Story City: Norwegian Iowa and a Carousel That Survived

The small town of Story City, just north of Ames on Interstate Thirty-Five, sits at the center of what was once one of the densest Norwegian immigrant settlements in the United States. Norwegian farmers began arriving in the eighteen fifties, and by nineteen oh five an estimated twelve thousand Norwegians were living in central Iowa's Story County. They built churches, established language schools, and held onto the old country culture well into the twentieth century. Story City still celebrates Scandinavian Days each summer.

In the middle of North Park stands the town's most beloved artifact: an antique wooden carousel built by the Herschell-Spillman Company of North Tonawanda, New York, in nineteen thirteen. The community bought it in nineteen thirty-eight, restored it in nineteen eighty-two, and it is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. When the carousel turns, it is still powered by a vintage motor, still playing the same band organ music, still carrying riders under the same painted canopy that Norwegian-American children rode more than a century ago.