A Tiny Town with the Spirit of Oz

In a sleepy village that birthed America’s most celebrated children’s story, an obsessive crew of volunteers has built the world’s definitive shrine to all things Oz.

Illustration by Mathew New

Flapping gently in the breeze, American flags extend from power poles along a stretch of Genesee Street in Chittenango, located east of Syracuse in central New York. Few cars or pedestrians can be seen on the main drag of the village, which appears forlorn in the afternoon sunlight, almost like an Old West ghost town or the deserted setting in an episode of The Twilight Zone.

But look closer and you’ll notice yellow brick sidewalks lining both sides of the street — an homage to the “yellow brick road” from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the classic American fairytale written by native son Lyman Frank Baum and adapted into the 1939 MGM movie The Wizard of Oz.

Baum was born in Chittenango on May 15, 1856, and his family owned a barrel factory there. The family moved to the Syracuse area, where Baum grew up. He married Maud Gage, daughter of Matilda Joslyn Gage, a women’s suffrage leader who worked with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Baum went on to pen…