George Coulam is the American business owner behind the Texas Renaissance Festival (TRF), as well as the mayor of Todd Mission in Texas. In 2024, George Coulam’s net worth is estimated at over $100 million.
Even though he’s been popular for decades, George Coulam recently drew wider attention from the public after he was featured in the 2024 HBO documentary series titled Ren Faire. The series explores Coulam’s succession now that he’s considering retirement.
If you’re into the series, read this article to see how George Coulam earned his fortune and made his way on to your screen.
George Coulam’s Net Worth Breakdown:
The documentary on George Coulam’s sale of his festival clearly showed the value of his biggest asset – TRF. Using this information along with other data we gathered from our research, we estimated his net worth to be at least $100 million. Considering he also owns 800 acres in Todd Mission, along with his mansion and the festival, his wealth is likely greater than this. Here’s a detailed overview of his main assets:
| Asset or Income Source | Contribution to Net Worth |
| Minnesota festival sale | $350,000 |
| Festival value, 2022 | $60 million |
| Stargate mansion | $30 million |
| Todd Mission land, 800 acres | Approx. $60 million |
| Total Net Worth | $100 million |
George Coulam Net Worth: Early Life and Education
George C. Coulam was born in 1938, though his exact date of birth hasn’t been publicly disclosed. He was born to a family of Mormons who lived in Salt Lake City, Utah, where young George attended the San Fernando Valley State College.
According to Texas Monthly, Coulam was previously an English major but gave up on it to study art. At one point, he shared the following about his teenage years:
I was a bad dog… Up through high school I had no direction. I was a sump head who got into a lot of trouble
At the San Fernando Valley State College, he delved into studio arts such as woodworking and stained glass, earning his undergraduate degree in the process.
After his college graduation, he studied Art at the University of California at North Ridge, where he obtained his Master’s degree.
George Coulam has a brother, David, with whom he acquired 15 acres of land on a former strip mine in 1974. On that spot, they founded the business that changed their lives. He is the third of six children.
It was during his university years that Coulam started attending Renaissance festivals in California. He worked in costume, admiring the works of a stained-glass artist as part of his apprenticeship. This is what gave him the idea of his now-famous Texas Renaissance Festival.
Personal Life
George Coulam is a man of few words, so it should come as no surprise that very little is known about his personal life. In 1999, he reportedly married a woman from Thailand called Susie, though he most likely divorced her considering he is looking for a wife today.
George Coulam Net Worth: The Success of the Texas Renaissance Festival
Coulam was impressed with Renaissance festivals so he decided to move back to Utah and try to start a new festival there. However, the Mormon Church authorities weren’t thrilled with the idea and eventually “hinted” that his project would be better appreciated elsewhere.
“At that time, the church liked to know everything that was going on around there, and we were a bunch of people waving swords, quoting Shakespeare, and carrying on… They’d never seen anything like it,” shared Coulam.
Not ready to give up on his plans just yet, George Coulam decided to move once again.
The Birth of the Texas Renaissance Festival
In 1969, Coulam moved his festival operation to Minnesota after the Mormon Church authorities encouraged him to not set up a festival in Salt Lake City. Over the next few years, the festival experienced steady growth, but this time wasn’t without challenges for the young entrepreneur. The owners of the land in Minnesota often squabbled with him, which led him to sell his first festival for $350,000.
At this point, George Coulam was searching for a new location for his project, when he came across a property near Houston that later turned into Todd Mission.
Today, the city is home to the Renaissance festival with the largest annual attendance in the US, called the Texas Renaissance Festival.
Success of the Texas Renaissance Festival
The small village that hosts the Texas Renaissance Festival is located between Magnolia and Plantersville, approximately 45 miles northwest of Houston.
Also referred to as King George, Coulam started the Renaissance festival in 1974 with an attendance of 33,000 in its first year. In the beginning, he spent his earnings on acquiring land that surrounded the grounds of TRF, adding more and more acres to the festival grounds.
As the festival grew, so did George’s income. The generated income allowed him to expand his initial 15 acres of land to 70 acres, with an additional 200 acres for camping grounds – and this was only in the first few years!
By 2024, the annual attendance at the Renaissance festival had grown to over half a million people, with George Coulam generating a fortune through attendance fees, ticket sales, and commission/rent from the merchants who sell their goods.
George Coulam is the majority shareholder of the festival to this date. When he decided to sell the festival, he asked for a minimum of $60 million from prospective buyers.
Legal Troubles
Over the years, Coulam has been subject to some controversy due to his eccentric nature. Recently, he was mentioned in a lawsuit filed in the Houston Division, in which Toni Ewton, a former employee, alleges that Coulam required her to peruse sugar daddy websites on his behalf.
This wasn’t the first lawsuit of this kind to involve him. In 2018, another employee, Eileen Pena, alleged that Coulam fired her after she told him that making her find women to date was inappropriate. The case was dismissed and the details haven’t been publicly disclosed.
“George would go out riding and pick out women he liked. Part of my job was to create marketing collateral material that he would hand out to women. I know for a fact that he would have various people on the staff to help him find dates through various websites aimed at wealthy men looking for companionship,” shared Travis Bryant, another festival employee.
A fourth employee, a horticulturist who remains anonymous, claimed that she placed an ad in the Houston Press in 2004, designed to find Coulam “a local bride”. The ad was titled “loving wife for a loving husband”, where Coulam offered a $10,000 wedding gift and a $35,000 allowance to live with him at his property, Stargate Manor. According to the same employee, Coulam decided to place the local ad because he couldn’t find a mail-order bride from Thailand.
