The original Pink Pig

The Pink Pig still runs each year at Lenox, but for many Atlantans, today’s version doesn’t compare to the original one that first opened in 1953.

The original monorail train ride was built by the old Rich’s department store to attract customers from Atlanta’s growing suburbs to its downtown store. Each year, children lined up to ride Priscilla the Pink Pig – which circled high above the impressive toy department and, by the 1960s, outside onto the store’s roof, passing by Rich’s Great Tree.

Afterwards, elves could help children shop for their families at the no-parents-allowed “Santa’s Secret Shop.”

View this home video of the ride from the 1980s.

– Caroline Parsley, The 100 Companies