July 4 - Teresa Salcedo

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On this day, in 1979, Theresa Salcedo became the first baby to be born in a Disney theme park. The fourth of July was hot that year in Anaheim. Rosa Salcedo was very pregnant and very uncomfortable. She and her husband, Elias, decided that maybe some of that discomfort could be relieved by a visit to Disneyland, it was the happiest place on earth after all. The couple arrived at the park and spent some time walking around together. Rosa was obviously limited in the rides she could participate in. She began to tire and Elias suggested they rest in the shade, having his wife sit on a bench on Main Street USA, just behind the Plaza Inn restaurant.

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Whether it was the heat, all the walking around she’d done that day, or it was just time, Rosa went into labor on that bench. Park employees were notified and, as they would do in any medical emergency, they called for an ambulance. The baby, however, wasn’t going to wait around for that sort of foolishness. By the time paramedics arrived, Rosa was too far along for mother and baby to be moved safely. She ended up giving birth to a healthy 6 pound 10 ounce daughter right there. When it was decided that everyone involved was in stable condition, Rosa, Elias and the newest member of their family, Teresa, were transported to a nearby hospital. A few days later, Disney created a nice photo op and had Mickey, Donald and Goofy visit Teresa and her mother in the hospital.

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That’s where the story should have ended but someone in the Disney PR department had a bright idea on how to capitalize on the story even more and gave birth to one of the most persistent Disney Urban Legends out there (maybe second only to the cryogenics one). A couple of months later, Disneyland was having a ceremony to celebrate the opening of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad. Since the press was going to be around anyways, why not invite the Salcedo family back for a special side ceremony acknowledging Disneyland’s first official citizen? There are so many reasons why not, but Disney did it anyways.

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A small presentation was held in front of Sleeping Beauty castle. The Salcedos were presented with a Disneyland birth certificate with the serial number 1 on it. Characters gathered around, pictures were taken, I’m sure there was probably some kind of confetti. And that’s literally it. Except a certain segment of the public refuses to believe that. Somehow in popular thinking, that birth certificate translated into a lifetime pass to Disneyland, which grew into a certainty that anyone born on Disney property would receive the same thing. Pure balderdash, as anyone who actually thought about that prospect for even a moment would quickly realize. I’m sure the Salcedos were given complimentary admission on the day of the ceremony, but that would be it. Disney doesn’t want thousands of really pregnant women jamming themselves into every corner of their parks, trying to induce labor (and then keep it quiet enough so they can’t be whisked off to a hospital) all for free tickets. That’s just an insane scenario to even briefly contemplate. And yet the legend persists. Even though Disney quickly realized that even the birth certificate was a bad idea and never gave out another one.

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That being said, a total of four babies have been known to come into this world at Disneyland, although gathering information about them isn’t easy. One, in 1984, was born in the park’s First Aid station. Apparently that time Dad had left mom alone to go ride Space Mountain (she couldn’t for obvious reasons), she went into labor while he was gone and by the time he was finally reunited with her (Excuse me, but my very pregnant wife isn’t where I left her. Oh, you’re the guy. Come with me, sir), he was a father. Another birth reportedly took place in an office backstage and the fourth birth happened in the parking lot. We do know that all of four of the babies so far have been girls. So I guess if you’re looking to make Disneyland history, we are all still waiting for a boy to be born there. Just don’t expect a lifetime supply of goodies for your efforts.

July 3 - Marcellite Garner

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On this day, in 1910, Edna Marcellite Garner was born in Redlands, California. She enrolled in night classes to study art at Polytechnic High School, the second oldest high school in Los Angeles, California. Right after she graduated she applied for a job at the Walt Disney Studio. At the age of nineteen, Marcelitte became one of only 35 Disney employees in February 1930 as part of the Ink and Paint Department. She’d been there about six months when Burt Gillett, one of the directors of Mickey Mouse shorts, walked in and asked if any of the girls (Ink and Paint was staffed entirely by women) knew how to speak Spanish. Marcellite and one other woman raised their hands. Burt asked if either of them could sing. The other woman wasn’t willing to do that and put her hand down. Burt looked at Marcellite, said follow me and took her to the recording studio for a sound test. She passed and became the first regular voice of Minnie Mouse.

