IL Route 24 Carousel Horses
It is the spring of 2025. I have had to shift this very popular and beloved carousel horses post from a zenfolio space to squarespace. 2012-2025. Of all 2400 of my former blog posts this was the post that attracted the most traffic.
I had a lot of challenges migrating photos. I hope to piece together something for now and add to this post as images find me.
As the story goes a retired Chenoa farmer named Bob, plunked a carousel horse at the end of a field as a marker for his wife to see. Seemingly, others plopped more of these whimsical plastic figurines until there was a row of them!
When I first moved to Central Illinois in 2009, I had the opportunity to meet in Fairbury for a business coffee. Driving there on Rt 24, I noted this rather odd procession. It took me a bit to get back to them, but I snapped a few photographs in 2011, feeling a bit like I was trespassing on some sortof private memorial.
In 2013 I went again. I was on my way back from a trip and using Rt 24 as a shortcut from I57 to I55. My skills as a photographer had grown. The time of day was SO great for image taking. I love the hyper focus, the pops of color and shadow play. I had started using the software Lightroom and my artist signature was beginning to take form. It showed in my image taking.
In September of 2015 I was saying farewell to Central Illinois and took a fellow photographer with me on a bit of a road trip. The carousel horse field was one of the places we stopped. The day could NOT have been more perfect, and it was a treat to share this find with another creative. As anyone who is a photographer knows, when you are always the one behind the camera it's often a challenge to have a quality image taken of yourself. Our day together was a perfect ode to those endless fields we all know from the midwest. and, what a tug on my heart to say goodbye to someone whom I was just getting to pal around with - artist to artist.
My friend honored me by capturing an image of me in my essence.
My carousel horse post captured the attention of the owners of the farm in 2015. They requested photos of Bob and the horses, and although I couldn't follow through because of my move - my friend did.
Below images taken the winter of 2016 by Ricky Traughber.
Mr. Robert Wenger died September 7, 2019 He was 90. From the obituary: “Robert brightened commuters lives with his line of horses in the field, that can be seen off of Route 24.”
In 2021 Sean Mattingly, wrote a comment on my blog, it said: “I visited in September of 2020 and brought in an additional horsey. This is a video I made of the adventure.”
Sean wrote: I visited a quirky and little-known place on Illinois Highway 24 on the way to Route 66 near Chenoa. There is a row of bouncy horses that was placed there by a farmer years ago. He was just using one horse to mark the location of a drainage tile. But then more horses mysteriously get added to his collection, usually under cover of night. The only clue you are at this destination is a single plastic horse peeking out from behind the corn. The address of Bouncy Horse Gallop is 35190 E. 3100 North Rd, Chenoa, IL. The roadside has exactly one parking spot and is featured on the website called RoadsideAmerica.com. If you visit, please don't deface the horsies! Just admire them and take photos, please.
image above taken by Sean Mattingly, 09/20 - he called this horse "sentinel" and that's his 1968 GTO ( the video - link above - he shot is an absolute riot. )
