America's first roller coaster opened at Coney Island
On this day · 16 June 1884
A nickel bought a six-mile-an-hour gravity ride in 1884 — and launched the amusement-park industry from a Brooklyn boardwalk.
On June 16, 1884, inventor LaMarcus Adna Thompson opened his Gravity Pleasure Switchback Railway at Coney Island, the first roller coaster built purely for amusement in the United States.
By modern standards it was tame. The 600-foot wooden track ran along West Tenth Street, and riders coasted toward the ocean at a stately six miles per hour. There was no loop back: at the bottom, passengers climbed out, attendants pushed the car over to a parallel set of tracks, and everyone rode home facing the other way — the “switchback.”
At five cents a ride, the novelty was a sensation, reportedly clearing around $600 a day in profit. Thompson, soon dubbed the “Father of Gravity,” plowed the earnings into grander scenic railways.
Within a generation, hundreds of coasters dotted the country, and Coney Island’s gentle little gravity train had become the unlikely ancestor of every steel-and-screaming megacoaster since.
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