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Starting with The Cactus Kid in 1930 (it’s set in Mexico, thus the reason for the Spanish question), Marcellite would lend her voice to Miss Minnie for over 40 shorts in the next ten years. You can hear her in such classics as Mickey’s Orphans, Mickey’s Rival, Brave Little Tailor and The Nifty Nineties. She is generally credited with helping to develop Minnie’s personality beyond eye candy for Mickey.  Marcellite also provided various other voices and sounds for the Silly Symphony series, like cats meowing in the Academy Award winning Three Orphan Kittens.

When the Great Animator’s Strike happened in 1941, Marcellite’s sympathies lay with the studio not the animators. She couldn’t see how anyone was being mistreated and felt the strike was ruining the family vibes of the studio. Her main contribution to the strike actually came about quite casually. She took some color home movies of the workers walking the picket line; nowadays, whenever footage of the strike is shown, it’s almost always her work you’re seeing. Though the strike was soon settled, Marcellite wouldn’t be around for much longer. Later that year, she retired from Disney in order to focus her efforts on raising her two kids with her husband, Richard Wall.

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In later years, when the Wall family had moved to Los Gatos, California, Marcellite did briefly re-enter the entertainment industry, producing a comic strip called El Gato for the local paper. Throughout her life she continued to expand her artistic skills, taking classes in ceramics, watercolor and oils. She made all sorts of pieces for friends and family, selling a handful in art galleries or at local festivals, but she never did any more voice acting after leaving Disney. Until that is, archived recordings of her were used to create Get a Horse!, the short released before Frozen in 2013. Unfortunately, Marcellite hadn’t lived long enough to hear herself as Minnie again. Horse hit theaters two decades after she passed away at her home in Grass Valley, California on July 26, 1993. She was 83.

July 2 - Rainbow Carverns Mine Train

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On this day, in 1956, the Rainbow Caverns Mine Train took its first guests through the Living Desert of Frontierland in Disneyland. The Living Desert area of Disneyland, named after the Tru-Life Adventure film of the same name, was a happening place in the late Fifties. Guests could ride in stagecoaches and Conestoga wagons, opt to straddle a pack mule to tour the area or take one of two trains. The larger train was the Sante Fe and Disneyland Railroad (nowadays just the Disneyland Railroad). The smaller train was the Rainbow Caverns Mine Train and was the only way guests could see the beautiful Rainbow Caverns.

The Mine Train was a narrow gauge train that rain on a track 2 feet 7 inches wide, making it a little bigger than the Casey Jr. Circus Train over in Fantasyland, which runs on a 2 foot wide track, and a little smaller than the Disneyland Railroad which runs on a 3 foot track. All three trains are considered narrow gauge (a standard gauge train, such as Amtrak, is about 4 feet 8 inches).

In 1960, Walt decided that Disneyland’s attractions needed more humor in them (although the Living Desert always had cacti that look suspiciously like people we know) and put Marc Davis on the problem. Marc designed a major redo of the Living Desert area. The Conestoga wagons and stagecoaches disappeared and the desert area was reduced in size. The freed up space became several different ecosystems, encompassing everything from mountain peaks to valleys full of beavers to forests teeming with bears. The area was now called Nature’s Wonderland and only a few things remained untouched: the pack mules, Rainbow Caverns and the mine train.

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Now called the Mine Train Through Nature’s Wonderland, guests boarded the train in the fictional town of Rainbow Ridge before traveling past replicas of over 200 North American animals. A recorded narration was provided by Dallas McKennon (who can still be heard giving the Big Thunder Mountain Railroad safety spiel). The ride was topped off with a trip through the Caverns before returning to Rainbow Ridge for disembarking.

And so it went for the next seventeen years. As the world lurched into the latter part of the Seventies, the public’s appetite grew for thrill rides and the shelf life of attractions like the Mine Train grew short. In 1973, Disneyland finally pulled the plug on the pack mules and the last visit to Rainbow Caverns happened in 1977. The Nature’s Wonderland area was completely transformed and became one of the parks most popular attractions today, Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, which opened in 1979. Eagle-eyed guests can still spot some remnants of the Mine Train in Big Thunder, though. In the queue near the loading station, there is a scaled down set up of an old mining town named Rainbow Ridge. Several of the animatronic animals throughout the ride first appeared in Nature’s Wonderland. The colorful, glowing pools of water near the first lift hill are in homage to Rainbow Caverns. And, until 2010, one of the Mine Train engines and two cars could be seen along the Rivers of America.

