Seeking the Original Gateway into the Emerald City

For fictive purposes, I’ve been trying to figure out the location of the original gate to the Emerald City and when more gates were added.

L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz makes clear the city has only one gateway, which Dorothy and her companions use to enter and exit. That makes sense historically. Oz the Wizard built the Emerald City as a citadel against the witches, especially the Wicked Witches, so he wanted to minimize the entry points. He claimed no authority over the lands of the Munchkins, Winkies, Quadlings, and Gillikins and therefore didn’t need to welcome them.

Several adventures later, The Patchwork Girl of Oz states that by then there are four gates in the city walls, one pointing in each cardinal direction. Presumably one of the four gates of the later city was the Wizard’s original. That means the original gate faces north, south, east, or west—but which one?

We know that it doesn’t face to the west or south because when Dorothy and her friends leave the gate to head in those directions, Baum wrote that they “turned toward the West” and “turned their faces toward the Land of the South.” Turning would be unnecessary if they were already facing either of those directions as the gate opened.

Baum described the travelers’ first glimpse of the gate this way:

As they walked on, the green glow became brighter and brighter, and it seemed that at last they were nearing the end of their travels. Yet it was afternoon before they came to the great wall that surrounded the City. It was high and thick and of a bright green color.

In front of them, and at the end of the road of yellow brick, was a big gate, all studded with emeralds that glittered so in the sun that even the painted eyes of the Scarecrow were dazzled by their brilliancy.

Likewise, in The Marvelous Land of Oz travelers from the Gillikin Country to the north follow another Yellow Brick Road to what appears to be the same gate. And in The Patchwork Girl of Oz we learn there’s another Yellow Brick Road in Munchkinland.

We must presume that when there was only one gateway into the city, all those roads merged at some place in the green country surrounding the city. That leads to the possibility that one or more of the Yellow Brick Roads didn’t head straight to the city from east or north but first led to the merge point—perhaps why Dorothy’s approach seeemed to take so long.

In contrast, the Sawhorse and Jack Pumpkinhead’s arrival at the gate from the north in Land seems more direct. To me that gives a slight edge to the original gateway being at the Emerald City’s north.

Again, that seems to fit with what we know of the history of Oz’s reign. Wicked Witches ruled to the east and west, so the Wizard wouldn’t have built an entrance in either of those directions. The most powerful magician in Oz, Glinda, controlled the south; though she was not a hostile power, she was still a threat to the humbug ruler.

In contrast, the Good Witch of the North dominating the Gillikin Country was a lesser danger to the Wizard. And as for the wicked witch in that territory, Mombi, he actually had personal dealings with her. A gateway to the north would have made the most sense to the great Oz.

COMING UP: Adding more gateways.