Arrow Development was an amusement park ride and roller coaster design and manufacturing company, incorporated in California on November 16, 1945, and based in Mountain View. It was founded by Angus "Andy" Anderson, Karl Bacon, William Hardiman and Edgar Morgan. Originally located at 243 Moffett Boulevard, it moved to a larger facility at 1555 Plymouth Street after Walt Disney Productions purchased one third of the business in 1960. Arrow also had offices at 820 Huff Avenue.
By 1956, then secretary Bill HardimanR. L. Polk Santa Clara County CA Directory, 1949-50 and Angus Anderson, then vice president,R. L. Polk U.S. Cities Directory for Mountain View, CA 1954 had sold their interests in Arrow to Wharton graduate Walter Schulze, who then became Arrow's secretary-treasurer and vice president. Schulze and his wife had provided accounting services for several small companies in the Bay Area, including Duro-Bond Bearing, which is where he likely heard of Arrow. Schulze left Arrow after its sale to Rio Grande Industries. In 1979, Arrow listed over a dozen types of rides in their catalog, including 15 corkscrews, five looping coasters, 12 runaway mine trains, 43 flume rides, and 77 automotive rides, for a total of more than 200 rides installed at nearly 100 locations around the world.
Huss Trading Corporation purchased Arrow Development in 1981, but the combined Arrow-Huss went bankrupt in 1984. The similarly named Arrow Dynamics, eventual successor to Arrow Development, was incorporated in Delaware on January 10, 1986 by Ron Toomer, Otis Hughes, David Klomp, Ray Crandall and Brent Meikle.State of Utah Division of Corporations and Commercial Code Database - Articles of Incorporation #131482
History Early years (1945–1953)
Andy, Bill, Ed and Karl met while working at the Hendy Iron Works in Sunnyvale, CA. The Hendy company had a contract with the US Navy to build torpedo launchers and marine steam engines. By 1942, Hendy was building hundreds of marine engines for Liberty ships. The number of employees increased to over 11,500 to meet demand. In June 1943, the union began enforcing a four-month ban on overtime, during which all machinists were to quit work after eight hours and refuse to work on Sundays. Hendy responded by announcing that all machinists who refused to work overtime would be discharged. Both Karl and Ed would recall later that being told to be on the picket line motivated them to start their own company.
Neither Bacon nor Morgan saw active duty in the military, although Ed and his younger brother Eugene enlisted in the Army Air Corps. Ed was given a deferment based on his employment at Hendy. Eugene was killed in action in the South Pacific on December 16, 1944, while serving with the 868th Bombardment Squadron, flying special radar equipped B-24 Liberators designed for secret night bombing and escort missions.Interment Control Forms, 1928–1962. Interment Control Forms, A1 2110-B. Records of the Office of the Quartermaster General, 1774–1985, Record Group 92. The National Archives at College Park, College Park, Maryland.
During the early years, Arrow Development sold used machine tools and made replacement parts for trucks, which were scarce after the war. Their first big job was building test run-in furnaces for the US Navy. They also performed machining and assembly work for Luscombe, Hewlett-Packard in the 1950s, and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center in the 1960s. Arrow helped the NASA Ames Research Center develop 25 balloon-suspended capsules for high altitude research with monkeys, in preparation for the Mercury Program.
Morgan, Bacon, and Schulze are credited with building the carousel originally installed at Alum Rock Park in 1947. By 1950, Arrow Development was known locally for its manufacture of carousels and other small amusement rides.
Contributions to Disneyland and Walt Disney World Ed Morgan read a newspaper article about Disneyland and wrote to Disney about a small stern wheel paddle boat named “Lil’ Belle”, which Arrow had built in 1952. Disney wasn’t interested in the boat, but became interested in the vehicles that Arrow was creating for other amusement parks. Imagineer Bruce Bushman gave Ed Morgan a sketch of the "Mr. Toad" vehicle, and a prototype body was quickly fabricated. Morgan would later recall that Arrow landed their contract with Disney through the recommendation of Stanford Research Institute which did the site and population density research for Disneyland. Walt and Roy Disney had consulted with Harrison Price of SRI’s Los Angeles office on a proposal to build Disneyland in Burbank, California.
Between 1953 and 1971 Arrow would be instrumental in designing and developing over a dozen ride systems and vehicles for Disney and were awarded multiple patents for their designs., USD189828, , , , , , USD204282 Six of the opening day rides at Disneyland were built by Arrow; Mad Tea Party, King Arthur Carrousel, Mr. Toad's Wild Ride, Dumbo the Flying Elephant, Casey Jr. Circus Train, and Snow White's Scary Adventures.
Arrow went on to design and build vehicles and track systems for the Midget Autopia and Motorboat Cruise (1957), Alice in Wonderland (1958), the Matterhorn Bobsleds (1959), Flying Saucers (1961) and the Mark VI redesign of Autopia cars (1963). The tram cars which carried guests from the parking lot to the park's entrance at Disneyland and Disney World were another Arrow Product. They also designed and built the ride systems for It's a Small World (1964/66), Pirates of the Caribbean, Adventure Through Inner Space (1967), and the Haunted Mansion (1969). Arrow has also been credited for improving the guidance system for the Submarine Voyage (1959) and prototyping a four-track version of Space Mountain for Walt Disney World in Orlando.Mouse Planet; WDW's Space Mountain by George McGinnis, July 6, 2005
Dana Morgan, the son of co-founder Ed Morgan, recalled that Arrow was involved in fourteen of the Walt Disney World attractions, including Dumbo the Flying Elephant and Peter Pan, Pirates of the Caribbean, the parking lot trams, Sky Buckets and the Prince Charming Carousel. The last ride system Arrow may have worked on for Walt Disney World would have been Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, which opened November 15, 1980, two months before the merger with HUSS Maschinenfabrik which formed Arrow-Huss.