July 1 - WEDWay People Mover

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On this day, in 1975, the WEDWay PeopleMover began giving guests a grand tour of Tomorrowland in the Magic Kingdom of Walt Disney World. The original PeopleMover attraction opened on July 2, 1967 as part of Disneyland’s new Tomorrowland. It was an update of the ride system that had been used in the Ford pavilion for the 1964 World’s Fair. The term PeopleMover was coined for Disneyland’s ride but has since come to mean a variety of transportation modes. The cars didn’t move on their own but were propelled along the track by rotating wheels placed every nine feet. When Ford declined to sponsor the new attraction (they didn’t care to associate with anything that could supplant cars), Goodyear stepped in and the rotating wheels were replaced with actual Goodyear tires.

Eight years later, the Florida Project got its own version of the PeopleMover with two big differences. First, instead of the cars being propelled along by rotating tires, linear induction motors were used. New decade, new technology, which made sense to everyone except Goodyear. Because the new version didn’t need their tires, they said Disney didn’t need their sponsorship and bowed out. The Edison Electric Institute stepped up in their place. Second, the design of the cars and track were reversed. Disneyland’s ride had an open track with covered cars. Walt Disney World’s ride has open cars that run on a covered track.

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Disneyland’s PeopleMover was deemed hopelessly outdated and closed in 1995, to eventually be replaced by the ill-fated Rocket Rods. Walt Disney World’s attraction keeps chugging along even though it’s had a couple of thematic changes over the years. In 1994, the Magic Kindom’s Tomorrowland underwent a major renovation, becoming a working city of the future rather than a showcase of future technology. The PeopleMover was renamed the Tomorrowland Transit Authority Metroliner, although the Metroliner part was rarely used and the name was generally shortened to the TTA. The track was cosmetically made to look more metallic and the narration was changed to reflect the rides new function as part of the city’s public transportation system. When Space Mountain went down for a major refurbishment in April 2009, the TTA also closed for a while to accommodate the major construction taking place right next to its track. When it reopened in September of that year, it had another new narration and it was announced that it would be called the PeopleMover again. Except the name wasn’t a replacement, it was an add on, making it a mouthful to even mention the ride anymore. The attraction’s full current name is the Tomorrowland Transit Authority PeopleMover.

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One final note: the Florida version of the PeopleMover is the last attraction in the Magic Kingdom that still retains a corporate sponsor (the nighttime spectacular, Happily Ever After, is sponsored by Pandora, but that’s a show not an attraction). It is currently sponsored by Alamo Rent-A-Car, although you could be forgiven for never knowing that. They aren’t mentioned in any of the narrations, just a few logos on the signs at the ride’s entrance and exit.

June 30 - Carl Barks

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On this day, in 1966, Carl Barks officially, and reluctantly, retired from drawing Donald Duck comic books. Born on March 27, 1901 in rural Merrill, Oregon, Carl recalled having a somewhat lonely childhood. His parents were farmers and thus always busy, the nearest neighbor was a half mile away (and didn’t have any children) and there were only about ten students total at the little school he attended. He and his brother (they unfortunately didn’t share any common interests) put in long hours themselves on the farm, leaving little time for leisure activities. When Carl was seven, his father moved the family to Midland, Oregon, buying a cattle ranch near the railroad tracks. The mass of cowboys who frequented the Midland Marketplace were the first crows he’d ever seen. After four years of wrangling cattle, the Barks family had made enough to move to Santa Rosa, California trading in the ranch for orchards. The profits weren’t nearly as high, however, and by 1913 the Barks moved back to Merrill. Poor Carl was 12 at that point and still hadn’t finished elementary school with all the moving around. He did manage to finish by 1916, but that would turn out to be a watershed year for Carl: his mother died, his hearing noticeably worsened and, with the nearest high school more than five miles away, he had to end his formal education.

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Carl began a checkered career that could best be described as a jack of all trades, master of none. A partial list of the occupations he unsuccessfully tried to maintain includes mule driver, farmer, woodcutter, printer and cowboy. Later in life, he would attribute many of Donald Duck’s character flaws to this period in his life, namely the drifting from job to job and the inevitable building of frustrations. Ironically, his characters' innate wit would also come from this era. As Carl put it, if you didn’t have a sense of humor about those kinds of situations, you would go insane.

