Chuck Kaparich grew up in Butte riding the carousel at Columbia Gardens, the miners' amusement park on the east side of Butte, long since gone. Years later, a cabinetmaker in Missoula, he set out to carve himself a carousel horse, then four, and in 1991 he went to the city council with an offer. He would provide the frame, the mechanism, the horses and the chariots, he told them, if the city would give the carousel a permanent home and promise that no one would ever take it apart.
The city agreed. That year Kaparich bought a 1918 Herschell-Spillman frame that had turned at the Ponderosa Ranch theme park in Nevada, and he taught volunteers to carve basswood. Families and organizations adopted the horses and helped decide how each was painted, and some tucked keepsakes into the hollow bodies before they were sealed. After four years of carving, sanding and painting, the carousel opened on May 27, 1995, in its own building in Caras Park on the Clark Fork, with 38 horses, two chariots, 14 carved gargoyles and a band organ.
Riders still reach for the brass ring from a dragon's mouth. In 2001 more than four thousand volunteers built Dragon Hollow, the playground beside it, in nine days, and a carving room added later turns out horses for carousels elsewhere. Watching is free, and rides cost a little.
The closest stops worth working into your route
Roadside plaques and monuments within a short detour