Club Chaos Eye Candy - Waterbury, CT HolyLand

Sitting atop Pine Hill in Waterbury, CT, visible from I84 and Route 8 as you approach the center of the city, is a large metal cross that is the most prominent remnant of what was once a thriving tourist attraction.

Holy Land, USA was a Christian theme park, complete with miniature replicas of Bethlehem and Jerusalem, with scenes from the life of Jesus, most notably a minature Golgotha/Calvary, with three wooden crosses, the center one with an image of Christ nailed to it. What was most visible, however, was a large fiberglass cross, 56 feet tall and illuminated from within at night, with alternating colors - red for Christmas, and blue for Easter. Built in the late 1950's by John Baptist Greco, over 40,000 visitors came to the site annually during the 1960's and 70's. The park was closed in 1984, and Greco died shortly after in 1986, willing the property and entrusting its care to an order of nuns, the Religious Sisters of Filippi Greco.

Since Greco's death, the park has fallen into a state of disrepair, with all of the relics either broken or overgrown with moss. There are several statues that are still in pretty decent shape, and the fiberglass cross was replaced in 2008 with a steel cross that is illuminated by floodlights.