Outdoor and indoor roller coasters, a "giant-sized" children's area, a three-story carousel with its own elevator, a 900-room hotel with an indoor water slide feature, and an 8,000-seat amphitheater were a few of the most exciting revelations on July 26, 2006, when developer Steve Minard announced the project.

Minard was born and raised in Iowa, established a career as an amusement developer, and he was a dreamer who genuinely believed Ohio County was a plausible location for such an attraction. His dream was "Wild Escape," a "small city," as he explained it, and Minard said the facility would be the first of 22 similar developments around the county.

Developer Steve Minard presented a few different drawings of his vision of what "Wild Escape" would be at The Highlands.

The developer estimated the park would employ as many as 1,500 workers during fair-weather months and approximately 400 during the winter season.

Minard was requesting "TIF financing" for infrastructure needs. TIF, or tax increment financing, allows a local government to capture the projected growth in tax revenues in a specific development area to help finance additional development in that same area. He was afforded office space on the second floor of the City-County Building in downtown Wheeling, and on many occasions he was featured on local radio stations, television stations, and in newspaper articles. In one interview he described his "kiddie-land" concept as follows:

"Junior Bigs is the son of a couple of giants, so his toys are, of course, much larger than the toys that we have played with. The good news is that Junior is not around very often because he goes to boarding school, and then he goes to summer camp, but when he is here, he leaves his toys lying around.

"That means we get to play with those toys like a giant swing set and footballs and whatever else he may leave lying around. Everything in that area will be larger than life, and people are going to be amazed."

Minard's contact information is no longer activated so efforts to reach him for comment proved unsuccessful, but two current Ohio County commissioners who were directly involved with the theme park process explained that if the economic crash in November 2008 had not happened the theme park could be located at The Highlands.

The board room in the Ohio County Commission's office in downtown Wheeling is crowded with possible business concepts.

"The biggest issues with the theme park project were the timing and what happened to the economy," explained Ohio County Commissioner Orphy Klempa. "At that time I was a member of the Ohio County Development Authority, and I can tell you that when the bottom fell out, and everything came to halt, no one was building anything after that.

"The banks got very serious about lending money, and the regulations that were implemented afterward have made it more difficult to get the loans that would be needed for a project of that size. Before that, I can tell you that a theme park at The Highlands was definitely on our plate," he continued. "It was a part of the original big picture for The Highlands, and everyone wanted it to happen. We believed in it."

Minard surprised everyone with his confirmation of the project, Ohio County Commissioner Randy Wharton recalled, and the public reaction was intense because of how "out of the box" the concept was at the time. The developer described the project as "moving a mountain, literally, to build a small city."

"The theme park project was a huge project that was going to cost, at that time, at least $200 million, but then the economy crashed, and development shut down all over the country," recalled Ohio County Commissioner Randy Wharton. "We thought it could have been great at the time, but there were a lot of steps to take before that announcement should have been made. The good news is that Ohio County did not spend any money to further that project.

"The ball was completely in Steve Minard's court. Before the development authority would have spent the first dollar, he had a lot to do and a lot to pay for," he said. “It was going to be an interesting process, but there were a lot more permits that would have been involved and a lot of environmental agencies, too.”

Cabela's Outfitters was the first development at The Highlands in Ohio County.

During that late-July afternoon, Ohio County Administrator Greg Stewart announced the agreements with Olive Garden, the AT&T Customer Service Center, and they allowed Minard to address the media too. The amusement park, though, swiped all the headlines.

"Sen. Jay Rockefeller was here because he was very instrumental with bringing the AT&T Center to The Highlands," said Wharton. "And Steve Minard and his theme park proposal were in the mix. He wanted to make a presentation about what he wanted to do, and we allowed it. That was a mistake.

"In hindsight, if we were in the same situation today, Steve Minard would not make that presentation," he continued. "It was a mistake and a lesson learned because it wasn't a done deal. We meet with people most days and these people have some grand plans for The Highlands, but you'll never hear about it unless it's a done deal."

Approximately 650 acres of the 1,000 acres available at The Highlands have been developed, and more flat surface could be created via earthwork, so the space remains if Minard and his "Wild Escape" were to resurface. Klempa and Wharton, however, insisted the theme park idea is a dream of the past.