Wild West World, Park City, Kansas

Wild West World was a short-lived theme park with a Wild West theme, located in Park City, Kansas. Situated on 130 acres near Interstate 135, close to Phil Ruffin’s Wichita Greyhound Park, which also shut down in 2007, the park operated for just two months. It opened its gates on May 5, 2007, and closed abruptly on July 9, 2007. The park was developed and managed by Thomas and Cheryl Etheredge through their companies, Wild West World LLC and Restoration Farms Inc. The couple also owned the Prairie Rose Chuck Wagon, an entertainment venue in Butler County.

Plans for the park were first publicized in the Wichita Eagle on December 19, 2004, with construction starting on August 15, 2005. Promoted as the world’s only fully Western-themed amusement park and Kansas’s first major theme park, it distinguished itself from Frontier City in Oklahoma City, which included one non-Western ride. However, the park’s attractions were primarily standard carnival rides rebranded with a Western aesthetic, according to reports from the Hutchinson News.

The park’s closure came swiftly due to financial struggles, with the owners filing for bankruptcy. Low attendance and unfavorable weather were cited as primary reasons, though analysts also pointed to a flawed business model and questionable theme choice. The Prairie Rose Chuck Wagon was also sold off as part of the fallout. The park was listed for sale with hopes of reopening, but no buyers emerged. Equipment, fixtures, and materials were auctioned off by Bud Palmer Auctions, and on November 6, 2010, the remaining structures and landscaping were sold to clear the site for future development. Despite these efforts, the land, now owned by the same group behind Crosswinds Casino, remains undeveloped, with only the Johnny Western Theatre and a shed still standing.

In a related legal development, Thomas Etheredge faced significant consequences after the park’s failure. On April 19, 2009, he was arrested on 10 counts of securities fraud involving $800,000 in investments, largely collected from members of Wichita’s Summit Church. This church, which Etheredge attended, had split from Immanuel Baptist Church and held services in the park’s Johnny Western Theater during its construction. Investigations revealed Etheredge’s prior conviction for securities fraud in the 1980s, when he misled investors in Texas and Missouri through a fraudulent merchant bank scheme called Bethany Trust, which funneled money into an aloe vera farm in Belize. In the Wild West World case, he was convicted on February 10, 2010, on seven counts of securities fraud, sentenced to five years in prison on April 2, 2010, and released on parole on July 29, 2013. After the park’s closure, Etheredge relocated to Texas, near San Antonio, where he started an alpaca business.

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