Carnival once featured unique carousel

By Hannah Wever
Review Staff Writer

Published: June 5, 2008

The 2008 Orange Fireman’s Fair starts this week at the fairgrounds just behind the Orange Volunteer Firehouse. Along with games, contests, funnel cakes and other fair fare, there are neon-colored, brightly-lit, gravity-defying rides for thrill seekers.
But, decades ago, there were exotic animals at the Orange Volunteer Fireman’s fair. Those beasts, which included tigers, giraffes, lions and horses, were part of a beautifully crafted, imported carousel that was housed in the silver-domed building where fair-goers now play bingo.
Duff Green, a former volunteer fireman who knows just about everything about Orange County and can show you a relevant file folder full of sepia-toned photos to prove it, remembers the carousel from the fair’s early years. Green said the round-a-bout ride was added to the fireman’s fair in the late 1930s. At the time, the ride had already been in use for 20 or so years, so it came to Orange at a discounted price of around $1,000.
“The animals-maybe the whole thing was-built in Germany at the turn of the century,” Green said.
For years, Green said, the carousel’s painted ponies and embellished big cats were a fair favorite for the children and adults of Orange.
“It just ran continuously for days during the fair,” he added. “A ride cost maybe ten cents.”
After a while however, the cost of operating the carousel became too great. Green said there was a great deal of mechanical upkeep. Fortunately, he explained, mechanically adept volunteer firemen kept up with the machinery. But it was the insurance costs that forced the fireman’s fair to shut the carousel down. Dust collected on the backs of the carousel animals, and rust formed on the machinery as it sat for years, unused, inside its tin-roofed, round stable.
About 40 years ago, the carousel and its critters was brought out of mothballs, but not to return to its place as a feature of the fair. Green said a train passenger, headed north to Washington D.C. glimpsed the round building as she passed by on the nearby railroad tracks and speculated at its contents.
“She looked down and saw that building,” Green explained. “She just had a notion that a carousel might be in there.”
Green said the woman got off the train in Culpeper, caught a cab back to Orange, and after learning she had guessed correctly about the carousel, bought it from the fire company for $35,000. The new owner had antique ride dismantled and sold each animal individually as collectors’ items.
“Where they are now, I don’t know-probably in peoples’ living rooms,” Green said.
The fair opens Wednesday, June 4 and runs through Saturday, June 7, and features more than 20 rides, nightly bingo games, and a parade on June 5 at 6:30 p.m. Folks can fill up at a number of concessions stands, including the Ladies Auxiliary Booth.