Eventually, after several career failures, Carl began to wonder if he could maybe turn his favorite childhood hobby, drawing, into money. Throughout his childhood, he had tried to imitate the comic strips in newspapers he occasionally found. At one point he tried to take a correspondence course to improve his technique, but his work schedule forced him to quit after just four lessons. In December 1918, he left Oregon for San Francisco. He worked odd jobs while trying to sell his drawings, but met with little success. He returned to Oregon in 1923, worked on his father's farm some more and continued peddling his art. He had some success with the Calgary Eye-Opener, a racy men's magazine based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He soon was hired on as Calgary's editor, moved to the Land of a Thousand Lakes and made a respectable $90 per month, albeit for less than respectable publications. 

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In 1935, Carl heard that the Walt Disney Studio was looking for more animators. He decided to apply, was accepted and moved to Los Angeles for a trial run. He passed the test and began work as a much more respectable inbetweener for a slightly less respectable $20 per week. He also started submitting gag ideas for the studios shorts that were so good he was transferred to the Story Department in 1937. Luckily for Carl, Donald Duck started getting his own shorts that same year instead of always being paired with Mickey or Goofy. Carl quickly became part of the team that was writing exclusively for Disney's resident fowl. His work can be seen in classics like Donald's Nephews (the first appearance of Huey, Dewey and Louie), Mr. Duck Steps Out (Daisy Duck's debut) and The Vanishing Private.

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Part way into World War II, Carl was becoming disillusioned with the working atmosphere at the Walt Disney Studio and with animation in general (he also thought the studio's air conditioning was affecting his asthma). In 1942, he resigned his position intending to go back to farming, specifically raising chickens in the region of San Jacinto, California. In order to make ends meet while getting the farm off the ground, Carl did some moonlighting as a comic book illustrator. His first job was splitting artwork duties with the fellow Disney animator Jack Hannah (not the crazy animal guy) on a special edition 64-page Donald Duck Dell comic, Donald Duck Finds Pirate Gold. It was the first original story written for an American Donald comic and the first time Donald and his nephews ever searched for treasure.

Carl then asked Dell's parent company, Western Publishing, if they had any other Donald comics they needed illustrated. They gave him a ten page comic for an upcoming edition. Carl felt the story could use some improvements. Western was so impressed with his revised script that they let him do both the writing and the drawing on most of his Donald comics for the next few decades, not something that many artists were allowed to do. When The Victory Garden was published in April 1943, it was the first of nearly 500 duck stories Carl would produce during his career. That proliferation alone would earn him a place in the Disney Pantheon, but it's the world he created during those stories that really pushes him above everyone else.

When Carl got a hold of the Disney Duck universe, other people had already created Donald, Daisy and his nephews, Huey,  Dewey and Louie. But that was pretty much it. Carl would use those characters and introduce dozens of his own. Just try to imagine Duckburg (which Carl certainly expanded if not outright dreamed up) without the following citizens: Scrooge McDuck, Gyro Gearloose, Gladstone Gander, the Beagle Boys, Magica De Spell, Flintheart Glomgold, Daisy's nieces, April, May and June, The Junior Woodchucks or Cornelius Coot, just to name the highlights. All of them came, and tons more, from Carl's fertile imagination.

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For the first seventeen years of his comic book career, Carl toiled away in anonymity. The only name to appear on the books was Walt Disney's , although sometimes an small identification number would also appear. Avid readers soon learned to recognize Carl's style though, both artistic and story wise, and began referring to him as the Good Duck Artist. In 1960, two different people stumbled on his real identity and quickly let the comic book community know that the Good Duck Artist had a name and it was Carl (although they still mostly referred to him by his nickname). For the next several years, a growing fan base lifted him out of obscurity and into the limelight he so richly deserved. If only mother nature had played along. By 1966, Carl's eyesight was going the way of his hearing (he wore hearing aids all the time) and he could no longer do the fine detail work he was known for. He reluctantly retired from the business, sort of. He would draw one more Daisy Duck comic that was published in 1968 and he would write scripts for several more well into the Seventies. 

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In order to continue making money after leaving the comic book industry, Carl turned to creating oil paintings, mostly of farm life, that he exhibited and sold at local art shows. One day, in 1971, a fan asked if he would do a commission of the Disney Ducks. Carl contacted the company to see if he could get permission to produce some work. Disney surprised him by granting a royalty-free license. Carl was further surprised when word got around that he was taking requests and was inundated with them. By 1974, Carl stopped taking requests and began auctioning off pieces at various comic cons, bringing in thousands of dollars at a pop. Unfortunately, some fans made some unauthorized prints of one of his Scrooge McDuck paintings and Disney ended up rescinding his license.

