9/1/1941 | River Park, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada closes. |
9/1/2001 | Deja Vu, the long-delayed Vekoma Giant Inverted Boomerang coaster, opens at Six Flags Over Georgia. |
9/2/1946 | Crystal Beach Cyclone closes forever. Demolition began on 9/16/46. |
9/2/2001 | The wire rope used to haul trains up the lift on Millennium Force, a 310-foot-tall roller coaster at Cedar Point, breaks during morning test runs, stranding a trainload of park employees near the top of the lift. Nobody was hurt, but the incident made headlines and took the ride out of service for a week. |
9/3/1909 | The Hershey Press, a weekly newspaper printed in the Hershey Park printing office, is first published. |
9/3/1973 | Columbia Gardens, Butte, Montana, closes after 74 years of operation. |
9/4/1967 | Riverview Park closes. |
9/4/1978 | Ohio's Chippewa Lake Park closes. Portions of the coaster are still standing. |
9/4/1989 | Crystal Beach Park closes. |
9/5/1910 | Hershey Park's miniature railway first runs. |
9/5/1977 | West View Park closes what turns out to be its last season. |
9/5/1997 | A 13-year-old boy is injured while helping his father repair a wood coaster at Stricker's Grove (Ross, Ohio). He was struck by a train and fell through the track six feet to the ground. |
9/6/1971 | Coney Island (OH) closes. Taft Entertainment purchased Coney Island, constructed a new park on higher ground, and moved many of the ride pieces to the new location, Kings Island. Today, Coney Island still operates as a major picnic facility. |
9/7/1916 | Summit Beach Park Company incorporated. |
9/7/1933 | Death of Dudley Sherman Humphrey II, President of Euclid Beach Park. |
9/7/1997 | Four passengers on the American Eagle racing coaster at Six Flags Great America are slightly injured in a low-speed collision on the brake run. The train coupler failed between the second and third cars, allowing the train to separate and cars to bump together. |
9/7/1998 | Mr. Toad's Wild Ride closes at Walt Disney World's Magic Kingdom, Reedy Creek, Florida. |
9/8/1990 | Long Point Park, Geneseo, NY, auctioned. |
9/9/1984 | The minor collision in the station of two trains on the American Eagle at Great America (Gurnee, Illinois) sends three riders to a hospital. |
9/9/2001 | The Country Bears Playhouse closes after 29 years at Disneyland, Anaheim, California. |
9/10/2001 | A 7-year-old boy dies of internal injuries when the car he was riding in "stopped short" on a Flitzer roller coaster owned by Reithoffer Shows. The incident happened at the York fair in York, Pennsylvania. |
9/11/1887 | Sliding Hill and Roller Tobboggan opens, Haverhill, Massachusets. |
9/12/1927 | A standing rider was killed on one of Detroit, Michigan's riverfront roller coasters. |
9/12/1971 | The Palisades Amusement Park, located in Cliffside Park, New Jersey, closed its gates for the last time before becoming an apartment complex. |
9/12/1990 | White Swan Park, Coraopolis, PA auctioned. |
9/13/1857 | Birth of Milton Snavely Hershey, founder of Hershey Park. |
9/13/1995 | Milton S. Hershey is honored by being pictured on a United States postage stamp. |
9/14/1922 | Aloha Amusement Park opens, Waikiki, Hawaii. |
9/15/1964 | Freedomland Park files for bankruptcy. |
9/15/1968 | Last day of operation for the Cyclone Racer (Church/Traver) at The Pike, in Long Beach, CA. |
9/15/1977 | A tornado rips through Fairyland Park in Kansas City, causing extensive damage. The park never re-opened, but the Wildcat roller coaster survived. It did not run again until it was relocated to Frontier City (Oklahoma City) in 1991. |
9/16/1946 | Crystal Beach Cyclone, designed by Harry Traver, is demolished. Some parts of the legendary Cyclone were used in the park's Comet, which today operates at The Great Escape. |
9/16/1985 | Roseland Park (Canandaigua, New York) auctioned. The Skyliner roller coaster ended up at Lakemont Park (Altoona, Pennsylvania) where it still runs today. |
