Ice slides at a St Petersburg carnival, 1800.
Credit: Popular Mechanics
Russian fun was on giant wooden structures with frozen-over ramps. People slid down on ice blocks and accidents were commonplace, yet the popularity remained. Russian ice slides were a very simple form of gravity-powered thrills, said Robert Coker*, theme park attraction designer. Riders boarded sleds made out of hollowed-out ice blocks and descended timber chutes that were packed with snow. They were so popular among the aristocracy that lit torches were installed for night sliding; even Catherine the Great (r1762–96) commissioned one of her own. Today roller coasters are known as Russian Mountains in French, Italian and Spanish.
By the late C18th, carriages with wheels maintained the thrills in the warmer summer months, and by the early C19th, the idea migrated across Europe. The French devised their own gravity-driven rides with one major improvement; by locking the cars’ wheels into the tracks via carved grooves, the cars wouldn’t derail.
Accounts of Parisian attractions showed gravity-powered rides that sent passengers in wheeled carts soaring down wooden tracks, inspired by Russia. Much fun was elicited by the Promenades Aériennes, opened in Paris in 1817. Built in an amusement park on the Champs Élysées, it had two tracks curving down on either side of a central tower, and attached wheeled cars. And see Les Montagnes Russes à Belleville whose name and concept probably came from Russian Mountains via Russian soldiers in Paris post-Waterloo (1815)
The Parisian leisure class enjoyed their thrills which satirical engravings then dubbed: La Passion du Jour. More rides followed, their names evoking lofty landforms: Fujiyama, Les Montagnes Françaises, Les Montagnes Susses and Les Montagnes Egyptiennes.
Les Montagnes Russes, ou la Passion du Jour,
artist unknown. Musée Carnavalet
Credit: paris musees
USA
In America, the roller coaster had more working-class origins. Pennsylvania industrialist Josiah White built a cheap, long, 2 paralleled track railway in Lehigh Valley to haul the precious coal in 1827. Using only natural landscape gravity, the carts flew down the tracks up to c50 mph, attracting eager tourists. For decades, Pennsylvania’s Mauch Chunk Switchback Railway transported coal each morning and carried tourists each afternoon. Mauch Chunk’s popularity inspired other attractions in the USA in the 1870s-80s.
The term roller coaster may have come from Philo Stevens’ 1884 patent describing a roller coasting device built in Chicago. Richard Munch, National Roller Coaster Museum historian in Plainview Tx, said there were also early coasters in New Orleans, Philadelphia, St Paul and Tennessee. But these early proto-coasters were mostly lost to history - no photos and written accounts only about accidents.
While travelling around selling clothes, garment-maker and Sunday-school teacher in Indiana LaMarcus Thompson saw some of these coasters in action. Thompson was concerned with sleazy saloons and brothels, and lack of wholesome family-friendly entertainment. In 1884 this inventor designed and built a linear 600’ two-tracked wooden framed ride with undulating railroad tracks, and sideways seating similar to Pennsylvania, called Gravity Pleasure Switchback Railway. One of the most important things about Thompson’s railway was its location: Coney Island NY. It was one of the most popular and successfully commercial amusement park in the country in the 1880s.
When competition forced Thompson to create more daring designs, he debuted the Scenic Railway on the Atlantic City boardwalk (1887). Essentially it was a switchback railway but with scenes, which eventually included decorated walls, constructed facades and groves of trees that resembled Venetian Canals, Swiss Alps or North Pole. At a time when world travel was mostly unreachable, this scenic railway brought the world home.
Unlike the switchback, the Scenic Railway had an on-board brakeman, a continuous cable that pulled the train up the track and a completed circuit so attendants didn’t need to push the carriage onto a separate track. Thompson built 12+ scenic railways for parks across the country eg Santa Cruz, Coney Island and Minneapolis.
Until 1930, innovations emerged in The Golden Age eg the figure 8 coaster, underfriction wheels, coasters that jumped and a looping-coaster. The resounding click-clack muffled the murmur of anticipation as the train inched up the wooden structure. When the riders reached the apex, the bright blue summer sky swallowed everything. Then, with a lurch, gravity took over and everybody screamed. This was the legendary Giant Dipper roller coaster on Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, south of San Francisco. It was one of the highest roller coasters still in operation.
opened 1927,
Credit: CNN
By then, c2,000 wooden roller coasters existed for cheap entertainment; people needed a diversion, to take them out of their everyday lives. Today there are a few Golden Age coasters remaining, including the Jack Rabbit in New York and the Wild One outside of DC.
But in the early 1930s roller coasters were nearly undone by the Great Depression. The economic downtown meant people couldn't afford amusement park prices, attendance dropped and owners stopped maintaining their parks. So most of the coasters were demolished when the parks closed. Luckily Thunderbolt at Coney Island (1925) survived the Great Depression and continued for decades.
Then WW2 drained labour and building materials, and with the 50s suburban explosion, real estate values skyrocketed, making the land too valuable not to sell. The amusement parks that remained were run-down hangouts for naughty teens and loud drunks. But in the early 1950s, while taking his kids to the carousel in Griffith Park in Los Angeles, Walt Disney dreamed of a place full of wonder and magic that the whole family could enjoy together. In 1955, Disneyland was born in gorgeous orange groves.
And in 1959, when Disney was holidaying with family in Switzerland, he sent a postcard of the Matterhorn to his team, saying build this. The team rethought coaster design, creating a tubular steel track system, and trains that used polyurethane wheels. Steel could be bent in ways that wooden tracks couldn't, so it provided smoother rides. The Matterhorn Bobsled (1959) became Disney’s homage to Thompson’s scenic railway, taking riders from sunny California to snow-capped mountains.
Robert Cartmell, A History of the Roller Coaster, 1987
Robert Coker, Roller Coasters: Thrill Seeker's Guide, 2004.