It’s 1930 and you walk into your favorite amusement park, Astroland. You look at all the roller coasters around you. All are different, but they all have something in common. There’s one tall one, one small one, and every single one is wooden.Now, it’s seventy-six years later and you walk into your favorite amusement park, Six Flags Great Adventure . You notice the mass of roller coasters around you. There are some inverting, some gliding smoothly across the track, some going through more inversions than you can count, some with no floor, and one even going over 400 feet into the sky. You notice the familiar sight of a wooden coaster at the front of the park, however it’s nothing like the rides your grandparents experienced. You enter the park and ride all the huge steel roller coasters and maybe even ride the old classic wooden roller coaster that oftentimes finds itself forgotten among the newer thrill rides. Older coaster enthusiasts may feel that there is something missing in this park: the classic wooden roller coaster.

The beginning of roller coasters

The first roller coasters were called “Russian ice slides.” They were built out of lumber with ice on top of it. Riders were pushed down the slides at a fifty-degree angle for a thrilling ride. These rides were considered fit for royalty and became a hit in Russia. They soon spread to the rest of Europe where greater developments began. In France, two roller coasters were built in 1817. They both featured cars which locked into the wooden track, and the cars were pushed down a slide, then turned or just went straight down. The roller coasters spread all around Europe and grew to sizeable proportions. Despite questionable safety records, the people kept coming back for more.

While Europe was booming with the new invention of roller coasters, the USA was barren from any coasters. However, an idea developed in the coal mines of Pennsylvania one day: why not ride the coal cars from the top to the bottom of the mountain? The workers let the cars loose on an eighteen-mile railway track powered by gravity. Of the eighteen miles, seventeen of them were downhill so the cars could easily make their way down. Mules were used to bring the cars back up the hill and eventually mules rode in the car to get back down the mountain. Even though the ride was used for business in the daytime, they eventually let humans ride at night. The ride was a great success, and the mules were replaced by a steam engine. People paid one dollar to ride, and it became an instant success. At forty miles long and with speeds of 100 miles per hour, this ride was extreme even by today’s standards.

However, the first “true” roller coaster built in the United States solely for the purpose of amusement was the Switchback Railway, which appeared at Coney Island in 1884. It went over a series of mild hills and valleys. When the riders got to the other end of the track, they got off so the attendants could transfer the ride onto the parallel track. They would then re-board the ride and go back in the opposite direction. The ride was fifty feet tall and traveled along at six miles per hour – not so impressive by today’s standards.

With the roller coaster becoming popular in the United States, wooden roller coasters were built with different themes. Examples are the Steeplechase, a ride featuring parallel track on which wooden horses would race; the Whirl-Fly, which was a ferris wheel on roller coaster track; the Soap Box Derby, which was similar to the steeplechase but cars were used instead of horses; and the Virginia Reel, which had a circular car going through the track as it turned. Yet, these coaster styles died out and very few, if any, survived.

The ‘Golden Age’ of roller coasters

As America started building more and more roller coasters, their popularity increased. America was soon known as the world’s hotspot for roller coasters. These rides were unlike anything anyone had seen before. From 1920 to 1940, the Golden Age of Roller Coasters took America by storm. More amusement parks opened, and those parks started competing with each other and neighboring businesses. The technology that was developing in the world of roller coasters made more extreme thrills possible. Technology advances made rides not only more thrilling, but also safer. John Miller’s upstop wheel (also known as under-friction wheels) locked the wheels onto the track and making it easier for rides to go around sharp turns and over sudden hills. The upstop wheel is still used today – on every single modern roller coaster.

One of the most famous roller coasters of all time was built during the beginning of the Golden Age. The Coney Island Cyclone , a classic wooden coaster, was built in 1927. Its steep drops, incredible lateral and negative g-forces even by today’s standards made this ride one of the most renowned roller coasters ever built, and many would say one of the greatest. People from all over came to ride the legendary Cyclone. Even today, the Cyclone retains much of its fame.