Carl continued to make appearances at comic cons, though, creating long lines and frenzies wherever he went. In 1981, two different fans wanted to bring new appreciation to Carl's work and published a collection of his paintings and comic stories. By 1983, Carl was getting a little tired of all the attention and moved back to Oregon, quipping that his chicken farm was too close to Disneyland, fans kept dropping by unannounced. That same year, the Carl Barks Library was published, which included his entire Disney comic book oeuvre in an oversized thirty-volume set.

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Throughout the Nineties, Carl continued painting and had exhibits of his work in cities across Europe. In 1994, his final Scrooge McDuck story, Horsing Around with History, was published in Denmark and in 1997 his final Donald Duck Story, Somewhere in Nowhere, was published in Italy, both with artwork done by someone else. In 1991, Carl was officially declared a Disney Legend for his work in turning Donald and friends into international sensations. In July 1999, he was diagnosed with chronic lymphocytic leukemia. After unsuccessfully enduring treatments for nearly a year, he decided to stop them in June 2000. On August 25, 2000, shortly after midnight, one of the most brilliant minds to entertain the masses (even though he'd never even started high school) finally faded to black quietly in his sleep. He was 99.

June 29 - America Sings

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On this day, in 1974, Disneyland’s salute to the United States’ 200^th birthday, America Sings, opened in Tomorrowland. As Bicentennial Fever began sweeping the nation in the early Seventies, Disneyland naturally wanted to get in on the action. It was decided to create a new show to go in the space occupied by the Carousel of Progress. That classic show, one of the holdovers from the 1964 World’s Fair, was packed up and, in 1973, relocated to the Magic Kingdom in Walt Disney World, where it still runs today. Imagineers, led by the Legendary Marc Davis, then got to work on an all new attraction.

America Sings was structured similar to Carousel of Progress (kind of a necessity since it used the same space). A total of six theatres rotated around a central cluster of stages, each theater moving to the next stage every four minutes. Guests entered the show in stage one, saw a brief introduction, rotated through four eras of American musical history, then saw a brief conclusion and exited from stage six. For the show’s narrators, Marc created Eagle Sam, voiced by Burl Ives, and Ollie Owl, voiced by Sam Edwards. While Eagle Sam is sometimes referred to as Sam the Eagle, he shouldn’t be confused with our Muppet friend of the same name or the 1984 Olympic Mascot, Sam the Olympic Eagle; those are three distinct characters. In a nod to taking over Carousel’s space, Rex Allen, who played the narrator of Carousel, has a small part in America Sings as Sombrero, a dog.

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On a tragic note, America Sings was responsible for the death of a cast member shortly after it opened. On July 8, 1974, just nine days after its debut, Deborah Stone was caught between the stationary outer wall of the attraction and one of the inner moving walls. The 18 year old was crushed to death but her body wasn't discovered for nearly twenty minutes. Guests had actually heard her screams but thought it was part of the show. As a result of the accident, America Sings was closed for three days while safety lights were installed and the moving walls were redesigned to include breakaway panels. Thankfully, no further incidents were recorded.

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It might seem ridiculously out of place to plunk a historical show down in Tomorrowland, but Bicentennial Fever was a powerful thing in the mid Seventies and no one really minded. Until after the reasonable time that bicentennial celebrations could go on, of course. By the early Eighties, America Sings not only didn’t fit into a land that claimed to have its eyes set on the future, but it was getting long in the tooth as a concept as well. The show persisted almost to the end of the decade, however. In 1986, it was slight victim of recycling when two geese Audio-Animatronics were removed, stripped of their skin and installed as baggage droids in the queue of Star Tours. The rest of America Sings kept on singing until April 10, 1988. At that point, most of the remaining 113 Audio-Animatronic figures found a new home in Splash Mountain, which opened the following year. The Stork figure from the show’s finale is used as a training tool to teach and test new Imagineers on how to program Animatronics.

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Plans were made to install a third show in the rotating theaters and a “coming soon” sign was placed in front of the attraction. That sign stood there for almost ten years, as the remaining sets of America Sings slowly deteriorated and the building was used as office and storage space, the new attraction a victim of Euro Disneyland’s financial shortcomings. Finally, in 1998, the building was completely renovated and became Innoventions, Disneyland’s version of the Epcot area. In 2015, the space was further updated and became the West Coast’s Star Wars Launch Bay, a walkthrough attraction highlighting all things Star Wars related.

