roller coasters: from Russian ice slides to wholesome ent­er­tain­ment in USA

Ice slides at a St Petersburg carnival, 1800.

Credit: Popular Mechanics

Russia and rest of Europe
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.

Coney Island Cyclone
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.

Sky Walk in Dolní Morava, Czech Republic,

with a 55-meter-high viewing platform
built in 2021

Robert Cartmell, A History of the Roller Coaster, 1987
Robert Coker, Roller Coast­ers: Thrill Seeker's Guide, 2004.