Six Flags Great America
— — the summer the steel learned to roll.
Not only on a wall.
“A theme park on the prairie between Chicago and Milwaukee, opened in 1976 as Marriott's Great America and rethemed by Six Flags in 1984. The park spreads across about three hundred acres, divided into themed districts that move from a small-town square out toward the high steel of the coasters. Raging Bull lifts above the trees, the Eagle's twin tracks still cross the way they did at opening, and the lake at the centre holds the summer light. from the studio
Six Flags Great America, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Six Flags Great America sits in Gurnee, Illinois, in Lake County, about sixty kilometres north of downtown Chicago and roughly the same distance south of Milwaukee. The park opened on 29 May 1976 as Marriott's Great America, one of two parks of that name the hotel company built that year. Six Flags acquired the property in 1984. The grounds cover roughly three hundred acres of former farmland off Interstate 94, with the Hurricane Harbor water park added on the adjacent footprint in 2005.
The park keeps a seasonal calendar: daily operation through summer, weekend operation through the autumn Fright Fest and the winter Holiday in the Park. The themed districts move from Hometown Square out through County Fair, Yankee Harbor, Yukon Territory, Orleans Place, Mardi Gras, Carousel Plaza, and the Southwest Territory expansion that opened in 1996 with Viper. The wooden coaster American Eagle dates to 1981 and runs two trains racing on parallel tracks; Raging Bull, a 1999 hyper-coaster, lifts to about 202 feet above the prairie.
The Illinois summer carries the park: humid afternoons in the upper twenties Celsius, long blue evenings, fireworks on summer Saturdays. The shoulder months change the colour entirely. Fright Fest, a fixture since 1986, runs Friday through Sunday in October and turns the lake and the lit ride towers into a different park. Holiday in the Park follows from mid-November, with the same midways under coloured light and Lake Michigan air. The roller-coaster steel reads differently against snow than against July.