“I don’t know why this fell to me,” the horticulturist said. “Maybe because I was the new guy. I had to contact a doctor and a village elder to translate for her family. The financial arrangement had already been made; it was around $35,000. He traveled to Thailand a lot and knew about kathoey (Thai trans women). I had to express to the doctor that it was important that this was not a surgically created vagina.”
The businessman’s love life is vividly featured throughout the HBO show since he is still searching for a companion. Throughout the show, he shares how much Viagra he takes and what kind of woman he is looking for.
George Coulam Net Worth: Other Investments and Assets of
The biggest asset in George Coulam’s net worth is the Renaissance festival he hosts, which adds millions to his yearly wealth. However, this isn’t the only thing he’s created or earns from these days. In addition to the Texas Renaissance Festival, the businessman has founded an entire city called Todd Mission, invested heavily in real estate, wrote a book, and had a documentary made about his story.
About Todd Mission
Todd Mission is a city in Grimes County in Texas, which lies on Farm to Market Road 1774, 80km northwest of Houston. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 121, which is up from 107 at the census a decade before. This city is basically the home to the Texas Renaissance Festival and was also founded by George Coulam.
Authorship
In 2012, George Coulam published his first and only book to date, titled Mind-Wars. The book talks about holistic medicine and says that this is how Coulam reversed his Alzheimer’s disease.
Documentary
In 2021, after Coulam shared that he planned to retire at the end of the season, American filmmaker Lance Oppenheim produced a documentary about the future of the Texas Renaissance Festival, titled Ren Faire.
The documentary series was released in June 2024 on HBO. It contains three episodes, depicting the festival’s founders’ eccentric lifestyles, as well as the trials of the festival over three years.
Here’s how Oppenheim described Coulam:
“George is, I guess, for the lack of better words, this is that someone describes him in the series, a self-made king. I don’t know how many there are out there in America, probably very few, but this is a man who created the largest Renaissance fair in the country. It got so large that he decided to incorporate a city around the fair, and in that city, he became the mayor of everyone around him. Everyone votes for him every single year. And so in a way, he created a real-life fiefdom, of which he has been the sole ruler for the last five decades.”
When Coulam shared that he wanted to find a successor, one of the businessmen who first approached him was Loui Migliaccio.
However, the sale didn’t go at all smoothly. What followed was a battle to win the throne of the TRF founder, all of which is chronicled in the documentary.
How Did the Sale Go?
In the first episode of the documentary, viewers can see the loyal employee Jeff Baldwin, who was the entertainment director of the festival, later to be promoted to general manager. In the episode, it is clear that Baldwin believes that Coulam will steadily step aside and hand over the reins of the Texas Renaissance Festival to him and his team.
However, at the end of the first episode, Coulam decides to sell to Louis Migliaccio.
In the second and third episodes, Baldwin is disappointed, to say the least. After getting fired, Baldwin even goes to his former employer, asking him for his old job back, saying he wasn’t fit to run the festival in the first place.
However, when Coulam saw the last two episodes of Ren Faire, he realized how unfair he was to his employees. According to Oppenheim, he apologized to Baldwin, rehiring him to run day-to-day operations and giving him the position of new general manager.
Eventually, Coulam decided to maintain his ownership of the festival, rejecting two offers from Migliaccio.
Real Estate Assets
A chunk of Coulam’s wealth has been invested in real estate, more specifically his mansion Stargate Manor in Todd Mission, Texas. The mansion sits on 200 acres of land near the festival grounds.
The palace-like property is valued at around $30 million and includes a Grotto temple, amphitheater, cathedral, spiritual complex, and art studio.
As can be expected for a man who has founded an actual city, this isn’t the only land Coulam owns in Todd Mission. In the city, there are more than 800 acres of land in his name, out of 1200 acres. A lot of this is probably divided among his personal ownership and the festival, so it is unclear how much Coulam would own if he were to sell the festival as planned.
Real estate prices in the county vary, with undeveloped land marketed for around $60,000-$100,000 per acre. Taking a median price, we’ve estimated the land in his or his business’ name to be worth around $60 million.
What Can We Learn from George Coulam’s Story?
George Coulam’s story is a blend of creativity, entrepreneurial spirit, and perseverance. As such, it offers several valuable lessons.
Coulam’s love for Renaissance festivals, which he discovered in his youth, became the foundation of his success. Despite initial challenges, he didn’t give up and pursued his passion. This eventually led him to create the largest such festival in the United States and propelled him to millionaire status. This teaches us the importance of following one’s passion and believing in oneself.
Coulam faced a lot of pushback from the Mormon Church but, instead of giving up, he relocated his venture to a place where it ultimately thrived. This demonstrates the importance of flexibility and adaptability in business.
Coulam’s interactions with his employees and his behavior toward those loyal to him, as highlighted in Ren Faire, show that even successful leaders make big mistakes. However, he has demonstrated an ability to recognize his errors and apologize, underscoring the importance of humility and the willingness to correct course where needed.
Finally, George Coulam’s investments in multiple lawsuits and allegations of inappropriate workplace behavior highlight the importance of maintaining professional boundaries and ethical standards in professional circles. His misuse of power for personal gain is a cautionary tale about the potential damage to one’s reputation and legacy, especially in cases where such misconduct overshadows professional achievements.