Non-Disney rides The 1947 carousel at Alum Rock was later moved to the Happy Hollow Park & Zoo in 1964, where it still operates as the King Neptune's Carousel. Karl and Ed also set up a separate company called Easbey which won a contract with the city of Oakland, California, to install rides at the Children's Fairyland at Lake Merritt, which was built in 1950. The Flecto Carousel was built by Arrow in 1950, although it was not installed at Fairyland until 2002.
In 1955, Arrow built a demonstration children's park called Playtown, next to Palo Alto's Town and Country Village Shopping Center, where they demonstrated new rides including a miniature train, boat, "Arrow-plane," and carousel. They also had a demonstration park across the bay near San Leandro and another in Los Altos.
On August 21, 1960, a tragic accident occurred at Playtown involving the son of Frank Freidel, a visiting professor at Stanford, known for his extensive biography of Franklin Roosevelt. While Frank's wife Madeleine was buying tickets for the miniature train ride, their year old son Phillip wandered off, sat down on the tracks and was hit by the train, suffering massive head and leg injuries. He was pronounced dead on arrival at the Palo Alto-Stanford Hospital. Playtown closed soon after.
Arrow developed the Mystery Island Banana Train ride for Pacific Ocean Park, which was one of the opening-day rides in 1958. Arrow also developed an extensive Alice in Wonderland ride for Blackpool Pleasure Beach, which opened in 1961. For the 1962 Seattle World's Fair, Arrow created the "Space Whirl", a teacup ride which simulated the feeling of being launched into space.
For Freedomland U.S.A., located in New York City from 1960 to 1964, Arrow created four dark rides (Earthquake, Buccaneer, Tornado and Mine Cave), Spin-A-Top (similar to Disneyland's Mad Tea Party), horse-drawn street cars, antique cars (known as Horseless Carriage) and freeway cars for the Satellite City Turnpike. Arrow's contributions to the park are documented in Freedomland U.S.A.: The Definitive History published by Theme Park Press (2019). Arrow also created the Danny the Dragon train ride (two trains) for Freedomland and Happy Hollow (1961), the Cave Train and vintage auto rides for the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk and Adventureland (New York), teacup ("snowball") and bobsled rides for Santa's Village in Scotts Valley, CA, Frontier Village's Antique Car Ride, the Timber Mountain Log and Hat Dance ("Sombrero") rides at Knott's Berry Farm, a suspended monorail and electric boat ride for the Anheuser-Busch brewery in Van Nuys, CA and Florida and an omnimover type ride for Hershey's Chocolate World Great American Chocolate Tour.
Arrow reinvented and improved on the flume ride which had been popular in the early 1900s. The first modern log flume ride being El Aserradero at Six Flags Over Texas which opened in 1963. The Runaway Mine Train (1966), designed by Ron Toomer, was both the first mine train roller coaster and the first roller coaster with an underwater tunnel. Arrow's second mine train ride opened at Six Flags Over Georgia in 1967, followed by another at Cedar Point in 1969. Arrow Development would build 22 flume rides between 1970 and 1975. Toomer was promoted to Manager of Engineering at Arrow Development in 1971.
Arrow's 1979 brochure listed 32 roller coasters, 12 Runaway Mine Trains, 43 Flume rides, 5 "Space Whirl" rides, 4 Rub-a-Dubs, 7 Dark Rides, 20 Special Systems, 49 Antique Car and 28 Sports Car ride installations. Arrow's 1979 product brochure also listed eight Merry-Go-Rounds, mostly installed in California, ranging from in diameter.
Post Disney era transition into Arrow Dynamics and S&S Arrow When Disney opened Central Shops in 1971, Dick Nunis, then Executive VP, told Arrow, “I have to admit that we could not have done this without you. But it’s over now. We built this big facility and we’re going to do everything ourselves.” Dana Morgan recalled, “They made it very clear that it was a new era—that they now had all this in-house capability built up, and they would now do everything themselves.”
In 1972, Bacon, Morgan and Schulze decided to sell Arrow Development to Rio Grande Industries. Rio Grande had plans to build several theme parks, in addition to owning a coaster-building company. Carl and Ed acted as consultants to RGI for a few years. Walter Schultz sold all his RGI stock and retired shortly after the acquisition. All of the projects that were submitted during that time were rejected by RGI management, although they were often developed later by other companies. Ron Toomer stated that "building roller coasters really didn't fit into Rio Grande's scheme of things". In 1977, Arrow opened a manufacturing facility in the Freeport Center in Clearfield, Utah. By 1980, they were no longer operating in Mountain View.CALIFORNIA REGIONAL WATER QUALITY CONTROL BOARD, SAN FRANCISCO BAY REGION, ORDER NO. 01-010, January 24, 2001