The Willow Springs Tuesday Study Club met on April 2, 2024 at the Willow Springs Senior Center. Following a business meeting, Claudia Marvin gave the following presentation.
Charles I.D. Looff was one of the greatest carousel makers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A skilled woodcarver, he arrived in New York City from Denmark in 1870 at the age of 18 and by 1876 had manufactured the first carousel for New York’s Coney Island. During his lifetime, he produced carousels for parks across the nation. In 1917, he delivered a carousel to the Great Saltair Park, just outside Salt Lake City, which would eventually find its way to Nederland, Colorado.
During its 42 years of operation, the Saltair Carousel survived fires and wind storms. Once, it was the only attraction to survive a devastating park fire unharmed. After a windstorm, during which the roller coaster was blown over onto the carousel, it was rebuilt with two rows of animals from the original four rows.
In 1959, the park was declared bankrupt and Utah’s governor gave the Looff Carousel to the Utah State Training School in American Fork, not far away. Nearby striking steel workers and company management officers came together to set up the carousel on the grounds of the state school. The developmentally and physically disabled residents enjoyed it for another 27 years. In 1976, school residents restored the animals under supervision.
For the first few decades of the 1900s in America, there were between 5,000 and 6,000 carousels, or merry-go-rounds, featuring hand-carved wooden animals, usually horses. Beginning in the 1970s and continuing to the present, many carousels were sold to buyers who would then auction off the animals separately to collectors. Many of the old carousel frames are being restored and then populated with newly carved wooden animals. That is what has been done to create the Carousel of Happiness. Only a few hundred wooden carousels are left in the United States.
In 1986, The Utah State School carousel was sold to a buyer who only wanted the wooden animals. Scott Harrison, a resident of Nederland, Colorado, learned that the empty frame was still standing and available. With the help of a friend, he took it apart and trucked it to Nederland. As a young Marine in Vietnam, Scott had received a tiny music box that he held to his ear to distract him from the horror of the war going on around him. The music, Chopin’s “Tristesse” brought him a peaceful image of a carousel in a mountain meadow. After he returned home, he rescued the abandoned Looff carousel in Utah. He spent the next 26 years hand-carving animals to bring it back to life.
Scott never carved before, but starting with the rabbit that is now on the sign in front of the carousel in Nederland, he went on to create more than 50 one-of-a-kind animals, 35 of which can be ridden. As he was finishing, he created a 501 (c) 3 nonprofit organization, and the small community of Nederland (then with a population of 1,500) came together to raise $700,000 needed to build it a home.
The carousel is a blend of new and old creations. All the original bearings, gears, and metal work have been restored or rebuilt for continued use. A few pieces have been replaced because of safety concerns. The original electric motor and controller were retooled by General Electric to conform to modern day use. A new floor was built using Southern Yellow Pine. A material that was used in many original carousel floors. The wood used was cut down in 1890 and used as cribbing for whiskey barrels for a Seagram’s plant in Peoria, Illinois. When the plant was dismantled in the 1990s, this wood was resold and used as floor planks for the Carousel of Happiness. Rounding boards, the decorative panels which surround the top of a carousel, were missing by the time it was taken apart in 1986. So, rounding board paintings from other carousels were donated by collector Marianne Stevens and installed. The outside set is painted by the “Michaelangelo of the Midway” August Wolfinger. The paintings were rescued from a 1910 carousel originally built for the Silver Beach Amusement Park in St. Joseph, Michigan by Fred Dolle, Looff’s brother-n-law. They were repaired and restored by the late Denver restoration artist Edwin Friedman.
Most of the inside paintings, depicting endangered species, were painted in the 1990s by V. Vladimir. Because there were only 16 paintings and there are 18 sections to the carousel, local artist Dorothy Emerling generously volunteered to paint two extra panels representing polar bears and Amur leopards.
The Carousel of Happiness opened on Memorial Day 2010 with a silent memorial to recognize the service of fallen veterans, including two of Scott’s Marine Corps friends. There are several benches and a wheel chair ramp so that the carousel is both accessible and inclusive. In July 2022, after 12 years of service, their one-millionth ticket was sold.
