Reindeer and renovations at Santa’s Workshop

Former Navy SEAL takes on challenge of updating aging Adirondack theme park

By Tim Rowland

Working for big southern theme parks in Texas, Alabama and San Diego, Steven Thomas was accustomed to welcoming tens of thousands of sweltering guests a day to bottomless funnel cakes and hair-raising rides.

But in late May Thomas, the new general manager of Santa’s Workshop theme park, found himself on a chilly mountain high above the town of Wilmington caring for a newborn reindeer. “That was different,” said the former Navy SEAL, sitting in the office of a park that might attract in an entire season a crowd that some of the southern parks might attract in a day.

Since starting the job in January, Thomas has received a crash course in all things reindeer — their diets, the parasites they’re susceptible to and reindeer trivia, notably that all Santa’s reindeer had to be female because male reindeer lose their antlers in the winter.

With the new addition, Santa’s Workshop has five animals, a long-standing tradition dating back to the time that, to maintain their health, kids would be paid to go up into the mountains and collect bags of reindeer lichen for the reindeer to eat. Today, those nutrients are provided by beet pulp.

Reindeer were more common during the heyday of Santa’s Workshop, when there were 80 animals between the theme park and a 200-acre reindeer ranch in Jay. It’s unlikely the park will get back into the full-scale reindeer business — the animals sell for $10,000 today — but the remainder of the park is due for an upgrade.

Thomas said his amusement-park career has been spent starting new parks or turning aging parks around, and despite its small size, Santa’s workshop may present his biggest challenge yet.

“The business of family-owned theme parks is really, really hard,” he said. “So far in just this year, 2025, I know of six family parks that have folded. Now, three or four huge companies control 95% of the parks. The other hard part is getting people to think about Christmas in July and August.”

At Santa’s Workshop, macadam is crumbling here and there, paint is peeling and the train engine is on its last legs, In some ways this adds to the campiness of the mid-20th century theme park, which is the last intact survivor of a handful of Adirondack roadside attractions designed by Arto Monaco, an Upper Jay resident who was busing tables in his family’s restaurant when Rockwell Kent encouraged him to go to art school and, later, John Steinbeck encouraged him to go to Hollywood.

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Pictured here: Santa’s Workshop entrance and North Pole Post Office — officially recognized by the postal service in 1953. Photo by Tom French

A rich theme-park history

Monaco became a toymaker, set designer and consultant to Walt Disney, who opened Disneyland in 1955, six years after Santa’s Workshop.

As he’s been dealing with baby reindeer and recruiting the 50 or so young people needed to play the role of elves this season, Thomas said he has also been fascinated with the Monaco-related documents and artifacts that are turning up as he revamps the office space.

“It’s really intriguing, because the sheer history of this place is just remarkable,” he said.

Thomas has discovered Monaco’s sketches of what he wanted the restaurant to look like, hand-typed press kits bearing Monaco’s signature and some of Monaco’s artwork, including a figure of a sailor that’s of particular appeal to a Navy man.

“Until I considered coming here, I had no idea that the upper state of New York was pretty much the birthplace of the theme park,” Thomas said. “Disney came here to get ideas for Disneyland. They went to Frontierland to get ideas, so there’s a Disneyland today because of us. It’s kind of amazing, and I’d love to bring this park back.”

Photo at top: The newborn reindeer and its mother at Santa’s Workshop in Wilmington. Photo courtesy of Steven Thomas