These 10 old roller coasters at vintage amusement parks will make you really appreciate today’s safety standards

1900s, 1910s, Featured stories, Old cities and places, Old photos & vintage photography, Vintage & retro entertainment

Note: This article may feature affiliate links to Amazon.com or other companies. Qualifying purchases made via these links may earn us a small commission at no additional cost to you. Find out more here.

Do you love to visit amusement parks? If so, how would you like to actually ride on some of those old roller coasters — ones with loops and tight turns — that were built using the construction techniques and safety regulations of the late Victorian era? In that case… maybe not so much.

Here, take a look back at ten vintage roller coasters from the early 1900s — in New York, New Jersey, Ohio and Massachusetts — and admire the courage of the riders who sat down in those rickety little cars and sped off into the wild blue yonder.

One of the oldest coasters here, seen in the video below, consisted of just rows of plain wooden benches in a car — no seat backs, no belts, and only a little handle to hold on to. Still, people back then loved the rides! (The speed was probably even more exciting to folks in the days when cars were still a novelty.)

The roller coasters at Coney Island in New York (1910)

From the simple toboggan was gradually evolved the highly complex safety coaster. S E Jackman built most of his structures within the dimensions of a good-sized house or amusement pavilion. The look of even the newest one reminds the spectator of nothing so much as of the good, old, substantial framework joiners put up for big barns and dwellings before the days of steel beams and concrete reinforcement.

A myriad sticks of seasoned timber, bolted and nailed; a wilderness of cross pieces, supports, and stays; a car track that quickly mounts to a height of 75 or 100 feet, circles the level top, dips suddenly for a partial descent, rises again in scary flight, makes a second circuit lower than the first, and so on circles, dips, and rises til like a bird or an aeroplane, it strikes the ground level at last.

MORE Which way does the wind blow? A look back at antique weathervanes

A loading lever at the start attaches the car to the chain which carries it up: another lever unloads the car from the chain; and other grips, likewise operated from the ground below, elevate track brakes, which, by pressing the wheels from beneath, reduce the speed on the curves. An emergency brake is supposed to stop everything when required.

Heights and descents are so calculated, or so tried out by actual experiment, that the unconducted car returns, after its swift flight, at snail’s pace to its starting point. – Deseret Evening News (Salt Lake City, Utah) – July 30, 1910