The Silver Beach Carousel

Of all the times I've been in St. Joseph, I never noticed the carousel before.  It's been here since 1910.

 The three-row, Coney Island Style Carousel was built by Fred Dolle of Bergan, NJ in 1910.  All of the horses were hand carved by Charles Carmel who was considered as one of the master carvers of the time.

 In 1920, it was converted to a jumping carousel in order to keep up with the times and was quite busy.

 It remained in operation until its closure in 1971.

 In 1972, it was bought by a carousel collector and moved from St. Joseph.

 In 2003, a group of businessmen became interested in returning the carousel to its home, but they were unsuccessful in that effort.   So they turned their efforts to constructing a new one.

 The new one was built by a company out of Manfield, Ohio.  They took great steps to recreate some of the original horses.  They also added some new ones.

In 2010, the carousel started up again.