Highland Park Dentzel Carousel and Shelter Building, National Historic Landmark carousel in Highland Park, Meridian, Mississippi.

The Highland Park Dentzel Carousel is a two-row stationary menagerie with 28 hand-carved animals—a lion, a tiger, two deer, two antelope, two giraffes and 20 horses—plus two chariots, seating 36. It measures about 30 feet in diameter, smaller than the 42-foot standard of its time, and its crown carries original oil paintings. It stands in a rectangular board-and-batten shelter built from a Dentzel blueprint, with an octagonal clerestory roof and an intact mosaic tile floor with a snowflake pattern.

Originally manufactured in 1896 by German immigrant Gustav Dentzel, the carousel was showcased at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair before being purchased by the City of Meridian in 1909 and installed in Highland Park where it has operated continuously for over a century.

The carousel's 28 animals were carved by Gustav Dentzel's Philadelphia workshop, a family firm that began building carousels in 1864 and is credited with starting the American carousel industry. Dentzel animals were praised as "the finest built," especially those made before 1910. The carousel has run in the same Highland Park spot since 1909, and its animals were restored from 1984 to 1995 by Rosa Ragan of Raleigh, North Carolina.

The carousel stands in Highland Park at the same spot it has occupied since 1909, inside its original Dentzel-blueprint shelter building. The building was closed for major restoration in 1983–1984, when the animals were removed and stored in local institutions while funds were raised. Look for the intact mosaic tile floor inside, laid in a large snowflake pattern of green, yellow, terracotta and white.

The shelter building was erected from a Dentzel blueprint, and the carousel inside is the only remaining two-row stationary Dentzel menagerie in the world. Its nearest contemporaries are both in Indiana: a modified carousel in Indianapolis and a partly restored one in Logansport.