We’re still a half-dozen years from the celebrations that will doubtless erupt in Balboa Park to mark the 100th anniversary of the 1915 Panama-California Exposition (the influential event that, among other things, made the park what it is today). But one institution within the park is fast approaching centenarian status: the classic wood carousel located at Zoo Place and Park Boulevard. It was built in 1910 by the Herschell-Spillman company in North Tonawanda, New York, and the current owners aren’t sure what month it was completed and shipped west (to an LA amusement center called Luna Park). But I figure if that happened in the spring, then this will be the 100th summer the old merry-go-round has been giving riders a mesmerizing whirl.
Like the carousel’s exact date of construction, the record of when it made its way south to San Diego has been lost. The 1915 Expo included a carousel, but that one may have been a Dentzel that was later moved to San Francisco. (The San Diego Union-Tribune’s critic-at-large, Welton Jones, reported in a 1993 article that he’d heard this from “the national carousel grapevine.”) Virginia Long, a long-time owner of the carousel, believed that an Englishman by the name of H.D. Simpson bought it from the Luna Park operators and operated it periodically both at Coronado’s Tent City and in Balboa Park during the mid- to late-19-teens and the beginning of the 1920s, according to Jones’ story.
I find it mind-boggling to imagine anyone back in those pre-18-wheeler days moving the carousel anywhere with any regularity. Unlike the merry-go-rounds designed for today’s county fairs, the local Herschell-Spillman was never intended to be portable. It’s what’s known as a “park” carousel – meant to occupy a space on a permanent basis. By 1922, it had settled in near the site where the Reuben H. Fleet Science Center stands today. Most of its riders then were adults, passing the time while waiting for one of the trolleys that ran through the park back then, Bill Brown recently told me. In 1968, the merry-go-round moved to its current location where Brown oversees its operation in the decagonal building that looks “like a Bavarian farm building,” in the words of the current owners.
Brown isn’t one of them, though he has participated in a big chunk of the carousel’s history. A friendly fellow now in his early 50s, he first applied for a job there on his 16th birthday, and he still seems to enjoy working the mechanisms that bring the grand old contraption to life. He loosens a hand brake than slowly positions the clutch arm to match the speed of the central wheel. This takes about 80 seconds. Then he flips a little 3-minute egg timer that the carousel’s operators have been using since the 1940s. Once the grains have run down, it takes another 45 seconds to apply the brake and stop the rotation — making the total ride a little more than six minutes long. “I think that’s relatively long for merry-go-rounds,” Brown told me.
The Balboa Park carousel stands out in other ways. It’s one of only a handful that’s been honored with a Historic Carousel Award by the National Carousel Association. The military band organ (similar to a player piano) near its center can still be coaxed into emitting jolly carousel music, though the antique music sheets read by the device tend to jam when the weather isn’t just right. (Music CDs do the job at other times.) The Balboa Park carousel is also one of only about a dozen carousels in the world that still tantalyzes riders with a brass ring. (Snatching it successfully earns the snatcher a free ride.)
Because of the advantage conferred by their height, the ride’s giraffes tend to be favored 
by clever children. “But the stork’s seat is pretty high too,” Brown confided. “A lot of people don’t notice that.” He told me that the “lead horse,” decorated with roses, has been a perennial favorite of little girls, while little boys often make a dash for the lion. But the on-board menagerie (which was hand-carved by European craftsmen who were paid $2 for a 10-hour workday) includes something for every taste: 12 jumping horses, 15 standing ones, a camel, 2 dogs and 2 cats, a dragon, 2 frogs, 2 giraffes, a goat, 2 mules, 2 ostriches, 2 pigs, 2 roosters, 1 tiger, 2 zebras, 3 chariots, and the stork and lion.
The merry-go-round is still on winter hours, operating from around 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. weekends. But the summer schedule will begin June 15 and continue till September 5. Rides cost $2 each or $10 will get you 6.
I’ve lived in San Diego 42 years, rode the merry-go-round as a child vacationing here, brought my children to ride it on a regular basis and this article taught me the history I never knew of this city treasure. Thanks!