Remember Six Gun Territory? It was the star at the Wild West Weekend Reunion

Nostalgia rushes in for Ocala residents when they hear the pop of a cowboy’s gun.

Six Gun Territory Wild West Weekend Reunion returned to Kirby Family Farm on Saturday, Nov. 4, and Sunday, Nov. 5. It was a two-day event honoring the original Ocala theme park. About 2,000 attendees visited the farm to watch the gunfights and performances.

The weekend is one of the public events Kirby Family Farm puts on annually, and it’s inspired by the Six Gun Territory theme park, which was Florida’s No. 1 manmade attraction from 1963 to 1984.

Daryl Kirby, the 53-year-old founder of the farm, said it was a dream of his to bring back Six Gun Territory because he used to go there as a child.

The farm, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, hosts more than 10,000 children and their families a year. Kirby said they started doing public events like Six Gun Territory as a way to pay for the free private events they host for children.

“There’s so many good charities with good missions who have to beg for donations to survive,” Kirby said. “We thought, ‘Some crazy guy put down a railroad on his property — maybe people want to see it.’ ”

The farm has made numerous efforts to capture the energy of the original theme park, including bringing back the original performers and purchasing the original train station.

Ocala residents Wanda and Marty Penuel donated the original train station to Kirby in 2016, after keeping it on their 10-acre residence since 1984.

“It has a lot of memories for a lot of people,” Wanda Penuel said. “It was sitting there deteriorating, but now everyone can enjoy it.”

While many Kirby Family Farm events incorporate the railroad that loops around the 110-acre land, the train has always been a crucial part of the Six Gun Territory experience.

“Guests had to survive the train robbery to get to the park,” Kirby said. “Of course, they always did.”

Julie Smith, a 46-year-old Inglis resident, was shocked by how similar the event was to the original park.

“My parents couldn’t afford Disney, and this was the next best thing,” she said.

Smith wanted her 17-year-old daughter, Leah, to experience the theme park. She pointed out the buildings that are used as the background landscape for the main gunfights.

“It looks just like how the parks looked,” she said.

The original theme park’s scripts are used for the Six Gun Territory gunfights, and some of the actors — who are now in their 60s — get to reprise the roles they made for themselves 40 years prior.

Gary Smith, a 66-year-old Ocala resident, started performing at the original theme park when he was 17 years old. He left the park at age 22 when he went to Florida State University to study finance.

“I would’ve never thought I would be reunited with my friends that I haven’t seen in 45 years,” Smith said. “It’s kind of sad because we’ve lost a couple of us, but I’m glad we’ve gotten to reconnect."

Clinton Smith, a 53-year-old Six Guns Territory performer, plays “The Colorado Kid,” the lead outlaw, in the Six Gun Territory gun fights.

“When people come up to me and say I want a picture with ‘The Colorado Kid’, it’s just amazing,” he said.

The historical train robbery and the “Outlaws and Lawdogs town” gunfights were put together by the volunteers who participate in those new performances.

Each area where there’s a gunfight has a safety officer who checks each firearm before and after every performance. The safety officer is responsible for making sure every gun is unloaded before the actors have meet-and-greets with the attendees.

“Let’s face it. It’s a different world today, and we got to be careful,” Kirby said. “In the reenactment world, we have a reputation of being over cautious.”

Cliff Matthews, a retired police officer from Lady Lake, is the lead safety officer for Six Guns Territory and is in charge of all of the safety officers in each of the groups.

All 300 of the individuals carrying weapons at Six Guns Territory need to have gone through some sort of firearm safety training, Matthews said. No one is allowed to carry live ammunition.

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“We probably have a couple hundred guns around here, and you cannot be too cautious,” Matthews said. “Anything can happen.”

Kirby said the safety aspect of the show was the most important factor that needed to be figured out before they launched the event for the public.

“Getting Cliff to be on board with Six Guns was invaluable,” he said. “You couldn’t find a better guy to put a team of safety officers together.”

The Outlaws and Lawdogs town was built by volunteers, and new building additions are constantly being added to their hidden area in the woods. Kirby said the volunteers feel like the adult versions of the Little Rascals.

Charlie Kercher, a concrete business owner from Lakeland, built a post office for the town and slept in it during the Six Gun Territory weekend. He plays the part of the bounty hunter in the town’s gunfight.

Kercher likes to use references to old Western movies while he’s performing. During each performance, he says one-liners like “this is the second time today my money’s walked right up to me” and “buzzards gotta eat, so do the worms.”

“It’s the coolest thing to get to play a cowboy,” Kercher said. “I feel like a big kid.”

This article originally appeared on Ocala Star-Banner: Remembering Six Gun Territory, Ocala's long-ago theme park.