SALT LAKE CITY — It's been thirty years of walking up and down a steep driveway, setting up all hundreds of decorations and personally greeting the families that came by here to see Frosty's Winter Wonderland.
After thirty years, the man who's been putting it all together has decided, he's putting it all to rest.
"There's no words, how it's made me feel over the years, I feel like I've paid back the city,” said Forrest Nunley, the creator of Frosty's Winter Wonderland. “I've given back what the city's given me."
WATCH | After 30 years of Christmas cheer, Frosty’s Winter Wonderland comes to an end
To many in the city and beyond, Nunley's home was a part of their Christmas tradition.
"To see those vans pull up, full of little kids, and to see their eyes just wide open, faces pulled up against the windows, all just singing Christmas songs with their families, everyone's just happy up here,” said Nunley.
Happy to see hundreds of Christmas molds lining Nunley’s home, to see lights brighter than the stars in the sky, to feel the warmth of a fire Nunley would put out on his driveway.
It's at Nunley’s home, Frosty's Winter Wonderland, that memories, new and old, were made.
"I've had people, people tell me that they've actually got engaged right in front of our house, people tell me, 'I've proposed to my wife in front of your house because that's where I brought her for my first date,'" said Nunley.
But all good things come to an end.
After dealing with Parkinson’s for the last six years and now a new cancer diagnosis, Nunley decided it's time to hang up the Santa hat.
"My body was telling me, ‘You’ve done it enough, you've had enough fun, you've created a good history of people having Christmas experiences,' so now I need to give that experiences to my family,” said Nunley.
Those experiences, it's something his family was missing as Nunley would focus on making the winter wonderland as wonderful as possible.
"We wanted to spend time with him during the holiday season and he'll come inside and grab hot chocolate and chit-chat with us for a while, and he's like 'I got to go back outside, I got to talk to people,' and we're like dad we're here, come hang out with us' and he's like 'yeah but I got people out there,' and I'm like 'yeah but your family is here,'" said Keifer Nunley, Forrest Nunley’s son.
Nunley is planning to spend time with his family on a farm he bought in Moab years ago, to create memories with his family that he's helped so many create for their own.
"It's been a wonderful blessing in my life, it's been really hard, definitely been a little pricey, but the fun, the fun outweighs it,” said Nunley.