As the golden years raged on, roller coasters were becoming bigger, faster, and more extreme. People wanted more thrilling rides, so amusement parks gave them what they wanted. However, the 1930s into the 1950s was a slow time for roller coasters. The Great Depression and WWII were great struggles for the roller coaster industry, but there were also other reasons the industry didn’t thrive at that time. One reason was a new invention that entertained everyone from the comfort of their own home: the television. It was a time where amusement park owners worried about the fall of their success. Luckily, the amusement park industry survived. While a very limited number of roller coasters were built in the 1940s, the trend began to pick back up during the 1950s. But at the end of that decade, a new innovation arrived that would usher in the Space Age of the roller coaster, and the wooden coaster’s place in the amusement park would diminish.

The fall of the wooden roller coaster

As the 1950s ended, the crowds started coming back to the amusement parks for more fun. However, Disney was just about ready to reveal the ultimate rival of the wooden roller coaster. While flat steel rails had been used for kiddie coasters and wild-mouse-style rides before, Disney revolutionized the steel track forever. His park collaborated with a company known as Arrow Dynamics to open Matterhorn Bobsleds , the world’s first coaster to use a tubular steel track.

Amusement park owners realized the endless possibilities of the tubular steel track. Instead of taking the new idea as a threat from Disney, amusement parks used it to their advantage. They started building bigger, more thrilling, and more intense rides, with the new innovations.

Roller coasters using steel track could have so many more capabilities, including the inversion – a nearly impossible feat for wooden coasters. An inversion is any element on a roller coaster that turns riders upside down. Ride manufacturers and parks tried to make inversions at first with just a simple looping ride. But the ride failed due to extreme g-forces. The successful inversions began as a simple vertical loop, but have transformed into all types of maneuvers previously limited to fighter pilots, including twisting the track 360 degrees, as well as the camel back. Rides were combining inversions to make maneuvers such as the cobra roll. Some inversions were also switched around to make them a little bit different. Steel coasters were also smoother than wooden and could travel at faster speeds. They were built taller, more intense, and more thrilling. And yet, these coasters could still prove just as safe as the small, classic wooden roller coasters of the past.

A new hope for the wooden coaster?

The rides of today’s amusement parks are fast, furious, and – most of the time – glide smoothly around their tracks. However, some may think something is missing from today’s average park. Teenagers or newcomers to amusement parks probably won’t notice anything, but people who have been coaster fanatics for decades may wish that parks would have kept the tradition of a classic wooden roller coaster going strong.

Sadly, in 2005, not one new wooden roller coaster was built out of eighty new coasters that year. However in 2006, four wooden roller coasters were built out of eighty-nine roller coasters which mean that about five percent of the roller coasters built in 2006 were wooden.

Parks like Kennywood , in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania would be considered the success story to lovers of the classic wooden coaster. Over the years, Kennywood has kept the Phantom's Revenge , an arrow hyper coaster with a 228-foot drop built in 2000. It also has Jack Rabbit , Racer, and Thunderbolt , which were all built in the 1920s. In doing so, Kennywood has not only created a favorite spot for old-time coaster fanatics, but also for families in search of smaller wooden coaster thrills.Even though it seems as though amusement parks have forgotten about wooden roller coasters and have just left them alone, some parks actually tried to diversify them. Paramount Kings Island took the wooden coaster to the extreme. They took the wooden roller coaster to 218 feet, almost eighty mph, over 7,000 feet of track, and a vertical loop. This coaster broke many records including: tallest and fastest wooden roller coaster; longest coaster in the U.S.; and the first and only wooden roller coaster with an inversion. Even though this ride seemed incredible, riders complained of the roughness of the ride. The ride is now closed because of an accident in the 2006 season which injured its riders, and the park announced several days ago that the loop would be removed.

However, some attempts to diversify the wooden roller coaster have been complete successes. Lightning Racer at HersheyPark was built in 2000 with twin tracks that both race and duel, meaning that riders will find themselves side-by-side for part of the ride, and racing straight towards each other at other times. Ever since its debut, Lightning Racer has been constantly ranked as one of the top coasters in the world for its uniqueness, twisting layout, and smoothness.

The wooden coaster may not be the media’s favorite, but amusement parks will most likely not give up on it. It will most likely never regain its former popularity unless its design is diversified. Manufacturers may try to make another inverting wooden coaster, but they will have to learn from the mistakes of the past and ensure its smoothness and comfort. Could we see a floorless wooden roller coaster? Or maybe even old-fashioned-style designs revived and modernized, like the Virginia Reel? Introducing new styles of wooden coasters may be the key to saving it once and for all.