American Heartland theme park in Northeastern Oklahoma. A new lawsuit claims that the park’s founders defrauded a 91-year-old man, Gene Bicknell, out of over $60 million in investments toward the park using text messages pretending to be from God. According to reports, the lawsuit alleges that the defendants “executed a predatory conspiracy of psychological manipulation” and obtained the investment by “convincing Bicknell, through fraud and impersonation, that God himself was commanding him”. American Heartland was to be a $2 billion world-class theme park and resort off Route 66 in Vinita, Oklahoma scheduled to open in 2028. However, the park’s website has gone dark (along with that of parent company Mansion Entertainment Group) and combined with the lawsuit it almost certainly marks the end of the development.

The original announcement for the park came in 2023 and the renderings looked promising. The park’s leadership included former Disney Imagineers and was meant to be in the mold of a Disney park. It was to have six themed lands of Liberty Village, Great Plains, Bayou Bay, Big Timber Falls, Stony Point Harbor, and Electropolis. The park even was selling merchandise on its defunct website including logo t-shirts.

Unfortunately every announced park or new attraction doesn’t make it to the finish line. It’s one thing when an established company tries to open a new location, but it’s got to be another level of hard when you’re both forming a new company and trying to build a park. Sometimes failure to find financing, inability to obtain permits or failed business relationships cause things to fall apart as building a theme park is hard. I’m just down the road from the Georgia Budweiser brewery that was rumored to be a Georgia Busch Gardens and the “Hunger Games” based Avatron theme park, so you often wonder what might have been. It makes me pull for places like Storyville Gardens in Nashville that are trying to make it happen. Maybe they should get Taylor Swift involved and name it Swift’s Storyville like Dolly Parton and Dollywood?

American Heartland is not definitively dead as of today, but it certainly looks that way and it’s especially sad when fraud or deception may be involved. It also likely joins an unfortunately long list of theme parks that were announced, but never built. A theme park is a massive construction project and it makes you appreciate the rare instances when a new one does actually open like Epic Universe, Lost Island or the nearly complete Six Flags Qiddiya City. American Heartland will no doubt become a cautionary tale and reminder that just because it’s announced, has a logo and some renderings, doesn’t mean it will always actually be built.