ABSTRACT
Ark Encounter will be a $150 million biblical theme park, scheduled to open in the summer of 2016. Set on eight hundred acres of Kentucky’s rolling hills, forty miles south of Cincinnati, the park’s centerpiece will be an all-wooden re-creation of Noah’s Ark, built to creationist specifications from the text of Genesis 6–9. The completed ark will be built from 3.5 million board feet of timber. It will stand 75 feet wide, 50 feet tall, and 510 feet long and contain more than 100,000 square feet of themed exhibit space. The park is a joint venture between the creationist ministry Answers in Genesis (AiG) and the for-profit Ark Encounter LLC. Founded in 1994, AiG is the same ministry who opened the $30 million Creation Museum in 2007. From October 2011 through June 2014, I conducted ethnographic fieldwork with the creative team in charge of conceptualizing and designing Ark Encounter. 1
