W. E. Sullivan of Roodhouse, Illinois, turned his 1893 dream of a portable Ferris wheel into reality by designing and building a small, portable, revolving wheel patterned after the Ferris wheel at Chicago's 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and naming it Big Eli. On May 23, 1900, in downtown Jacksonville, Big Eli, a 45-foot-high wheel with twelve structural steel spokes, carriage seats at their extremities, and a steel axle, offered rides and grossed $5.56 that day. Big Eli No. 17 was constructed in 1907 as the seventeenth wheel built by Sullivan's manufacturing concern, the Eli Bridge Company, and later thrilled crowds at amusement parks in Duluth, Minnesota, Leavenworth, Kansas, San Antonio, Texas, Guaymas, Mexico, and Miami, Florida in 1957. After returning to the Eli Bridge Company for renovation, No. 17, originally built with 10 seats, was converted to a 12-seater and sold to the Jacksonville Rotary Club, which installed it in Nichols Park and operated it there until increased insurance costs forced its closure in 1985. In 1986, the Rotary Club donated Big Eli No. 17 to the City of Jacksonville with the assistance of the Eli Bridge Company and private donations, and the structure was renovated and reerected at its present site. Big Eli No. 1 stands in the front yard of the Eli Bridge Company.