounding Six Gun Territory began changing during the 1970s. Coburn sold Six Gun Territory and its sister attractions in 1970, beginning a period in which the Ocala park passed through different ownership and management. At nearly the same moment, an even larger shift was taking place in Florida tourism.
Walt Disney World opened outside Orlando in October 1971. Its arrival didn't instantly erase Florida's older attractions, and it would be too simple to claim that Disney alone caused Six Gun Territory's eventual closure. But the scale of Florida tourism was changing dramatically. Large destination resorts had enormous advertising budgets, new attractions and the ability to keep families on property for days at a time. Smaller independent attractions increasingly had to compete for travelers who might previously have explored several roadside destinations during a Florida vacation.
Western entertainment itself was changing too. The television Westerns that had dominated American schedules during the 1950s and early 1960s gradually declined in popularity. The fantasy that Six Gun Territory had been built around was no longer as central to popular culture as it had been when the attraction opened. Even the Florida Park Service, in recounting the tourism history surrounding Silver Springs, has noted the decline of television Westerns as part of the changing environment Six Gun Territory faced.
Through the 1970s and into the early 1980s, the attraction continued operating, but maintaining an aging 200-acre park became increasingly difficult. Local retrospectives describe deteriorating facilities during the later years as attendance declined and the property changed hands. The frontier town that had once seemed alive with gunfighters and packed crowds was approaching the end of its run.
The End of Six Gun Territory
Six Gun Territory closed in 1984 after roughly two decades of entertaining Florida families. The rides and other pieces of the attraction were sold, and the buildings that had formed its frontier town eventually disappeared as the property was redeveloped.
Today, visitors traveling along State Road 40 won't find the steam train waiting beside a Western railroad station or gunfighters facing one another in the street. Residential and commercial development now occupies the area, although one very recognizable reminder remains. Six Gun Plaza preserves the attraction's name near the property where the old park once stood.
That small piece of geography is meaningful because so much else vanished. Unlike historic buildings that can be restored or attractions where portions of the original property remain visible, little at the original Six Gun Territory site reveals what once existed there. Someone unfamiliar with Ocala's past could drive through the area without realizing that thousands of families once climbed aboard a steam train nearby and disappeared into a frontier town.
Six Gun Territory Refuses to Disappear
The physical park may be gone, but Six Gun Territory has experienced an unusually strong second life through the people who remember it. Photographs, home movies, postcards, brochures and souvenirs continue circulating among collectors and former visitors, while the State Archives of Florida has preserved an extensive collection of photographs and even a period promotional film showing the attraction in operation.
One especially important piece of the park survives at Kirby Family Farm in Williston. The farm is now home to the original Six Gun Territory train station, which it identifies as the only surviving building from the Western town. The station has been relocated to the farm and is being preserved as part of its railroad collection.
Kirby Family Farm has also helped keep the spirit of the attraction alive through its Six Gun Territory Wild West Weekend and Reunion. The event has brought together original Six Gun gunfighters, can-can dancers and former employees while recreating gunfights, train robberies and other pieces of the attraction's entertainment. More than four decades after the original park closed, people are still gathering specifically because Six Gun Territory means something to them.
That may be the best measure of the attraction's legacy. Six Gun Territory didn't have to survive physically to remain part of Florida history. For the children who rode that train into town, watched the marshal confront an outlaw or sat inside the Palace Saloon waiting for the show to begin, the memory became attached to a very particular version of Florida.
It was Florida before the interstates were filled with signs directing everyone toward the same handful of enormous resorts. It was a Florida road trip where a family might spend the morning looking through the bottom of a glass-bottom boat at Silver Springs and the afternoon watching cowboys shoot it out a few miles away.
For more than twenty years, that world existed just outside Ocala.
And for the people who remember Six Gun Territory, the train whistle never completely faded away.
Do You Remember Six Gun Territory?
Did your family visit Six Gun Territory when you were growing up? Do you remember riding the steam train, watching the street gunfights, visiting the Palace Saloon or taking the sky ride over the park? Maybe you still have an old postcard, photograph, souvenir gun, ticket, brochure or a story your family has been telling for decades.
Six Gun Territory was in Ocala Fl…..not Orlando! Lol