Atlantis Found : Garden Grove’s unique playground emerged out of a sea of asphalt in the ‘60s. Visitors continue to discover and rediscover it, and its pioneers continue to marvel over its existence.

Jack Wallin was a young man when he built the park. Back then, people thought he was either nuts or the greatest threat, this side of a strawberry blight, to the city of Garden Grove.

He was neither.

Today, he is 66 and retired and has grandkids who don’t quite believe his claims to have built the dragon slide, the Viking ship and the other equipment in their favorite park.

He did.

Wallin, who was Garden Grove parks superintendent at the time, and his crews gave shape to the creatures that V.E. “Gene” Rotsch had the imagination to see emerging from what was then a sea of asphalt.

Thirty-five years later, the Atlantis Play Center in Garden Grove Park remains a landmark attraction, a destination for people in and out of the city. About 60,000 people pass through the entrance every year, called by the park’s playful lines, hidden paths and grounds that rise and fall as do sand-bound sea serpents.

Not all the park’s original play structures have survived, a point lamented not just by children but by the people who built them. Wallin has recently decided to see what he can do about bringing back what has been lost.

How Atlantis came to be has as many twists and turns as its play equipment.

The play center is on the northwest corner of a 40-acre parcel--formerly a federal airstrip--that was given to the city in 1956 when it incorporated. The 3 1/2 acres developed as Atlantis became the city’s first park; the rest of the parcel became Garden Grove Park.

The city was teeming with young families, and it fell to Rotsch, the city’s first director of parks, to build places for them to play.

He proposed Atlantis, a single-entrance park based on a single theme, the equipment to be custom-built by city workers. It was not a popular choice with many local families nor among the local pilots who buzzed city workers as they tore up the airstrip.

“You’ve got to remember, we’re talking about a new city with no parks to speak of,” said Mike Fenderson, Garden Grove deputy city manager. “This guy says he wants to build this experimental park out where no one lives instead of neighborhood parks. To be honest, if I had been living in town at the time, I probably would have been against it too.”

Just about everyone who knew Rotsch, even those who admired him, knew he lived for an argument.

“He was a very bright man, extraordinarily creative, and he stuck his neck out a lot. I’m not sure he didn’t like that,” said Sam Migliazzo, a friend of Rotsch’s and head of parks and recreation in Westminster from 1960 to 1991.

Combative, visionary and single-minded, Rotsch was a skilled designer and administrator who started as a shipbuilder’s assistant in Stockton and progressed to superintendent of the city’s shipyard.

He was not the kind to tread lightly, especially when it came to something he believed in--and he believed in Atlantis.

He derided other parks for their dull, cookie-cutter designs. He stood firm against putting the usual equipment in his parks because, he said, “kids just don’t use it.”

Rotsch asked local kids what they thought would be fun, and, with limited money and resources--no pickup truck, one lawn mower--he moved forward with his plan.

He encouraged Wallin and the city work crews to rely on their imaginations, asking them, too, to visualize what kids would want in a park. The crews were enthusiastic but inexperienced, something that may have worked to their advantage.

On the asphalt on their hands and knees, Wallin and landscape architect Patrick O’Brien drew the individual play lands in chalk. They were followed by bulldozers, which cut along their dotted lines.

“We did this by the seat of our pants,” Wallin said. “We really didn’t know what we were doing; we just had fun.”

More than constructed, Atlantis was sculpted. Workers used pipe donated by oil companies to fashion handrails; they created makeshift molds for fiberglass sea horses in city workshops. The Viking ship, still one of the park’s most popular features, is a refurbished rowboat that had been discarded by one of Wallin’s neighbors. A sea serpent climbing toy was created by bending steel rods by hand as was the winding 40-foot dragon slide.

The park was ready in less than a year and opened July 4, 1963. Five thousand people showed up that first day. Nearly 10,000 came the first month, marveling at the attention to detail.

