Rhode Island once had at least a dozen, possibly more since some locations had multiple rides. You can still take a spin (and even try to grab at the brass ring) for $5 or less at Watch Hill Beach in Westerly, Roger Williams Park Zoo in Providence, Crescent Park in East Providence, Slater Park in Pawtucket, Adventureland in Narragansett, and at the Warwick Mall.

The Crescent Park Carousel in the Riverside neighborhood in East Providence, R.I.Herde, Tom Globe Photo

The Flying Horse Merry-Go-Round, an open-air carousel in Westerly, is believed to have been left behind by a traveling circus around 1883, according to Gary Anderson, who has been refurbishing its horses since 1993. Anderson is the operator of Anderson Artworks in Stonington, Conn., and he, his daughter, Elizabeth Anderson, and son, Benjamin Anderson, are the merry-go-round’s official caretakers.

Once a week during the summer, they sweep sand and water away from the ride, which is about 150 feet from the beach. They brush and condition the horsehair tails and manes, check the leather saddles and stirrups, and perform other maintenance.

“It has had a roof over it, at least since 1906,” Gary Anderson said. “If it’s raining, the center fills up with water. There’s salt water, mist, and other things to contend with.”

The Flying Horse has endured through the powerful storms that have hit Rhode Island. It was buried under sand after the Hurricane of 1938 pushed 17 feet of storm surge ashore, and has been battered by several more since, including hurricanes Carol (1954), Bob (1991), and Sandy (2012).

The original horses are on display the first few weeks of the season, before they’re replaced by a “sacrificial” set made for the busy summer season, Anderson said.

In this file photo, a young girl grabs for a brass ring while riding the Flying Horse Carousel in the Watch Hill neighborhood in Westerly, R.I.Wiggs, Jonathan Globe Staff

“They were never meant to last this long,” Anderson said. “Most carousels are wood-carved and painted. These have leather and metal tacks, marbles for eyes, and some sewing is involved.”

Climate change has claimed several of Rhode Island’s classic carousels.

In Newport, the carousel at Easton’s Beach was shuttered in 2019, after salt water damaged the building’s structure, according to Thomas Shevlin, the city’s director of communications. It was disassembled, and the pieces are in storage in Connecticut until officials can determine a new location for it.

“We’ve seen a steady uptick over the last 10 years of flooding events at Easton’s Beach,” Shevlin said. ”We started seeing waves coming over the beach, over the sand, into the parking lot.”

Erosion and flooding also claimed the carousel at Atlantic Beach Park in Westerly’s Misquamicut district.

The 1915 Herschell-Spillman carousel at Atlantic Beach Park in Westerly, R.I., was beloved by Rhode Island families for generations. It closed during the pandemic and never reopened.John Caruso

Carousels were a fixture at the family-owned Atlantic Beach Park for more than a century. One was destroyed during the Hurricane of 1938; it was replaced by a 54-foot-wide carousel housed in a special circular building designed especially for it. Eventually, that carousel’s mechanisms began to wear out, and it was replaced by a series of smaller rides.

“We even had a double-decker in there at one point,” owner Charles Trefes, the grandson of the original owner, told the Westerly Sun in 2025.

In 1996 Trefes and his wife, Amy Trefes, installed a 1915 Herschell-Spillman menagerie carousel that was relocated from Rocky Point Park in Warwick. But as with other carousels, high operating costs, flooding from storms, and changing safety regulations led them to shut the Atlantic Beach Park carousel down during the pandemic.

“Antique wooden carousels are very labor intensive,” Amy Trefes said in a statement emailed to the Globe.

The family planned to reopen the carousel in the summer of 2024. But violent, back-to-back coastal storms in December 2023 and January 2024 “essentially destroyed everything inside the main building,” she said.

“After witnessing the damage sustained during those winter storms firsthand and thinking back to other storms and hurricanes, it made us seriously contemplate our future and the precautions we can take to avoid future losses,” she said. “It is not ‘if’ a future storm will come but ‘when.’”

