Environments / Constructions

I use to do construction work like this for places like the Biôdome (Montreal, Quebec, Canada), The Lost City (Bophuthatswana in Africa), the Henry Doorly Zoo (Omaha, NE), and Sea World (San Diego, CA). These all have a common theme: They are all fake environments - completely artificial - which did not exist until we created them, along with mythologies to make them all as believable as possible.

For example, the Lost City was a resort, of sorts, created alongside Sun City (think Las Vegas in South Africa). “Sun City sits in the crater of an extinct volcano. Almost 2 million cubic meters of earth was moved off the site before construction could begin in 1990.” Billionaire, Sol Kerzner, wanted to create a family-friendly water park, where kids would enjoy playing while their parents could go gamble. He created a mythology that went something like this: A forgotten Roman-era city was lost to the ages after being destroyed by a volcanic eruption. He discovered it (so the myth claims), and turned it into a theme park.

The reason I am sharing this, beyond the fact this construction work was a significant part of my life, is the idea of artificial or fake environments. Each was created where visitors were willing to suspend disbelief in order to enjoy the park, resort, or zoo.

These projects were what gave birth to the idea of the Museum of Alternative History (MoAH), although the purpose and concept wasn’t fully formed until decades later. At that time, a school board in Texas decided to rewrite history to include in textbooks which were distributed to schools throughout the South. That is when Museum of Alternative History truly came to fruition.