The story begins in the German town of Kreuznach, where Michael Dentzel built carousels in the mid-nineteenth century. His son Gustav emigrated to Philadelphia in 1864 and began constructing carousels of his own, likely using parts imported from his father's workshop for his first American machine. Gustav Dentzel's menagerie carousels were distinctive for their variety of animals. While most carousel makers stuck to horses, Dentzel filled his platforms with cats, dogs, rabbits, goats, pigs, donkeys, kangaroos, giraffes, lions, tigers, deer, ostriches, and more. Each animal was individually hand-carved and painted. The largest Dentzel carousels carried up to 72 animals and four chariots. Gustav built and sold carousels across America until his death in 1908 in the Germantown section of Philadelphia.

This particular carousel was manufactured around 1896 and displayed at the 1904 St. Louis Exposition, the great World's Fair celebrating the centennial of the Louisiana Purchase. After the exposition closed, the carousel was sold and shipped south to Meridian, Mississippi, where it was installed in Highland Park, a 32-acre pleasure park that had opened as one of the South's premier streetcar parks. The carousel began operating in 1909 and has run ever since, surviving world wars, the Great Depression, and the decline of the streetcar era that originally brought visitors to its door. It stands inside its original shelter building, one of the few remaining structures built directly from a Dentzel blueprint.

By the early 1980s, more than seven decades of continuous operation had taken a toll on the hand-carved animals and the shelter building. From 1984 through 1995, restoration specialist Rosa Patton of Raleigh, North Carolina, one of the foremost carousel restorers in the country, meticulously brought the animals, chariots, and canvas oil paintings back to their original condition. The animal restoration alone cost more than $112,000, while the shelter building required nearly twice that amount. In 1987, the Department of the Interior designated the carousel and its shelter building a National Historic Landmark, one of only 11 carousels nationwide to receive that honor and the only one in the American South.

Gustav Dentzel's legacy did not end with his death in 1908. His sons William and Edward kept the Philadelphia workshop running until 1928, when William died. Edward moved the business briefly to California before the stock market crash of 1929 and the Great Depression forced him to abandon carousel-making for home construction in Beverly Hills. But the craft resurfaced. Edward's son, William H. Dentzel II, developed a line of children's carousels in the early 1970s, finished in traditional Dentzel style with mirrors, artwork, lights, and band organ music, carrying on until his death in 1991. Today, William H. Dentzel III and his children, Zaryn, Sophia, and Noah, continue the family tradition, now spanning six generations from the workshops of Kreuznach to the parks of America.