9/16/2001 | Viper, a Schwarzkopf weight-drop shuttle loop coaster, closes at Six Flags over Georgia, Atlanta, Georgia. The ride was moved to Six Flags over Georgia in 1995 after operating as the Tidal Wave at Marriott's Great America from 1978-1991. |
9/17/2001 | Visionary developer William Albert Koch dies at the age of 86. Koch's accomplishments include the first theme park, Holiday World (originally Santa Claus Land), the town of Santa Claus, Indiana, a national park, and a devoted family. |
9/18/1902 | M. S. Hershey's attorney purchases the first of many tracts which will be combined to form the town of Hershey, Pennsylvania. |
9/19/1977 | Tom Rebbie starts working at the Philadelphia Toboggan Company for $4.25 an hour. In 1991, he would take over the company. |
9/20/1964 | Steeplechase Park, the last of the great Coney Island parks, closes. |
9/20/1994 | King's Castle Land Amusement Park (Whitman, Massachusets) auctioned. |
9/21/1938 | A hurricane destroys several New England roller coasters, including the Thunderbolt (Church/Traver, 1925) at Savin Rock (West Haven, CT). |
9/22/1988 | Death of George W. Long, owner of Seabreeze Park (Rochester, New York). |
9/22/2001 | A rider is killed when she falls from a boat on Perilous Plunge, a Shoot-The-Chutes ride at Knott's Berry Farm, Buena Park, California. |
9/24/1993 | Michael Moodenbaugh, owner of Boblo Island, critically injured in traffic accident. |
9/25/1925 | Euclid Beach Racing Derby struck by lightning. |
9/25/1960 | Sen. John F. Kennedy and Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson make a campaign stop at Euclid Beach Park. |
9/25/1995 | Fire destroys a maintenance building at Williams Grove, Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. The Cyclone suffered roughly $15,000 damage. |
9/26/1961 | Death of Harry G. Traver, influential wood coaster designer and builder, best known for the Cyclone triplets at Palisades Park, Crystal Beach, and Revere Beach. |
9/26/1981 | Rides and equipment from Edgewater Park (Detroit, Michigan) are auctioned. |
9/26/1984 | Hanson's Park, Harvey's Lake, Pennsylvania is auctioned. |
9/26/1993 | Final operating day for Boblo Island, Amhertsburg, ON. |
9/27/1929 | Birth of Curtis D. Summers (1929-1992), influential wood coaster designer responsible for Hercules, Texas Giant, Mean Streak, and a number of other major wood coasters of the 1980's and 1990's. |
9/27/1939 | The Indian Theatre at Blackpool Pleasure Beach catches fire and burns to the ground. Firefighters are able to prevent the blaze from spreading to the nearby Big Dipper. |
9/27/1961 | Death of roller coaster designer and mechanical engineer Harry Guy Traver. |
9/28/1969 | Euclid Beach Park closes. |
9/28/1983 | A fire at Dorney Park (Allentown, Pennsylvania) destroys PTC Carousel #38 and several other rides and buildings. |
9/29/1998 | In response to a fatal carnival accident (March 19, 1998), a Travis County, Texas grand jury returns nine murder indictments. It is the first time murder charges have ever been filed in a ride accident case. |
9/30/1952 | The movie This Is Cinerama, which features footage of the Atom Smasher coaster at Rockaway's Playland, opens at the Broadway Theatre in New York. |
9/30/1977 | West View Park announces that it is permanently closed. |
9/30/1978 | The National Amusement Park Historical Association (NAPHA) is founded. |
9/30/1993 | Investor Larry Benaroya gains control of Boblo Island in court and officially closes the park. |
9/30/1996 | Two trains collide on the Eurostar, the Intamin transportable looping coaster, at the Munich Oktoberfest. A block brake at the end of the ride failed to release, causing a following train to collide in the final trim brake. |
The Roller Coaster Rollback is maintained by Dave Althoff, Jr. (a.k.a.,
"RideMan"). Read the "history of the history" on Dave's site.
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