The Switchback: America's First Roller Coaster

In eighteen twenty-seven, engineers built a gravity railroad up this mountain to haul coal from the mines near Summit Hill down to the Lehigh Canal at Mauch Chunk, the town now called Jim Thorpe. Cars loaded with coal rolled downhill by gravity; mules dragged the empty cars back up. By the middle of the eighteen forties a second back-track and two inclined planes were added, letting the cars return by gravity as well.

The whole circuit became so popular with thrill-seeking visitors that it is widely credited as the inspiration for the modern roller coaster. For decades it carried tourists through the Lehigh Valley mountains before the Great Depression finally closed it in nineteen thirty-two. A railroad built to move coal ended up teaching America what it felt like to ride for pure speed.