The history of Kennywood Park can be traced back to the turn of the 20th Century, when the streetcar was the main form of transportation around the city of Pittsburgh. The Monongahela Street Railways Company created a picnic park at the end of the line to increase weekend ridership and to increase their profits. The area was known as “Kenny’s Grove” in 1898, but it soon began to grow into what was known as a “mechanized amusement park” (Hahner 9). Initially, at a time when electricity was not commonplace, it was simple to implement electric powered rides and lights since there were already electrical lines feeding the streetcars which terminated near the park (Cross 32). The importance and excitement surrounding the lights that Kennywood contained is best juxtaposed by Thomas Bell in his novel Out of This Furnace; “…on summer evenings the lights of Kennywood Park winking through the smoke above the blast furnaces”. While Kennywood is located in a suburb of Pittsburgh, its location towers above the Monongahela River, and what better place would there be to build a rollercoaster? Through Kennywood’s history, the park began as the end of the trolley line, but soon after became the beginning of a new type of tracks, rollercoaster tracks.
Kennywood has been known for its rollercoasters, this initially began with the design of The Jack Rabbit. The Jack Rabbit was built in 1921, advanced for its time, this rollercoaster has wheels below the track which allowed it to be locked onto the tracks. These wheels allowed for a faster ride with bigger hills than other roller coasters at the time. The 70-foot double dip gives the rider a feeling a weightlessness while still being able to stay attached to the tracks (Hahner 46). Currently the Jack Rabbit is the seventh oldest operating rollercoaster in the world (Futrell 118). The location of Kennywood on a hill allowed for rollercoaster designer John Miller to utilize natural ravines for big drops which would typically require a much more elevated track.
Half a decade after the Jack Rabbit was built, Miller came back to Kennywood to help design Racer (Futrell 119). Originally there was an older ride named Racer but it was decided that it was too old and needed to be replaced by a newly designed version (Hahner 49) Racer was designed as a coaster with two multi-car trains which depart at the same time from the point where riders get on. The difference between the design of Racer and many other racing coasters is that it is on a single continuous track rather than two separate tracks. At the end of the ride, a train which “started on the right side of the platform returned on the left side and vice versa” due to the nature of it being on one track (Hahner 50). An image taken of the roller coaster circa 1950 can be seen in Figure 1, a man test rides one of the trains. At the time this picture was taken one can imagine that the ride was almost a quarter of a century old yet still undergoing mechanical upkeep and testing. While it might have seemed like an old ride at the time, the Racer is coming up on being almost a century old rollercoaster which can still be enjoyed to this day.
The early 20th Century rollercoasters were wooden track based, but towards the end of the century a newer coaster construction material was being utilized, steel. For “Steel City”, there was nothing more relevant than a steel rollercoaster to be built as Kennywood’s ultimate and newest ride. Figure 2, a picture taken in 1991, shows the newly built Steel Phantom rollercoaster in the foreground with the Braddock US Steel Plant in the background. While many of the steel mills in Pittsburgh have been closed for years, this image is the opposite of a poem by Jim Daniels, “Find The Steel Mill in This Picture”, the contrast exists with the working steel mill in Braddock. With Pittsburgh once being the steel capital of the world, the image shows the old and new, how once again Pittsburgh was put back on the map with the Steel Phantom. In 1991, the Steel Phantom was the fastest rollercoaster in the world with a record-breaking top speed of 80 miles per hour (Hahner 60). Even nearly 70 years after the Jack Rabbit was designed, the Steel Phantom was also designed to utilize the natural ravines at Kennywood to create a 225-foot drop (Hahner 60). Throughout the following decade Kennywood officials wanted to expand, and decided to close the Steel Phantom much to the dismay of fans of the roller coaster (Futrell 128). After much deliberation, it was decided to redesign the coaster while keeping some aspects and updating others, the new creation was dubbed Phantom’s Revenge (Hahner 64). Like the Jack Rabbit and Racer, Phantom’s Revenge can still be visited to this day, view of Braddock’s US Steel and all.
The future of rollercoasters at Kennywood is typically kept very secretive until the coaster is built. For the 2019 season there will be the unveiling of the new Steeler’s themed roller coaster “The Steel Curtain”. Designed not to disappoint, The Steel Curtain breaks a number of records including the world’s tallest roller coaster inversion as well as Pennsylvania’s tallest roller coaster (“The Steel Curtain”). From the limited information available on Kennywood’s website, the coaster seems to be a single train which can hold up to 24 passengers and is 4,000 feet long (“The Steel Curtain”).
The history of Kennywood making tracks did not end at the trolley terminal, roller coasters have been a vital part of the park from its inception as a “mechanical amusement park”. From the Jack Rabbit to The Steel Curtain, Kennywood has continued to create exciting and record breaking rollercoasters for visitors to enjoy year after year. The culmination of old rides and the newest rides at Kennywood gives it a real sense of historical establishment and makes it an important institution in the Greater Pittsburgh Region. While newer rides may be exciting, it has to be said that the older coasters hold a certain nostalgia of yesteryear which cannot be replicated.
Works Cited
Bell, Thomas. Out of This Furnace, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1976. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pitt-ebooks/detail.action?docID=2039430.
Cross, Gary, et al. The Playful Crowd : Pleasure Places in the Twentieth Century, Columbia University Press, 2005. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/pitt-ebooks/detail.action?docID=909232.
Daniels, Jim, et al. From Milltown to Malltown: Poems. Marick Press, 2010.
Futrell, Jim. Amusement Parks of Pennsylvania. Stackpole Books, Mechanicsburg, PA, 2002.]
Hahner, David P. Kennywood. Arcadia, 2004.
Levinson, Joel B. The Steel Phantom. ca. 1991. 201501.02.036.15. Joel B. Levinson Photographs. University of Pittsburgh, Archives & Special Collections.
Slantis, Paul. Test Riding the Racer at Kennywood. ca. 1950. 000312.PIC. Paul Slantis Photographs. University of Pittsburgh, Archives & Special Collections.
“The Steel Curtain.” Kennywood, www.kennywood.com/thesteelcurtain. Accessed 18 Apr. 2019.