Sunday, July 8, 2012


I know it's not a postcard, but picked up a neat old travel souvenir this morning. 


It is a souvenir glass bowl, with ruffled edges. It measures approx. 7" across. It was made in the 1970s for the long gone amusement attraction called "Warner Brothers Jungle Habitat" in West Milford NJ. It has super graphics of all the displays including "Gerald The Giraffe", "Curious Bear", "African Dance Troupe", "Baby Elephants", "Kemo The Porpoise" and "Traffic Jam". Front of plate reads "Warner Bros. Jungle Habitat". I remember going here as a kid, and loved the lions that would come up to your car and sometimes lay on your warm car hood! The baboons were also a favorite of mine, climbing on board our station wagon and sometimes peeling off the wiper blades! Great Adventure here in Jackson is similar, but you can no longer get close to the more dangerous animals!  


Here's a little history... 


Jungle Habitat, located in West Milford, New Jersey, was a Warner Brothers-owned theme park that opened in the summer of 1972, and closed in October 1976. The park contained well over 1,500 animals, a drive-through section and a walk-through section. A favorite was a drive-through safari section, which allowed for wild animals to roam free and approach vehicles as they slowly drove through. Many of the animals would climb atop the cars, bringing them to a halt, and signs were posted along the route to warn visitors to keep their windows closed. Great Adventure in Jackson Township, New Jersey, approximately 100 miles to the south, also had a similar type of drive-through safari attraction. The walk-through section was a small theme park which included a petting zoo, camel and elephant rides, snack bars, gift shop, reptile house, dolphin show, Bugs Bunny and Friends shows including live Warner Bros. Looney Tunes characters, and a small train station and ride-on train called Jungle Junction. The park did not have any amusement park rides, although there were plans to add them in the future. Shortly after the park opened, a tourist driving through the safari in a taxi was attacked by two lions, bringing negative publicity to the park. In 1974, a woman was bitten by a baby elephant who had reached out of its enclosure with its trunk and grabbed the woman. The park was plagued by problems, including reports of dangerous animals escaping into the town of West Milford. In addition, the increase in summertime and weekend traffic on West Milford's roads created problems for local residents. The park would close in 1976 due to these problems and more.   

Sunday, July 1, 2012

Rollright Stones

I recently was perusing through a large lot of old postcards. I located an interesting old Real Photo postcard of some kind of rock formation. Upon closer examination, it turned out to be a British postcard. At first glance it appeared to be a Stonehenge type of landmark. It was called Rollright Stone or Roll Right Stones. 


As I kept scanning through the lot I located another similar view, and then another, and another....Apparently there must be a set of these? I kept going and assembled a nice group of these and decided to research them at a later date. 


Well here is is six months or so later and I just came across these cards again in my "to be sorted" box! A quick Google search yielded a ton of info on this bizarre British attraction! 


The Rollright Stones are a group of 3 Neolithic and Bronze Age megalithic monuments located near the small village of Long Compton, on the borders of Oxfordshire and Warwickshire in the English Midlands. They are constructed from local oolitic limestone and are called as The King's Men, The King Stone and The Whispering Knights. Each was built at a different period in history. The long stretch of time during which the three monuments were erected bears witness to a continuous tradition of ritual behavior on this sacred ground, from the 4th to the 2nd millennium BCE.  



The ancient site complex consists of three main elements, The Kings Men stone circle, the King Stone, and the Whispering Knights. The King's Men is a late Neolithic ceremonial Stone Circle dating from 2500 to 2000 bce. The King Stone is a monolith standing 50 yards away from the Stone Circle itself, across the road in a different county (Warwickshire). And the Whispering Knights is a 5000 year old burial chamber, believed to be part of a Neolithic long barrow. The Knights are a small group of five upright stones 400 yards away from the actual Stone Circle, who got their name because of the conspiratorial way in which they lean inwards towards each other as if they are plotting against their king. 


The name “Rollright” is believed to derive from “Hrolla-landriht”, or the land of Hrolla.


A neat old group of postcards from the UK!