The Man Behind The Wheel
By: Harry Bulkeley
It's carnival season! Most small towns (and big ones, too) will have some kind of festival and most of those will include a carnival. Long before I could appreciate the subtleties of the pie baking contest or fat steer auction, I knew a good Scrambler or Bump-Em cars when I rode it. Rising above the midway is the tallest of all the rides. I like to think of it as the King of the Carnival. What is it? The Ferris Wheel, of course.
Every time I get on one, I think to myself "This is pretty lame" until the first rotation takes me over the top and suddenly my stomach reminds me of why this remains a favorite from generation to generation. Fewer of us know that the Ferris wheel, or at least its designer, was born right here in Forgottonia.
As you may surmise, a Mr. Ferris invented the Ferris Wheel. His full name was George Washington Gale Ferris, Jr. To some of you in Knox County, that name might ring a bell. Galesburg was founded by ta da- George Washington Gale, a preacher and educator from upstate New York who came out here to start Knox College. Some of the main financial backers of the plan were Sylvanus Ferris and his sons, one of whom was George Washington Gale Ferris, Sr. His son, G.W.G.Ferris, Jr. was born in Galesburg in 1859.
G.W.G. Ferris, Jr.
Some people think that Ferris developed his wheel in Galesburg but his family left Forgottonia when he was only five years old. They settled in Nevada and young George went to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute to study civil engineering. He first worked at designing and building steel bridges for railroads but in 1891 the directors of the forthcoming Columbian Exposition in Chicago held a contest to design a monument for the fair. Gustave Eiffel had recently unveiled his tower in Paris and Chicago wanted something as good or better than that. This is America, after all.
Ferris submitted his design for a giant wheel that he said would "out Eiffel Eiffel." To bolster his entry, he also found financial backers to pay for it. His design was truly spectacular, weighing over 400 tons and rising 264 feet above the exposition midway. It had 36 cars, each of which held 60 people. It was huge! You could buy two rotations for fifty cents or about $17.50 in today's money. Over 1.4 million people paid to ride during the 19 weeks it was running.
The Original 1893 Chicago Ferris Wheel
The wheel was the big hit of the World's Fair but it was also a source of big problems. Ferris sued the fair promoters, claiming that they had not paid him his fair share of the purported $750,000 profit that his wheel had earned. His suppliers sued him for nonpayment of debts. After the fair the wheel was reinstalled on the north side of Chicago near Lincoln Park. Litigation again ensued as an annoyed neighbor sought to have it taken down. He failed and the wheel stayed up for several years.
Our hero, George W.G. Ferris was not so lucky. He spent two years in court seeking his share of the profits and fighting off creditors. His wife left him. Moving back to Pittsburgh, he contracted typhoid fever and died bankrupt at age 37. He was cremated but his ashes remained in the crematorium for over a year as no one claimed them.
His wheel lived on, however. In 1903, it was dismantled and transported by train to St. Louis for its 1904 World's Fair where it was again a big hit. After the fair it was also a big white elephant mostly because it was so big. The axle alone weighed almost 90,000 pounds and sat 130 feet in the air. The only way to get it down was to dynamite the concrete supports, which ruined the steel structure.
So, what happened to this giant sculpture? Strangely, no one knows. The debris from blowing it up is believed to have been buried somewhere between St Louis and Chicago. Maybe right here in Forgottonia? Probably not.
George Washington Gale Ferris of Galesburg only built one wheel in his all too short life but his name lives on in every wheel in every festival and carnival in every city and town in the world. Not bad for a guy from Forgottonia