Hermann’s Slug Farm, Midway City

An early incarnation of Sidney Slug joins (L to R) Roger Hermann, Mrs. Hermann, and members of the Midway City Chamber of Commerce for the farm’s grand opening in 1953. (Photo from Midway City Times)

What’s the key to a successful tourist attraction? If you said, “gobs of mucus” or “tiny critters that barely move,” you would be wrong. That is, you’d be wrong if Midway City’s late, not-so-lamented Hermann’s Slug Farm was any indicator. 

Opening in October 1953 and closing in November 1955, the “farm” featured not only dozens of species of slugs, but also smaller numbers of snails and worms. It was located on the east side of Highway 39 (Beach Blvd), south of at Hazard Ave. Billboards along the highway read “See the World’s Most Playful Slugs!” and featured smiling cartoon gastropods frolicking on the beach, playing volleyball, building sandcastles, and so forth. Unsurprisingly, the actual slugs participated in none of these activities. 

The slug farm was the brainchild of Roger S. Hermann, a limacologist who’d retired from teaching at UCLA and wanted to share his passion for shell-less gastropod mollusks with a wider audience. 

If nothing else, Hermann picked a good location. Highway 39 had been a key route from Los Angeles County to Orange County’s beaches for decades and had spawned numerous other popular roadside attractions. Land in Midway City was affordable and had a naturally high water table and rich moist soil conducive to a healthy slug population. 

Visitors entered Hermann’s Slug Farm through “The World’s Largest Slug” – a slug-shaped building designed and built by artist Claude Bell, whose studio was just up the road at Knott’s Berry Farm. This giant gunite slug also housed a small gift shop featuring a variety of items – from cigarette lighters to bottle openers – emblazoned with the images of real slugs or the farm’s cartoon mascot, Sidney Slug. Among the most memorable items in the store were colorful ceramic banks shaped like Sidney, which sell for over $150 on eBay today. The gift shop also sold worms for gardening and fishing, as well as slugs that hadn’t “made the cut” in the farm’s exhibits.

From the entrance building, a silver trail, painted on the concrete walkways, led visitors from one exhibit to the next. Slug-shaped signs described each exhibit, as did the “Fun Map” booklet handed out at the farm’s entrance.

A silver lapel pin, as sold in the gift shop.

“Be sure to visit again at feeding time!” read a large sign over the main slug enclosure. But it took half a day to watch the slugs devour even one good-sized leaf. 

“Some of the slugs and snails were trained to perform tricks, but they did so very slowly,” said Terry McGee who worked summers at the farm as a teenager, spraying the gastropods to keep them moist. “Most people didn’t have the patience for that.”

Twice-daily slug races also failed to draw large crowds. 

Perhaps the Slug Farm’s most well-remembered attraction was a small terrarium where a trained slug would play a tiny piano each time a guest placed a nickel into a coin slot. A series of hidden electrodes herded the slug back and forth across the keyboard. It took the slug half an hour to play a small snippet of Scott Joplin’s “Maple Leaf Rag.”

But some just came to admire the surprisingly wide array of slug species. “The bright yellow banana slugs were probably our biggest hit,” said McGee.

The farm’s on-site snack shop, Gastropod Gastronomy, featured fried escargot on a stick and an assortment of hot dogs, hamburgers, and ice cream treats. As a safety precaution, no salt was available to customers.

Midway City briefly considered capitalizing on the Slug Farm by hosting a proposed annual Slug Fest and a Slug Parade before realizing the roadside attraction was a flop.

Indeed, Hermann’s Slug Farm never became popular. And business only got worse as new freeways pulled traffic off Highway 39 and as competition from other tourist attractions edged out “the little guy.” The slug farm closed for good on November 17, 1955, just four months after Disneyland opened its doors. 

Posted 4/1/2021