A long-abandoned Christian theme park sits just off a US highway. Will it rise again?
Shuttered in 1984, Connecticut’s Holy Land USA is a crumbling hodgepodge of biblical settings that was also the site of a grisly 2010 murder; a local priest works for its resurrection
Reporter at The Times of Israel
WATERBURY, Connecticut — I climb out of my car atop Pine Hill and for a moment feel like I’ve stepped into a vintage postcard. The city of Waterbury fans out below in muted tones of red brick, oxidized copper, and gray. Behind me is the reason I’m standing here in the bracing cold — a 65-foot-tall and 28-foot-wide cross, the focal point of Holy Land USA.
To a tired child sitting in the backseat of the family car whizzing down the I-84, the towering illuminated cross was a mile marker that was as mysterious as it was foreboding.
I must have passed it 100 times: on family vacations, on my way to Camp Ramah and then Camp Tevya, on school field trips to Hartford, and later, when I lived in Brookline, Massachusetts, on my way to visit my parents in Danbury. While it always piqued my curiosity, I had never planned to visit, content to let it remain an enigma — but when your editor asks you to write about one of the landmarks of your youth, it’s hard to resist.
Waiting for me outside the metal gate is Father Jim Sullivan, the rector at the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception. He graciously agreed to guide me through the nearly 70-year-old site.
“Welcome to Holy Land. You’re going to love it,” says Sullivan, who also serves on the board of directors that oversees the site.
The 17.5-acre site was the idea of lifelong Waterbury resident John Baptist Greco, who wanted to present a “pictorial story of the life of Christ.” A first-generation Italian-American, Greco had considered the priesthood before changing course and graduating from Yale Law School.
“He was a prayerful man and he had a vision. It was not state of the art, but at the time it was sufficient. They built a replica of Jerusalem, the [Roman] catacombs, and a replica of Calvary,” Sullivan says, pointing to our right where three crosses stand.
Nicknamed the Brass City — it manufactured buttons and bullets — Waterbury once had the most Catholics per capita in the US. There were about 20 Catholic schools and four Catholic high schools.
As such, Greco had no difficulty finding volunteers to help him execute his vision. The volunteers, whom he called Companions for Christ, used a hodgepodge of materials, from cinderblocks and discarded bathtubs to plywood and plaster, to fashion more than 200 biblical scenes, all 13 stations of the cross, replicas of the catacombs that reportedly extended underground for 200 feet, and several Israelite villages.
At one time, biblical figures and Catholic saints fashioned from plastic mannequins and remnants of statuary dotted the hilltop. There was also a diorama that depicted Daniel in the lions’ den.
It makes sense to me that Holy Land opened in 1956, a year after the first McDonald’s opened in Des Plaines, Illinois, and Disneyland debuted in Anaheim, California. After all, the Korean War had only recently ended and the nuclear arms race was on. Maybe people craved some kind of escape, whether it was the globe in miniature à la Walt Disney’s It’s a Small World or Israelite villages à la Holy Land USA.
“It had a certain mystique, and people would come from all over. At its peak in the 1960s and 1970s, there were about 40,000 visitors a year,” Sullivan says.
But as Greco’s health declined, so too did Holy Land USA. In 1984, no longer able to administer the site, Greco was forced to shutter it. He was moved into an assisted living facility and out of his home, which was situated just inside the gates.
Greco died two years later at age 90 and as per his will, the site was bequeathed to an order of nuns known as the Religious Teachers Filippini.
Nevertheless, the biblical attraction fell into disrepair. There were repeated reports of vandalism; trespassers broke and beheaded statues, and spray-painted graffiti throughout.
On July 15, 2010, Francisco Cruz, then 19, raped and murdered 16-year-old Chloe Ottman at the base of the illuminated cross. Charged with capital felony murder, sexual assault and strangulation, Cruz pled guilty on April 20, 2011, and was sentenced to 55 years in prison.
Sullivan says there were several meetings during these years to try and figure out what to do with the once-bustling attraction.
In 2013, the nuns sold the site to then-Waterbury mayor Neil O’Leary and car dealer Fred “Fritz” Blasius for $350,000.
The two established the nonprofit Holy Land USA and announced their intention to revitalize the site. In the past decade, Holy Land USA has raised approximately $80,000 through various fundraisers, including an annual dinner.
O’Leary has since retired and Blasius remains involved. Today, there is no evidence of the tangled underbrush and trees that once spread over the top of the small mountain. The large cross is now fitted with LED lighting and a small road on the property was paved.
Still, the miniature replicas of Jerusalem and Bethlehem are crumbling and corroded. The white paint on the cinderblock Garden of Gethsemane, which appears to be some sort of cave-like structure, is peeling and the cherry red roof cinderblock Tomb of Jesus threatens to collapse in on itself.
Someone did refurbish the replica of the inn where Mary and Joseph are said to have sought lodging — and affixed a “No Vacancy” sign to the white building, which resembles a child’s playhouse.
“A sense of humor,” Sullivan said, as we stood looking at the hilltop.
Sullivan, who spent nearly three decades working as a builder and carpenter, was ordained in the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Hartford in 2014, at the age of 53.
While it wasn’t until then that he felt the calling to become a priest, he says the site has fascinated him since he was a child growing up in Waterbury. It helps explain why he’s celebrated Mass several times under the mammoth cross, including Easter morning during the COVID-19 pandemic and more recently during the summer solstice.
“As a priest, I try to get people to encounter God in a multitude of ways. It could be outside of church; there is something beautiful about being here in nature with the dome of the sky,” Sullivan says.
He says he finds holding services on top of the hill particularly meaningful, as mountains feature fairly frequently in the Bible.
“In Scripture, God speaks on mountains. In the Jewish tradition he speaks from Mount Ararat and Mount Sinai; in the New Testament he speaks from Mount Tabor and Mount Nebo,” Sullivan says.
As we wind our way down the hill to the original Holy Land USA sign, Sullivan speaks about how he and the board want to see Holy Land USA become a tourist destination once again.
While Sullivan declines to discuss details or elaborate on fundraising, he does say he’d like to see something similar to the Sight & Sound Theater in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, or the Ark Encounter, a life-sized replica of Noah’s Ark in Kentucky.
“If it all works out, it’s going to be grand. It could be a place of pilgrimage for people, or a place for people to come light a candle on their way home. Whatever it becomes, it has to touch hearts,” Sullivan says.
