originally posted on 4/29/2024
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It is sobering (but also inspiring) to read that in January 1994, ACE President Ray Ueberroth attended a community meeting held at Lakemont Park in Altoona, Pennsylvania, led by Ralph J. Albarano, Jr. Albarano was president of Lakemont Park Inc., which was announcing initial steps to restore Leap The Dips with the formation of the Leap The Dips Preservation Foundation. We now know the effort to save Leap The Dips succeeded, and the historic ride (and the world’s oldest roller coaster) reopened in 1999, thanks to considerable assistance from ACE.
Now, 25 years later, we are again confronting the need to preserve and restore Leap The Dips. Lakemont Partnership — the company operating the amusements at Lakemont Park — announced that the park's rides will not operate during the 2024 season. This includes the 122-year-old Leap The Dips — a National Historic Landmark and an ACE Roller Coaster Landmark and Classic Coaster — along with the 1960 John Allen-designed Skyliner woodie that was relocated from Roseland Park in Canandaigua, New York, in 1987. It has operated at Lakemont Park since the Boyertown era, the WalyLand years and the recent Lakemont Park years through 2023, but is now sadly standing but not operating, like Leap The Dips.
What will it take to get Leap The Dips and Skyliner operational again? Will we get the chance to ride and savor these special treasures of amusement park and roller coaster history? What can and should ACE do in 2024 like it did starting in 1994?
— Randy Geisler
The formation of the Leap The Dips Foundation to restore the world’s oldest roller coaster located at Lakemont Park is a highlight of this issue of ACE News. Fortunately, its story was ultimately more optimistic than the fate of Montaña Rusa. The restoration and fundraising efforts by the Foundation and Lakemont Park were very successful, and the 1902 Leap The Dips reopened to the public in May 1999, 14 years after it had closed.
However, Leap The Dips still has endured a “roller coaster” ride of its own during its last 25 years, since its grand reopening in 1999. It closed again from 2017 to 2019, as the park lost most of its portable rides and was reimagined into a local community park. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, Leap The Dips reopened that summer. Since maintaining the world’s oldest roller coaster was not the easiest or cheapest of endeavors, the coaster seemed to be down more than it was up from 2020 to 2023. However, the park did try to keep it and the John Allen-designed Skyliner operational during this period as best they could.
Unfortunately, it was announced in February 2024 that none of the rides would operate for the 2024 season owing to financial reasons, with only the recreational activities such as mini golf and batting cages opening for the season. ACE is hoping that the park finds a way to reopen these wooden treasures or that a new operator can come in to make the rides operational once again. Fortunately, neither coaster is in immediate danger of demolition, especially Leap The Dips, which is protected by Blair County (which owns the coaster and the property that Lakemont Park sits upon). Yet the longer these coasters go without routine maintenance, the quicker they deteriorate and the more likely they fall hopelessly into disrepair and never operate again. Both coasters are of historic importance, including Skyliner, which is one of the earliest John Allen-designed coasters, originally having opened in 1960 at Roseland Park in Canandaigua, New York, and moved to Lakemont in 1987, thanks to a rebuild by Charles Dinn. But it is imperative that Leap The Dips, the last remaining figure-eight, side-friction coaster as well as the world’s oldest roller coaster and a National Historic Landmark, must be preserved.
For the ACE Preservation Committee, the reopening of Leap The Dips and Skyliner will obviously be among our highest priorities to try to accomplish. We hope the correct solution will present itself soon and that ACE will do everything in its power to help facilitate a positive outcome.
— Dave Hahner, ACE Historian and ACE Preservation Committee member
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