August 16 is National Roller Coaster Day. These thrill rides
have been around since the 1600’s, when Russians built high wooden ramps in the
wintertime and covered them with water. The water quickly turned to ice. Passengers
would climb seventy-foot ladders to the tops of the ramps and ride sleds to the
bottom, where they’d coast to a stop. In the early 1800’s, a Frenchman decided
to bring the “Russian Mountain” ride to Paris. Winters in France are too warm
to maintain an icy surface, so his sleds ran on rollers: Roller Coasters. Coasters
were all the rage in the 1920’s, but during the Great Depression and WWII, they
fell out of fashion. Walt Disney ushered in a coaster revival when he built the
Matterhorn Bobsled Ride – a steel roller coaster riding a steel-and-concrete
mountain – in 1959. After sixty-three years, it’s still one of the most popular
rides in Disneyland.
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