Switchback Railway Opens: Coney Island's First Thrill Ride

LaMarcus Adna Thompson's Switchback Railway opened at Coney Island on June 16, 1884, charging five cents for a gravity-powered ride that reached approximately six miles per hour. Riders climbed a staircase to board a bench-seat car at the top of a fifty-foot platform, then coasted 600 feet along an undulating track to a second tower, where attendants pushed the car onto a parallel return track for the trip back. The entire experience lasted less than a minute. Thompson recouped his $1,600 investment in three weeks. Thompson did not invent the concept of gravity-powered amusement rides. The Mauch Chunk Switchback Railway in Pennsylvania, a former coal-hauling rail line, had been operating as a paid thrill ride since the 1870s, carrying passengers down a mountain at speeds of up to fifty miles per hour. Russian ice slides, precursors dating to the seventeenth century, sent riders down wooden ramps coated in ice at Catherine the Great's court. French entrepreneurs added wheeled cars to these slides in the early 1800s, creating what they called "Russian Mountains." What Thompson accomplished was packaging the experience for a mass urban audience at an affordable price point. Coney Island in the 1880s was becoming America's premier amusement destination, accessible by rail from Manhattan. Thompson filed numerous patents on coaster improvements, including tunnel effects and scenic elements that turned the ride into a narrative experience. He eventually built nearly thirty roller coasters and became known as the "Father of the Gravity Ride." Competitors quickly improved on his basic design. Charles Alcoke built the first roller coaster with a continuous loop track at Coney Island in 1885. By the early 1900s, coasters at Coney Island reached speeds of sixty miles per hour. The global roller coaster industry today generates billions in annual revenue, all traceable to Thompson's five-cent ride.