Helena IR reports, a landmark piece of playground equipment in Helena, MT the rocket slide began its final journey on Wednesday.
On Wednesday, a Terex T 230 Mobile Hydraulic Truck crane supplied NorthSide Welding & Fabrication Inc. helped a county public works department crew remove the rocket and load it onto a semi-truck’s flatbed trailer for the trip across town to Helena College, where it will be restored.
Just when the rocket will make its return isn’t certain, county Commissioner Andy Hunthausen said.
“We didn’t put any parameters on that as we recognize it’s an educational project,” he said.
Hunthausen asked Helena College to help save the rocket, said the college’s Dean Daniel Bingham.
People have played on it for generations, and Hunthausen didn’t want to see it lost to history, he explained.
“We’re pretty excited about the opportunity to do this,” Bingham said.
Restoration of the rocket could be completed by the end of the college’s fall semester that concludes in mid-December, Bingham said. Or it could continue into the school’s spring semester that concludes in May.
What’s important, he explained, is to have the students prepared for the restoration work they will undertake on the rocket.
There’s interest in recreating the slide that was once part of it too, he said.
But before work begins, Helena College needs photos of the rocket as it stood in the park.
And the college would like to collect stories from those who once played on the rocket to use in compiling a history of it, he added.
Rockets were popular in playgrounds in the late 1950s and into the 1960s. A 1963 issue of Life magazine noted the arrival of Space Age playground equipment.
“The new gear, some of it as colorful as modern art, is as different from the old-fashioned slide, seesaw and teeth-busting swing as Telstar is from a Conestoga wagon,” it reported in a pictorial look at playgrounds.
Rust competed with faded red and white paint on the rocket’s six legs. Small, black plastic signs with orange lettering warned against trespassing and said “Keep Out.”
Hatch watched as work began to prepare the rocket for its journey. He said the fair board talked about what to do with it for years. Within the last three or four months, the discussion became more focused and plans started to take shape.
With the crane extended above the rocket and connected to it with canvas straps, the county crew used a torch to cut the rocket’s six legs and the steel post that ran upward through the spiral staircase to the spaceship’s nose.
