By Peter Covino
Entertainment Editor

It was Nov. 22, 1963.

In a few hours, the nation would be mourning the death of its president, but for now, Walter Elias Disney was peering out of the window seat of a plane over Central Florida looking at the thousands of acres of rural swampland and orange groves below. He had reached a momentous decision: This would be the spot for his new Disneyland.

Chad Denver Emerson wasn't around for that historic moment, but for the past few years he has been retracing the steps of Walt Disney, brother Roy and other key figures, tracking down the origins of Disney's newest dream, what was to become Disney World.

The Faulkner University law professor spent two years researching and talking to those who remember those days in the late 1950s and early 1960s for his book, “Project Future: The Inside Story Behind the Creation of Disney World.”

What he found out has been largely forgotten through the years as Orange and Osceola counties grew from mostly rural orange groves and cattle lands to a major American metropolis, all because of Disney's dream of a bigger Disneyland in the East.

Emerson is on a two-week tour of Central Florida cities, promoting his book, including a stop recently at the Rotary Club of Kissimmee.

Among the things Emerson uncovers in his book: Orange and Osceola counties were not Disney's first choice in his quest for a Disney-themed park.

Disney always seemingly had a keen sense of what the public wanted, and when he found the trip to California was just too far and expensive for people living in the East, he began to think of a new Disneyland of some sort.

“He met with Palm Beach billionaire John MacArthur in 1959 and the two men even shook hands on an agreement for a City of Tomorrow,” Emerson told Rotary Club members.

But that was just the first instance of where fate intervened for Central Florida. Roy Disney flew to South Florida and met with MacArthur and the two men could not negotiate a deal.

Other areas given consideration included the New Jersey Meadows (the weather proved to be too big an obstacle for a year-round park) and Niagara Falls. Disney visited the city and falls in 1963 and while it never was considered as a possible theme park site, he did consider developing a “moon trip” kind of attraction at the site of the existing Seagram Tower near Horseshoe Falls, Emerson said.

Disney apparently even had more serious thoughts of some kind of a project in St. Louis. Disney was raised in Missouri and he still had deep roots there.

Disney had several brushes with building a Disney attraction in Missouri, the most serious being a project along the St. Louis waterfront.

He met with city officials and talked of a multi-floor enclosed facility, similar to Downtown Disney's Disney Quest, only much larger, Emerson said.

Disney talked about themed-areas such as Old St. Louis, a pre-Civil War haunted house and even a Pirates of the Caribbean in the multi-floored building.

But despite a lot of progress on the project, the deal fell through.

So Disney went on another scouting trip in November of 1963, Emerson said.

The Disney team landed at Orlando Executive Airport (then Herndon) and in two rental cars headed toward Ocala. Along the way, they visited the Citrus Tower. In Ocala, Disney registered under a different name, one of many attempts at disguises by Disney officials to keep a very low profile as a way to hide their future intentions in Central Florida.

The famous American icon was still recognized, Emerson said, and Disney even signed a few autographs under his different name, William Brown.

The next day, Nov. 22, the group returned to the airport for the flight back to California but they instructed the pilots to fly over various locations, including Central Florida.

Before arriving in New Orleans later that day, where they find out about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Disney announced to those on board he had made his decision: Central Florida would be the home of his new Disney world.

Within a short time, Disney hired other key figures to begin looking at land purchases in Central Florida, for what Disney called Project Future.

The exact location hadn't been figured out yet, Emerson said, but it didn't take long for the press to find something was up. But all the secrecy just led to false assumptions, the biggest being that McDonnell Aircraft or Boeing was behind the mystery project.

Under secret conditions, a small team of Disney confidants began acquiring 27,000 acres of land, from Orange and Osceola County landowners, including buying land from a pair of brothers who had acquired a 12,000-acre parcel from Osceola County cattleman and state Sen. Irlo Bronson. In May 1965, Disney would buy another 8,300 acres of land directly from Bronson for $900,000, about $100 an acre.

By June of 1965, a column in the Orlando Sentinel was already speculating that Walt Disney was behind a plan to build a city of the future in Central Florida.

There were still major hurdles to overcome before the park opened, like getting the Florida Legislature to approve the creation of the Reedy Creek Development District, which would give the Disney company all the rights of a municipality, and the death of Walt Disney.

You can get all the behind-the-scenes details in Emerson's book, available at area retailers or online at Amazon.com.

Emerson will also be at the downtown Orlando Public Library today for another presentation.