Once upon a time, there was a special park

MILFORD — Moon Valley Park was a landmark, especially for generations of kids growing up in the area in the last half of the 20th century. It was a kind of local version of Disneyland, with a touch of the Catskill Game Farm thrown in. Francis and Ethel Kern purchased the property (at the time 976 acres) from Charles (Doc) Stroh in 1949. Doc had used the property for horses and goats and there was a large barn and a small hunting shack on the property. The property extended from about halfway up today’s Moon Valley Road to the corral at Malibu Dude Ranch. There was also a large foundation next to the shack where Doc had wanted to build a house. However, his wife preferred to stay in their home on West Ann Street. Doc was a pharmacist, and their only child was local attorney Dorothy Stroh Tisdale. When visiting the property while negotiating the purchase, they happened to be there as a full moon came over the mountain and they decided to name their new home “Moon Valley.” The Kerns and their daughter Viola lived in the small shack while their new house was constructed on the existing foundation. When they moved to Milford from their former business, Rainbow Village, near Child’s Park on the Silver Lake Road, they brought with them two tame pet deer. These deer became the nucleus of the Moon Valley Game Farm and Petting Zoo. Summer housekeeping cottages were built over the next several years and various small lots were sold along the Vandermark and Deep Brook for summer homes and along the newly created Moon Valley Road for permanent homes. Francis Kern built many of both types of homes over the ensuing years. In the beginning, the business was called Moon Valley Ranch and a western theme was used in decorating. A trail was built to the waterfalls on Laurel Swamp Brook. They named it Rainbow Falls - partly because rainbows could be seen in its spray and partly in memory of their former home in Dingmans. The animal farm grew and the falls became known to tourists. Around 1953, Kern decided to make the animal farm into a storybook land which included a whale and shoe that children could enter as well as a western town complete with jail, stagecoach, shops, etc. There were also pony rides available and accommodations for group picnics with a refreshment and gift shop. Instead of signs along the local highways, Kern built real covered wagons with information painted on their canvases. When the gas pipeline was constructed in the area, it crossed the property and the Kerns sold the northern section (some 650 acres) to Malibu Dude Ranch in the 1960’s. They continued to also sell off small parcels over the years. Francis Kern died suddenly in 1964 and their daughter and son-in-law, Viola and Richard Canouse, purchased the property in 1965. In the next few years, they remodeled the cottages, built several year-round homes to rent and also expanded and updated the summer attraction. They renamed the business Moon Valley Park. Due to on going vandalism, they had to finally switch to regular signs instead of the old wagons. “Every Halloween,” Viola recalled shaking her head, “just forget it,” she said of the ill-fated wagons. Many more types of animals and, especially exotic birds, were added to the displays. They also raised registered Beagles, and the Moon Valley line was well known in the tri-state area. The gift shop was in a diorama of stuffed animals and birds in natural settings. The park became a well known local attraction. One of the new additions was a large museum for horse drawn vehicles and farm implements. It was built especially to house the old Hiawatha stagecoach, which had been stored for years in an old barn in the area. The stagecoach stayed at Moon Valley Park until the Pike County Historical Society raised enough funds to have it restored and a new home built for it at The Columns. The Canouse family operated the business for another 22 years. Their daughters, Lorelei and Jacki, worked in the business with their parents for a number of those years. In 1987, the business section of the property (around 68 acres) was sold to Robert and Janet Miller. Over the years since then, they built a housing development on the hillside where the old deer pens had been located and named it Moon Valley Falls. The Canouses and a few of the remaining animals relocated to an adjacent area called Sunset Trail off of Moon Valley Road and on an adjacent hillside. Recalling it now, Viola Canouse misses the old park, but then again, “it was a lot of work,” she admitted.