Rough Riders, also known as Over the Rockies, was a

roller coaster A roller coaster, or rollercoaster, is a type of amusement ride that employs a form of elevated railroad track designed with tight turns, steep slopes, and sometimes inversions. Passengers ride along the track in open cars, and the rides ar ...

built by William F. Mangels and located on Bowery Street in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

Coney Island Coney Island is a peninsular neighborhood and entertainment area in the southwestern section of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood is bounded by Brighton Beach and Manhattan Beach to its east, Lower New York Bay to th ...

from 1907 to 1916. It was known for its many

accidents An accident is an unintended, normally unwanted event that was not directly caused by humans. The term ''accident'' implies that nobody should be blamed, but the event may have been caused by unrecognized or unaddressed risks. Most researche ...

which led it to its closure.

History

W.F. Mangels installed his Rough Riders roller coaster on the Bowery and Jones Walk in 1907. The ride was a "

switchback railway The original Switchback Railway was the first roller coaster at Coney Island in Brooklyn, New York City, and one of the earliest designed for amusement in the United States. The 1885 patent states the invention relates to the gravity double tr ...

," similar to Coney Island's first roller coaster from 1884. The ride began at the top of a hill, not at ground level, and reached a chained

lift hill A lift hill, or chain hill, is an upward-sloping section of track on a roller coaster on which the roller coaster train is mechanically lifted to an elevated point or peak in the track. Upon reaching the peak, the train is then propelled from t ...

later on in the ride. It was a

third rail A third rail, also known as a live rail, electric rail or conductor rail, is a method of providing electric power to a railway locomotive or train, through a semi-continuous rigid conductor placed alongside or between the rails of a railway ...

electric roller coaster, in which the ride's operator turned off all electric power after the initial ascent. However, when the mechanism broke or the operator failed to turn it off, it would cause the ride to go at speeds too fast and overturn. Three people died on June 22, 1910, and when the train derailed again in 1915 and caused three more deaths, it was decided that the ride should be shut down. On the ride, people went past scenes from the

Spanish–American War , partof = the Philippine Revolution, the decolonization of the Americas, and the Cuban War of Independence , image = Collage infobox for Spanish-American War.jpg , image_size = 300px , caption = (cl ...

and ride workers wore Spanish–American War uniforms.

References

* Wild Ride, a book by Charles Denson

External links

Jeffrey Stanton's Coney Island page
{{coord, 40.5747, -73.9801, type:landmark_globe:earth_region:US-NY, display=title 1907 establishments in New York City 1916 disestablishments in New York (state) Amusement rides that closed in 1916 Coney Island Former roller coasters in New York (state) Removed roller coasters Roller coasters introduced in 1907