Page 20 - AAA Magazine – AAA Ohio Auto Club – May 2022

FANS STILL COMING TO THE FIELD OF DREAMS
In1987, some farmland in Iowa was selected to serve as the set for “Field of Dreams,” a
1989 Academy Award nominee for Best Picture. Since the film’s premiere, just as foreshadowed in the movie, people from all around the world have visited this quaint little ball field in rural Dyersville, Iowa, to experience the magic for themselves.
The movie site continues to prosper 33 years after the film’s debut, having welcomed more than 225,000 visitors in 2021, the highest annual traffic since the site’s inception.
Universal Pictures built the baseball diamond in 1988 on two farms. The field was built across the two properties because the producers wanted to place the field in a location where sunset shots would have a clear line of sight.
Once filming was completed, the baseball diamond created for the movie was left behind. Most of the baseball field, including the diamond and the adjacent house, was on a farm owned by the Lansing family,
but the left and center fields were on an adjacent property owned by the Ameskamp family.
After filming was completed, the Lansing family kept their portion of the field intact and added a small hut where visitors could buy souvenirs. The Ameskamp family returned their land to farming for a year, but then restored the remainder of the field and opened up their own souvenir stand. The two owners had operated separate tourist facilities and had also been at odds regarding the commercialization of the site.
In 1990, Keith Rahe, a neighboring farmer, put together a baseball team dubbed the “Ghost Players” to entertain the visitors at the field. The team’s presence at the
field on Sunday afternoons once a month attracted thousands of additional fans to the field.
In August 2007, Rita Ameskamp sold the land containing her portion of the baseball field to Don and Becky Lansing – the owners of the remainder of the field. As a result, the movie site was, for the first time, entirely owned by the Lansing family. On May 13, 2010, the Lansings announced
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