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Photo from
Brian & Jen Faris Note Signs - Buttermilk
5¢ and
Hamburgers 5¢

 Photographs taken in 1967 by Luijt Postma, from Holland, while visiting Long Beach on a Dutch cargo vessel
"The
Pike" amusement center in Long Beach, California, operated by
Charles I.D. Looff. He is best known for building the first carousel at
Coney Island in 1875. A Looff hand-carved horse sells for $10,000 to
$50,000 today.

Charles I.D.
Looff is considered to be the first
of the great American carousel manufacturers, building 17 carousels for
himself and 40 rides in total - only 11 survive.

Early
view around 1911 of the Pike with the first roller coaster extending
over water, band shell, and the Bath House (the white building on the
far right later called the Plunge).

Stan
Cochan of Newport Beach, CA sent this photo taken by his father in
1936 (that's Stan - the boy looking at the camera).
The Name for the Pike
Below are quotes about "The Pike" at the1904 St.
Louis World Fair:
"The Pike was a street a mile long, solidly lined with amusements, more
varied, more elaborate and more costly than any previous exposition had
ever contained."
"When night came, and the exhibit palaces were closed, the throng was
on the Pike. Everyone on the grounds, took a stroll down the Pike, to
see the life and motion and color and light, to hear the bands and
listen to the ingenious gentlemen whose wits were sharpened in the
competition for patronage, and whose vocal powers, assisted by
megaphones, vied successfully with the brass bands. It was an inspiring
spectacle -- fifty or a hundred thousand people ceaselessly moving, the
wise and the simple, the great and the humble, all pleased and happy,
care-free and safe."
Webmaster's Note: I think it is safe to say that Charles I.D. Looff,
being in the amusement business from 1875, was at the 1904 World's Fair
or may have even had a exhibit there. Perhaps he created his own "Pike"
in Long Beach.
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