Horses on the 1915 Herschell-Spillman carousel at Atlantic Beach Park in Westerly, R.I., John Caruso

The carousel was dismantled and put in storage “in a location far away from the angry ocean until we can find a safe new home for it where the beautiful horses can all run together again,” she said. The family hopes to get the carousel “up and running in the future.”

In the meantime, the Atlantic Beach Park arcade still remains, as does the Windjammer Surf Bar. “Plans to renovate the buildings are in the works for next summer, including a new and fresher arcade,” she said in an email.

Even disassembled, old carousels can be worth a pretty penny. Carousel horses can fetch $100,000 or more apiece at auction, according to the publication Carousel History. And given the high operating costs, keeping them off the auction block can be costly.

“We lost a lot back in the 1980s to auctions,” said Wentzel of the National Carousel Association. “Carousel figures were expensive. They were breaking them up.”

But some local carousels have survived.

Melissa Kells Burdick, owner of Adventureland in Narragansett, said she installed the 28-foot Victorian-style “Poppy’s Carrousel” in memory of her parents, Raymond and Patricia Kells, who founded Adventureland in 1985.

“It’s you just experiencing the ride. It brings back all the parts of childhood that are innocent and beautiful, in my opinion,” Burdick said. “That’s why kids love it. Their faces light up.”

Friends of the Hearthside House in Lincoln, R.I., attended the Looff Carousel Heritage Festival, part of the Pawtucket Arts Festival and Slater Park Festival. Hope Joyal, back left, her sister, Hazel, Kathryn Chase Hartley, middle in pink, and Carol Ann Shogi and Michael Shogi rode the carousel in vintage clothing. They are all volunteers with Friends of the Hearthside.Carlos Muñoz

In Pawtucket, Slater Memorial Park’s carousel is part joy ride, part thrill ride. It was originally made for Lee Funland Park in Troy, N.Y., and came to Rhode Island around 1910, according to Cheryl Babiec and Patricia Zacks, members of Friends of the Looff Carousel at Slater Park, a nonprofit organization that works to preserve the ride.

“It’s magic. The unit’s like 131 years old,” Zacks said. “It’s absolutely beautiful.”

“When you’re looking at it — the art and the pieces — it’s like a melting pot of the world on a carousel,” Babiec said.

During its heyday, the merry-go-round spun at a dizzying 15- to 20-miles per hour. Today, it rotates at about 9 to 10 mph, still among the fastest in the country.

“It goes really fast, and it’s affordable for the kids,” said Cassandra Parise who receives four free tickets a year from the Feinstein Jr. Scholar program. “My daughter loves it. She likes to pick the pink, bedazzled ones. [As a child,] I always would pick the one I thought was the cutest, the prettiest, and most aesthetic.”

A ride originally cost five cents, and is still only $1.

Gears and belts spin the Looff Carousel at Slater Park in Pawtucket, R.I. Past merry-go-rounds were hand-cranked, turned by horses, and steam-powered. Today, they have electrical engines maintained with generous amounts of grease.Carlos Muñoz

Slater Memorial Park’s carousel was created by Charles I.D. Looff, a Danish furniture maker who built more than 40 merry-go-rounds, including one in Coney Island, N.Y., as well as several amusement park rides, roller coasters, and Ferris wheels in the United States, according to the Friends of the Looff Carousel at Slater Park.

Looff also created the Crescent Park Carousel in East Providence, which was built in 1895 and added to the National Register of Historic Sites and Places in 1976, according to a website dedicated to the carousel’s history. In 1985, the Rhode Island General Assembly proclaimed it “the State Jewel of American Folk Art” and in 1987, the Department of the Interior, National Park Service, designated the Carousel as a National Historic Landmark.

The National Carousel Association offers grants to help carousel owners preserve them, but the job of real saving carousels comes down to communities, Wentzel said. “They need to rally around them.”

“National organizations can help, but we’re not the ones who save the carousels,” he said. “It’ll be local groups. It needs to be preserved for the history of the community.”

Carlos Muñoz can be reached at carlos.munoz@globe.com. Follow him @ReadCarlos and on Instagram @Carlosbrknews.