Merriam's Midway Shows - A Sesquicentennial Feature

Alva Clair Merriam was born July 16, 1911 on a farm near Mitchell, Davison County, South Dakota, the only child of Wilbur and Myrtle Merriam. Edna Alice Arnold was born November 24, 1910 – the youngest by six years of a family of two boys and four girls.  An unlikely couple, indeed, to meet, marry and begin a sixty-five year (so far) carnival legacy that would span three generations.

When they married, December 30, 1933, economic opportunities were not readily available. As Al  would demonstrate many times in his life, when something he needed wasn’t available, he made his own – in this case he made his own opportunity.  With the American carnival industry  in its adolescence - Just forty years after the close of the Columbian Exposition in Chicago -  which featured the world’s first Ferris wheel – Al and Edna began selling popcorn on Saturday nights in downtown Ogden, Iowa.

Though Al had no siblings, he was blessed with colorful uncles and a father – Wilbur (Web) Merriam – who was filled with the do-it-yourself, free swinging, capitalistic American spirit of the time.  

It’s unclear who had the idea first,  but Web and son Al thought if they could build a few, small gasoline powered cars, kids would pay money to drive them around a roped off area of the street.

So design and fabricate they did, with the help of Web’s brother, Ortiz (Snort), who owned the local machine shop. Three cars were produced with almost every part handmade.  They called their ride “Drive-em-yourself-Cars” and Merriam’s Amusement Rides was born with winter quarters in Ogden.

During the pre-war years, Al and Edna struggled but persevered, as did the rest of the country, and by 1939 they had acquired five rides (including a kiddie car ride built by Web) and a son, Dale Wilbur. During the war years, Al worked at an ordnance plant in Ankeny, Iowa, waiting to be drafted. Instead of working a traveling season, he operated his Eli wheel at Riverview Park in Des Moines, Iowa. These years were the summers of 1942, 1943, and 1944.

Read more in the Oct. 26 issue of The Ogden Reporter.