War Memorial Park � This park is one of Little Rock's oldest and most popular. This outstanding facility is near downtown Little Rock, but still far enough from the brick and mortar to include an 18-hole public golf course, amusement park, city zoo, and indoor health training center and public swimming pool. This park also is home to two of the state's outstanding athletic facilities, War Memorial Stadium and Ray Winder Field.


1992


War Memorial Park's "Over the Jumps" Carousel


Becky Rogers Witsell of Little Rock, now an artist and designer, provided for The Arkansas News her memories of childhood good times in War Memorial Park. The merry-go-round there still stands out in her mind. Here is her story, in her words: The first eight years of my life I lived in Little Rock on "A" street between Elm and Rose streets. I was born in 1944. I like to think that was really not so long ago.

Like everyone, I have many memories of growing up in that neighborhood and the things' I enjoyed doing. I made haunted houses in the basement with my friends, rode bicycles down Rose Hill (very scary), took piano lessons from Miss Brickhouse on Cedar Street, read comic books in Mr. Buice's Drug Store, and drank root beer floats in frosted mugs at Weber's' Root Beer Stand on Markham. All good neighborhood memories!

However, the best thing going for the neighborhood was its proximity to War Memorial Park. War Memorial Park had everything! You could go swimming in the summer, go to the zoo, swing and slide on the most daring slide, ride the carnival rides, and "go fish" to win painted plaster figures decorated with glitter.

Safely getting up and down the midway to ride the rides was the biggest challenge. "Laughing Sally," the lady in the glass box outside the haunted house, frightened me so that I either needed an adult escort or had to walk on the opposite side of the midway (and even then I felt I needed to run). Once I was safely beyond Sally's domain I could enjoy the prospect of a merry-go-round ride that took me galloping and jumping on horseback through sunlight and shade to the strange sounding music of the band organ.

It was a high step up into the saddle of one of the dappled ponies. My small hands held the metal ribbon and pole tightly to be ready for the first lurch starting the ride. As the ride sped up it seemed as if my pony and I would leap through the air, one jump after another. Several jumps in slow motion signaled that the ride would be over until another day. What an unusual and magical ride it was!

Forty years later I can fully understand just how rare and unusual that ride was. Now I know that it was one of only five "Over the Jumps" carousels manu- factured by Herschell-Spillman in the 1920s. By the time I was riding the machine it had already been retired from the traveling carnival circuit and had become a permanent feature at War Memorial Park. Today it may be the only one of those manufactured that still survives.

Last summer a group of people with fond carousel memories like myself began to raise donations to purchase and restore Over the Jumps. With the first payment made in November of last year, we dismantled the machine and put it into storage. This March it will come out of storage and work will begin on the slow process of restoring the horses, scenery panels, and machinery to their 1920s splendor.

When the project is complete we plan to erect it once again near its original site within the protection of the zoo's grounds. Once again the experience bf a magical jumping horseback ride will become future memories for new generations of Arkansans.



CREDITS: Old State House Museum


Over The Jumps Carousel -- One of the most eagerly awaited restoration projects in Arkansas is underway. An April groundbreaking paves the way for construction to begin on the new entry complex at the Little Rock Zoo, featuring the historic Spillman Engineering "Over the Jumps Carousel" as the center point. Unlike most carousels where the horses move up and down, Over the Jumps features an undulating track, the only one still in existence of the original four that were produced during the 1920s. The 40 prancing ponies have been meticulously restored as have the four chariots. When restoration is completed, visitors will be able to ride a wooden version of "Smarty Jones," the wonder horse of 2004. Owners Patricia and Roy Chapman donated money to the project in honor of their famous thoroughbred which started his Triple Crown quest at Hot Springs' Oaklawn Race Track. In addition to the carousel, the new complex, which will be of turn-of-the-19th century architectural design, will house a gift shop, an old-fashioned ice cream parlor, and a replica of "Laughing Sally," a coin-operated fortune teller long associated with the carousel when it was at Little Rock's War Memorial Park. Tentative completion date for the whole project is March 2006.