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Somewhere in North Carolina, near the Tennessee line...There's a land paved with gold, and a story that's endured through time.For nearly 50 years, 44,000 yellow bricks along a winding quarter-mile road have lured hundreds of thousands to Beech Mountain, whether the gates to "Oz" were technically open or not. This summer, the Land of Oz theme park will welcome fans from much farther than Kansas, to journey with Dorothy on the following dates: June 6, 7, 13, 14, 20, 21, 26, 27 and July 5.“We had a family from Russia come a couple of years ago,�� said Sean Barrett, artistic director for the Land of Oz, last spring. “They came dressed as the Russian version of the Wizard of Oz characters so that was a lot of fun.”The tour goes from Auntie Em’s farm house, through the tornado that dropped it onto the Wicked Witch of the East, and eventually to Oz.When we asked the “Dorothy�� who walked us through the park her favorite part of the job, she said, “You get to break the fourth wall and interact with the kids, and they believe it. It’s so magical to them.”That magical feeling is what the small team of wizards working behind the curtain say the Land of Oz is all about.“I love when you come in and little kids are dressed like Dorothy and they’re running up to see her and you have grown men getting on the yellow brick road and they’re tearing up, and they’ll be like ‘Are we allowed to skip?’�� Barrett said. The history of the Land of Oz theme park has had about as many twists, turns, and pitfalls as Dorothy's journey down the yellow brick road.The Land of Oz opened in 1970, created by the Robbins brothers to make Beech Mountain a tourist attraction during the summer months.The “Wizard of Oz�� theme was chosen just because the architect thought the trees looked like the ones from the movie.Barrett said the park “was a huge entity in the 1970s.�� Within the first year alone, 400,000 people skipped through -- among them, celebrities like Debbie Reynolds and Muhammad Ali.In the ��80s, a storm of problems swirled through, including bankruptcy, and suspected arson.“There was a fire that December that destroyed the Emerald City amphitheater and a couple of the gift shops,�� says Barrett.Another company tried to take over, but things just didn't work out, Barret says “So, after the 1980 season, Oz wasn't necessarily abandoned, it was just left to its own devices.”During that time, Land of Oz became notorious as one of the top “abandoned�� sites in the country.After a few years of unwelcome visitors and stolen bricks, the park beefed up security, and did some renovations.Within the past few years, it started the “Journey with Dorothy�� tours, as a way to cater to the demand for people who want to come to the property. For more information on the Land of Oz, click here.