Oglebay Park - Winter Festival of Lights

Winter Festival of Lights

This 1985 holiday tradition began at Oglebay Park, but soon spread throughout the city of Wheeling. The first year, displays and landscape lighting covered 125 acres (51 ha) over a three-mile (5 km) drive throughout the resort. The show now covers more than 300 acres (120 ha) over a six-mile (10 km) drive throughout the park. Landscape lighting expert Dick Bosch and the late Robert J. Otten, Wheeling Park Commission’s long-time creative director, were the creative talents behind Oglebay’s show. Bosch’s lighting expertise was needed to produce the lighting for trees and buildings, and Bob Otten designed the first five displays for the 1985 opening and created nearly 50 additional displays until his death in 2005.

Every year, several new displays are added. Notable displays from past years include the Snowflake Tunnel, a display that allows visitors to drive through a lighted tunnel portraying thousands of twinkling snowflakes, the massive Polyhedron Star, which includes over 2,000 lights, and the Poinsettia Wreath and Candle, which is the festival's tallest. Other displays include the Candy Cane Wreath, The Twelve Days of Christmas, and Willard the Snowman, named for the television personality Willard Scott, who switched on the lights for Light-Up Night in 1986. Every year, local students in Ohio County Schools submit new display ideas. Most displays are fabricated at Wheeling Park High School, where Welding Technology students build the frames for the displays. The school's Electronics Technology program have designed, built, and programmed the controls for every animated display at the Festival.

Two of the Park's light displays are synchronized to music. "Gardens of Light" and the Good Zoo's "Lighting and Music Extravaganza" were designed by Carson Williams, who created the original Wizards in Winter light display at his home in Mason, Ohio. The Good Zoo's light show, added in 2006, utilizes upwards of 35,500 LED light bulbs and is controlled by a computer. This technology allows the lights to be synchronized with music. The "Gardens of Light" display, which was added in 2007, is very similar to the Good Zoo's light show, but on a much larger scale. In this display, park visitors walk through the gardens, which incorporate hanging flower baskets with lights and lighted flowers in the flowerbeds. The "Gardens of Light" display is an attempt to recreate the look of Oglebay Park's flower gardens during the spring and summer months.

In 2008, Oglebay announced that all new displays will use LED lights, rather than the incandescent lights that were used before. In addition, the Park will gradually convert the existing displays to use LED lights. The new lights will use 85% less energy and last five times longer, according to Oglebay's website.