Prolific fantasy author Brandon Sanderson has confirmed he is buying the land where Evermore Park, a beloved fantasy-themed attraction in Pleasant Grove, Utah, once stood. But fans hoping for a revival of the park should temper their expectations.
In his weekly video update, Sanderson revealed that the buildings of the park have degraded beyond use. So everything will come down and what replaces it will be something new entirely.
Evermore Park opened in 2018 as an immersive fantasy experience in Utah County. Sanderson described it in an exclusive interview with KUTV 2 News filmed at the site: "Evermore Park was the brainchild of a group of people who wanted to start a theme park in Pleasant Grove, Utah. And they did so. They built this fantastic park which was a place for people to come and sort of have a fantasy experience. There were shops and things like that. It ran for a number of years."
The park struggled financially, was further complicated by the pandemic and a trademark lawsuit in 2021, and permanently closed in April 2024.
Sanderson had already been laying groundwork in the area. In September 2024 he announced at FanX that his company Dragonsteel Entertainment had purchased land adjacent to Evermore to build Dragonsteel Plaza, a bookstore and company headquarters.
At the time he was emphatic that the park itself was someone else's problem. What changed since then is that no one else could make the numbers work, and eventually the question came back to him.
Sanderson explains how the purchase of Evermore came together
In his weekly update, Sanderson said the announcement had been weighing on him before he made it. "I know where your mind is going: Brandon, are you buying Evermore? Well, it's bittersweet, because I am, and I'm not," he said.
He had passed on the park twice before getting to this point. When it first came up for sale after closing, he walked the site and decided not to proceed. "When Evermore went up for sale, a lot of people assumed I would buy it. I did go tour it to see, and I said no. Basically, I was not interested in running a theme park. I'm still not interested in running a theme park, so don't get your hopes up in that regard," he said.
Sanderson added that some of the early confusion came from the fact that the seller was also named Brandon, which led to a wave of inaccurate reports.
After Sanderson passed, the land's owner Brandon Fugal went looking for other buyers. Multiple groups tried and none could pull it off. Sanderson described watching that process play out from next door: "One group tried and they couldn't get the funding together. And then another group tried and they couldn't get the funding together. And this went on for years, till finally Brandon Fugal came back to me and said, 'Look, it looks like the only people who might be interested are the people who are going to bulldoze it. Are you interested one last time?'"
There was also a practical dimension to the decision. Dragonsteel's adjacent land controls the main road access to the Evermore site, which had been making it difficult for any outside buyer to make the property viable.
"One of the problems they'd had with selling Evermore is that we own the land that has access to the big road next door. So it's very hard for him to sell, very hard for anyone else to use that land," Sanderson said. Between that factor and the potential to expand Dragonsteel Plaza significantly, the case for buying eventually outweighed the reasons to stay out of it.
Sanderson says the Evermore buildings are too far gone to save
When the decision was finally made to move forward, Sanderson said the team went in hoping to salvage at least some of what was there. That hope did not survive contact with the architects and contractors.
"None of the buildings are usable. Our architects and contractors said you can't have people go in these buildings. They've degraded too far. We decided that if we did buy this, we would be buying the land, not Evermore," he admitted.
A specific effort was made for the park's main structure. Evermore's centrepiece building, known as Vanderhall, was assessed separately to see if it could be incorporated into whatever comes next. The verdict was the same.
"We actually went in and really tried to make the main building called Vanderhall work, and we brought in a lot of people and they said, 'No, you should not use Vanderhall. This is not viable,'" Sanderson said.
Even the land itself needs significant remediation before anything new can be built. "We are going to have to bring the grading back down. It was built up with a lot of fill that is not stable and that we can't build on," he said.
He was careful about the tone of the announcement, knowing some fans would read the news as a final closing of a door they had hoped might still open.
"I've thought long about how to make this announcement because a lot of people are very passionate about Evermore. If you haven't heard of it, it was a fantasy theme park where there was some really great role-playing done, and a lot of people who worked there put a ton of effort, sweat, and heart into making it. I went multiple times with my family and had a wonderful time," he said.
Sanderson also acknowledged the structural reality of the situation: "It was a very difficult business to make work in a city where it's cold in the winter. There's a reason you don't see a lot of theme parks in Utah."
Brandon Sanderson is about to do some 'cool things' at the Evermore site
Sanderson said he wanted to be clear about what fans should expect, even without being specific about plans yet. "I wanted you guys to hear it from me: yes, I am buying this land. Yes, I'm going to do some cool things with it. No, none of them will involve any of the existing structures," he said.
He added that he held back on announcing the details out of respect for the Evermore community: "I don't want this to be a celebration of the fact that the dream didn't end up working."
Demolition on the site will begin soon. More details about Dragonsteel's plans for the land are expected at Nexus, Sanderson's annual fan convention, and at other upcoming events. A contact email for the project has been made available in the video description for fans with specific questions about what is being planned.
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