Hollister
– The Swank Great Corn Maze and Haunted Ranch is entering its
seventh season as Hollister’s most haunted Halloween tradition.
Hollister – The Swank Great Corn Maze and Haunted Ranch is entering its seventh season as Hollister’s most haunted Halloween tradition.
Co-owner and creator Bonnie Swank said 2006 will be the farm’s biggest year ever, after approaching almost 30,000 visitors last year. For Bonnie Swank, the place has grown beyond her wildest dreams.
“In the very beginning, did we think it would turn into this? No,” Bonnie Swank said. “But we had this vision of what we wanted it to be.”
And that vision has turned into a 20-acre corn field with two mazes, three labyrinths and one scary attraction in the middle. The Swank Great Corn Maze has something for everybody, Bonnie Swank said.
The Swanks have created a new mining sleuth game for children to learn about gemstones and fossils. Small children can enter the Kiddy Koral, featuring its own maze based on Spookley the Square Pumpkin and a petting farm.
“It absolutely amazes me the amount of adults at night who stand there and watch the animals,” Bonnie Swank said.
For older children, teenagers, and even adults there is the four-acre Conover Mystery Ranch. This year will be the sixth year the haunted ranch has opened its after-dark doors.
Scream Works conducts the haunt each year and has been awarded the October 2006 “Best Themed Haunted Attraction” from HauntedMedia.com for the Conover Mystery Ranch.
The maze has helped turn Swank Farms’ luck around.
The Swank family began ranching and farming in San Benito County in 1929, Bonnie Swank said. The original farm was bought by Dick Swank’s grandfather, Bill Maggini, according to the Swank Farms Web site.
After struggling with a small farming operation, Dick Swank took his farm crew to see a maze operation in Woodland, similar to the one he would create. He met Bonnie Swank in 2000 and she put her interior design talents to use to help Dick Swank create the maze.
“It was kind of his last-ditch effort to make some money,” Bonnie Swank said.
The first year it rained so much it turned the maze into a muddy mess, Bonnie Swank said. The maze had 5,000 visitors that year.
Since then it has drawn more and more visitors each year. Bonnie Swank said they have been working on drawing family visitors during the day. Hollister residents have made it a tradition, and visitors from outlying areas are beginning to make it a tradition as well.
Jackie Little, of Monterey, watched her 21-month-old grandson kick straw outside the Kiddy Koral as her husband, daughter, son-in-law and 9-year-old granddaughter took their time wandering the maze. This year was the family’s first trip to the maze.
Little said that in addition to buying their pumpkins together every year, she would like to see the family make the trip from Monterey to the maze a tradition.
“We’ll be back for sure,” Little said. “My husband and son-in-law are two kids, if you know what I mean.”
Michael Van Cassell covers public safety for the Free Lance. He can be reached at 637-5566 ext. 335, or
mv*********@fr***********.com
.
