| George Coulam | |
| Other Names: | The King King George |
| Birth Place: | Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S.[1] |
| Occupation: | business owner, mayor |
| Known For: | founder of the Texas Renaissance Festival |
| Relatives: | David Coulam |
George C. Coulam is an American business owner. He is the founder of the Texas Renaissance Festival (TRF), the largest Renaissance fair in the United States.[2] Since 1982, he has also served as the mayor of Todd Mission, Texas.[3]
Coulam drew wider public attention after being featured in the 2024 HBO documentary series, Ren Faire. The series explores a succession crisis as Coulam, who founded the TRF in 1974, considers retirement.[4]
Coulam was born to a Mormon family in Salt Lake City, Utah and attended the San Fernando Valley State College. In 1974, Coulam and his brother David purchased 15 acres of land on a former strip mine and founded the TRF. In 1982, Coulam and others incorporated the city of Todd Mission and expanded the TRF. In 1999, Coulam married a woman from Thailand, Susie. Coulam's mansion, Stargate Manor, sits on 200 acres of land in Todd Mission.[5]
In 2012, Coulam authored a book entitled Mind-Wars, which claims that holistic medicine reversed his Alzheimer's disease.[6]
In 2021, American filmmaker Lance Oppenheim produced a documentary about the future of the TRF as Coulam planned to retire at the end of the season. Released in June 2024 on HBO, the three-episode series depicts Coulam's eccentric lifestyle and the trials and tribulations of the festival over a three-year period.[7] In an interview for NPR, Oppenheim described George as, "George is, I guess, for the lack of the 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 of for the last five decades".[8]