Colon: the Magic Capital of the World

It looks like any other small farming village, but Colon is known as the Magic Capital of the World — a title the U.S. Congress has formally recognized — and it’s earned. The story starts in the mid-1920s, when Harry Blackstone Sr., one of America’s most famous stage magicians, made Colon his summer home, building and storing the sets for his traveling illusion show here. A few years later his sometime-partner Percy Abbott, an Australian magician, settled in town and founded Abbott Magic Company, which grew into the largest maker and mail-order seller of magic supplies in the world.

In 1934 Abbott held the first Magic Get-Together, and it’s been a yearly ritual ever since — every August, thousands of magicians from around the world descend on this town of about 1,200 for a week of shows, lectures, and shop talk. Colon still has several magic shops and trick manufacturers, weekly magic shows in summer, and a high school whose teams are the Magi.

There’s one more thing. Colon’s Lakeside Cemetery is the resting place of more magicians than anywhere else on earth — Harry Blackstone Sr. and Jr. among dozens of others, many of whom asked to be buried among their friends. During the Get-Together there’s a guided tour; the rest of the year you can wander it yourself.

Abbott Magic Company, downtown Colon · the Abbott’s Magic Get-Together fills the town each August · and Lakeside Cemetery, on North Farrand Road, is open for self-guided tours.