Today, theme parks are a multi-billion dollar industry…

…but in 1945, things were very different. Amusement parks around the country had fallen into a disreputable state and few creative minds were in the service of designing rides. But the seeds of our current Golden Age were planted that very year when a small job machine shop opened for business in Mountain View, California. Founded by Angus "Andy" Anderson, Ed Morgan, William Hardiman, and Karl Bacon, Arrow Development Company was not created to help revolutionize the amusement industry, but that is what it was about to do.

The company purchased a small "kiddieland" park as a financial investment and began to repair and refurbish the existing equipment. It wasn't long before Arrow was designing new rides for their little amusement center and people began to take notice. In 1947, when the city of San Jose wanted to add a carousel to their new municipal "Central Park," they turned to Arrow to create the attraction. The $3,500 San Jose Merry-Go-round turned out to be a defining achievement for the company.

A man by the name of Walter Elias Disney was formulating plans for a new kind of park and he needed a company to help him produce the unique rides and attractions that would populate his "Disneyland." He saw Arrow's San Jose carousel and was so impressed by its design and craftsmanship that he called upon Arrow to build not just a merry-go-round, but a wide variety of the rides that would make Disneyland the groundbreaking "theme park" it became: Snow White's Adventures, Peter Pan's Flight, Dumbo, the Mad Hatter's Tea Party and the Casey Jr. Circus Train.

In the years to follow, Arrow would create the ride transportation systems for the Pirates of the Carribean, It's A Small World, The Haunted Mansion, and perhaps most notably, the Matterhorn Bobsleds. For that groundbreaking attraction, Arrow worked with the Disney Imagineers to develop the tubular steel trackwork and polyurethane-wheeled vehicles that would change roller coasters forever.

Arrow went on to create hundreds of rides and attractions for theme parks around the world. Their Flume Rides, Mine Trains and Looping Coasters are among the most successful ride systems ever produced. Sadly, in December of 2001, the company — then known as Arrow Dynamics — declared bankruptcy. Its assets were purchased by S&S Power the following year, creating a new legal entity called “S&S Arrow,” a descendant in name only. And in 2012, S&S entered into a binding agreement with Japan’s Sansei Yusoki Co., Ltd., becoming S&S-Sansei Technologies.

(For an excellent, more detailed look back at the Arrow’s history, please watch “The Legacy of Arrow Development” by clicking here.)

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To honor and preserve the memory of Arrow’s unparalleled contributions to the evolution of themed entertainment, Super 78 has resurrected the name and original logo to represent our design services to the industry.