Photo by Ken James

Can you adopt a carousel horse for a handful of pennies? Well, probably not, but children in schools throughout Missoula collected nearly a million pennies, enough to adopt four horses on A Carousel for Missoula! And in case you're wondering, the pennies weighed in at three tons!

The four classrooms that collected the most pennies won the right to design one of the Penny Ponies. Margaret Scott's classroom at Lewis and Clark School collected over 48,000 pennies, and named their pony Meriwether (after Meriwether Lewis, one of the explorers after whom their school was named.)

If you look closely, you'll see that Meriwether is decorated with a number of pennies in honor of his sponsors. There are at least 18 visible in this picture!

Adopted by: Missoula School Children
Designer: L&C 3rd Grade & John Thompson
Legs carved by: John Thompson
Sanders: Ione Briedlander, Ethel Diettert, Jerry Diettert
Painters: Marlies Borchers, Cyndi Joslyn, Alex McDonald