Benches were constructed as treasure chests; drinking fountains emptied into clamshells. Kids dove into bushes as they spotted hidden paths. There were unique slides, the sea horse teeter-totter with its works hidden underground, the sea serpent with a two-way speaker in its mouth that enabled park workers to talk to kids.

Then, at the end of July, came a new, seemingly more shocking innovation: Visitors would be charged to get into Atlantis. Ten cents each.

Rotsch argued the charge was necessary for “the psychological factor. . . . The public exercises better judgment and care when a fee is required.”

Residents and organizations, many of whom had either donated material or time to build the park, were outraged that a public park built with tax dollars would charge children to play. Petitions were signed and delivered; there were angry sessions of the City Council; women and children picketed.

“To begin with, people thought we were [bonkers] when they saw what we were building,” Wallin said. “Then, when they started charging to get in, well, this was a small community; everyone knew everybody else, and everyone hated me.”

Rotsch stood firm, sometimes too firm for some people’s taste.

“In hindsight, of course, you have to say the guy was a genius for doing what he did,” Fenderson said. “But, the truth is, he almost got fired over the whole thing.”

The furor was such that it took three years for Wallin to believe Atlantis was on firm ground. He became convinced of that when he noticed that many of the city officials who had argued about or against Atlantis were taking credit for it. It wasn’t long after that that Rotsch went into the private sector and began to consult with other cities on their parks.

Whatever the controversy over admission charges, Atlantis had been acclaimed in and outside of Garden Grove.

Today, the city charges $1 to get into Atlantis, and no one seems to complain.

“I still find that a lot of people don’t know the park is part of Garden Grove,” said Roxanne Kaufman, the city’s community services supervisor. “Once they’ve been there, they just assume that Atlantis is its own thing, its own little corner of the world.”

Migliazzo says he can see Atlantis’ influence in parks throughout Orange County as well as the state and country. Wallin believes Atlantis’ success gave equipment manufacturers the courage to try new things.

At Atlantis, it’s been difficult at times to keep up with Rotsch’s original plans. Some of the equipment has been removed because of wear or concerns for safety. Gone is the octopus merry-go-round, as is the teeter-totter. Atlantis is shut down twice a year for maintenance.

“It’s all we can do,” Fenderson said. “If we lose this stuff, it’s gone. You can’t go down to the local playground store and buy a 40-foot dragon slide.”

Sitting in front of that slide, Wallin recalls the last time he and Rotsch, who died three years ago, walked the park. It was about 10 years ago, an occasion, Wallin says, that “was hard for Gene.”

Hard not only because of the equipment that had been lost, but because of what had been added. Bought. Prefabricated jungle gyms. Anathema to what Rotsch had envisioned for Atlantis.

Atlantis had been Rotsch’s “crowning glory . . . his dream of the future,” Migliazzo said.

The future has also included less money to do the kind of custom work Atlantis requires.

Wallin may be able to help. He has contacted Fenderson about putting together a team of private citizens and service organizations to restore Atlantis.

Fenderson was very positive about the proposal, Wallin said. “He said go ahead and see what you can do. So I’m going to give it a try.”

In the meantime, Kaufman says, the city still instructs gardeners to cut around and maintain the hidden paths in the bushes as Rotsch had wished and attempts to buy the most innovative equipment it can.

Wallin still visits Atlantis. He’s still proud just to sit and watch.

“I built this,” he says as a girl on the slide makes another pass down the dragon, her father in tow. “Look how much the kids love this.”

But it’s the father, half out of breath from laughter, who catches Wallin’s eye and says, “This is great.”

Wallin smiles.

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Landmark Park

Atlantis Play Center is the main attraction in the 40-acre Garden Grove Park, the site of a former airstrip given to the city when it incorporated in 1956. About 60,000 people visit the center each year.

Atlantis Play Center Lowdown

Hours: Tuesday-Friday 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m.-4 p.m. and Sunday noon-4 p.m. Closed Mondays and twice yearly for maintenance.

Cost: $1 per person. (Adults must be accompanied by a child.)

Calls: (714) 741-5200.