Historedia
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Opening of the Switchback Railway

When
1884
Where
West 10th Street (named locality, not an exact site)
Part of
LaMarcus Thompson opens the Switchback Railway at Coney Island

LaMarcus Adna Thompson installed the first roller coaster at Coney Island in 1884, designed in 1881.

The Gravity Pleasure Switchback Railway was constructed in 1884 at West 10th Street, a named locality on Coney Island rather than an exactly documented site. It was the first roller coaster at Coney Island and one of the earliest designed for amusement in the United States, featuring a gravity double track system.

Sources

  1. Switchback Railway Wikipedia, revision of 2026-04-21
  2. Coney Island Wikipedia, revision of 2026-10-06

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.