Dogpatch USA bet a theme park on Li'l Abner — the comic strip retired first

Dogpatch USA opened on 17 May 1968 in Marble Falls, Arkansas: a theme park built on the world of Al Capp's Li'l Abner comic strip, conceived by real-estate man O. J. Snow, with Capp himself as a partner licensing his characters for two to three percent of gross admissions. Around 300,000 visitors came in the first year.

The park was financed on debt and the license aged badly. The 1973 oil crisis and skyrocketing interest rates hit road-trip tourism; television's 'rural purge' and the retirement of the Li'l Abner strip in 1977 drained the brand; a companion ski resort failed on mild winters; and Silver Dollar City won the regional competition. The debts stacked up — $2 million before 1973, another $1.5 million that year, a $3.5 million foreclosure in 1976, $7 million of loans at a 1980 bankruptcy — through a carousel of owners.

By 1991 the Li'l Abner theme itself was dropped. On 14 October 1993 Dogpatch USA closed after 25 years, and the Ozarks slowly took it back.