Carowinds is a 112-acre theme park, located adjacent to Interstate 77 on the state line between North and South Carolina, in Charlotte and Fort Mill, respectively. The park opened on March 31, 1973 at a cost of $30 million, after a four-year planning period spearheaded by Charlotte businessman Earl Patterson Hall, who was inspired to build the park by a 1956 trip to Disneyland and a dream of bringing the two states closer together.
It was orignally envisioned as a components of a large resort type area that would have included hotels, a shopping center, a golf course, and a pro football stadium. However, like many other theme parks across the country, attendance at Carowinds was severely affected by the 1973 oil crisis, and the plans for the resort that would have surrounded the park were abandoned. Hall and the other stockholders of the Carowinds Corporation continued to operate the theme park through 1974, though sagging attendance and mounting debt forced the company to sell out to Taft Broadcasting in early 1975.
The name "Carowinds" came from the park's original theme. Since the park was built around the history and culture of the Carolinas, the name is a combination of "Carolina" and "winds", representing the winds that have blown across the two states. As the park changed owenership over the years, most of the Carolina themes and cultural attractions were dropped in favor of more generic television and movie themes. Although it is the smallest and least well known of Paramounts former parks, Carowinds is still a popular destination for tourists, as one of 3 major theme parks in the Carolinas.