June 28 - Herb Ryman

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On this day, in 1910, Herbert Dickens Ryman was born in Vernon, Illinois. When he was 9, Herb's family moved to Decatur. He began following in his father's footsteps as a medical student at the private Millikin University there, until he became deathly ill with scarlet fever. His mother, who had pushed for the medical studies over what Herb wanted to pursue, an artistic career, became concerned for his health and relented, allowing him to enroll in the Art Institute of Chicago. He graduated cum laude and, in 1932, moved out to Los Angeles, California to try his luck at making money with his art. He quickly found a job at the MGM Studio, as a storyboard illustrator. For a while during the studio's Golden Age, Herb was the only illustrator on staff and helped design the looks of such classic films as Mutiny on the Bounty, David Copperfield, the Emerald City portion of The Wizard of Oz and The Good Earth.

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Something about The Good Earth really struck a chord with Herb. He was inspired enough by his work on that film to quit his job and spend a year traveling around China. He made hundreds of sketches and paintings during his Asian tour, publishing many of them in a book when he returned to the states in 1938. As part of his homecoming, Herb had an exhibition of his work at the Chouinard Art Institute which was attended by Walt Disney. Walt was so impressed with Herb's paintings, he asked him if he wanted a job. Herb said sure and became Disney's art director on Fantasia and Dumbo. In the summer of 1941, when Walt and an entourage took a goodwill tour of South America on behalf of the United States government, Herb was one of the artists that went along for the ride. His sketches from the trip influenced the look of both Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros.

Following the end of World War II, Herb got word that 20th Century Fox was developing a film based on the novel Anna and the King of Siam by Margaret Landon. He had actually become an acquaintance of Margaret during his time in China and was interested in working on the film. He amiably resigned his position at Disney and changed studios again. Over the next several years, Herb worked on Fox films including Forever Amber, David and Bathsheba and The Robe.

For two summers, in 1949 and 1950, Herb took leaves of absence from Fox and literally joined the circus. He traveled with the performers of Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey, preserving their way of life through his paintings. During his time with the circus, he became good friends with Emmett Kelly, one of the greatest clowns of all time.

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On September 26, 1953, Herb received a desperate call from another old friend, Walt Disney, asking for an immediate meeting. Intrigued, Herb agreed. When they came face to face, Walt began describing all his ideas for a new theme park and asked if Herb could produce some drawings bringing those ideas to life. Herb said sure, when do you want them? Walt said how about right now? The two men worked pretty much non stop throughout the weekend to finish several detailed sketches. It wasn't long after that when Roy Disney took those sketches and showed them to the investors who would agree to finance Walt's latest dream. Without them, Disneyland might never have become reality.

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Once the plans for his theme park were securely in place, Walt asked Herb to come back to work at Disney. This time around, Herb worked mainly with WED Enterprises, designing and creating concept images for theme park attractions. For Disneyland, he helped design Sleeping Beauty Castle, Main Street USA, New Orleans Square, the Jungle Cruise and Pirates of the Caribbean. He was integral to the development of Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln for the 1964 World's Fair. He was the chief designer of Cinderella Castle when the Florida Project was taking shape.

In 1971, Herb officially retired from Disney, but like most old timers of the era, he never completely walked away. By 1976, he was back consulting with the company on plans for EPCOT Center, giving style to the American Adventure and the China pavilion. He then helped design a history of Japan show for the opening of Tokyo Disneyland called Meet the World. His last project with Disney was creating concepts for the version of Main Street USA that would eventually debut at Euro Disneyland.

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Outside of his work with various Hollywood studios, Herb was a prolific artist. In addition to his paintings with the circus, he created watercolors of the California coastline and portraits of various celebrities. He was a member of the American Institute of Fine Arts, the Society of Illustrators and the California Art Club. His paintings were collected by the Guggenheims, the Barrymores and Cecil B. DeMille among others.

In late 1988, Herb became ill and he passed away on February 10, 1989 at the age of 78. In 1990, he was officially declared a Disney Legend for all his work shaping the beloved Disney theme parks. That same year, his sister Lucille, along with Marty Sklar, Sharon Disney and Buzz Price, created the Ryman-Carroll Foundation in Herb's honor. The Foundation's main purpose is running Ryman Arts, an organization that provides free art classes with master teachers to Los Angeles area high school students. You can find out more about their work, and the man that inspired them, at rymanarts.org.