Defunct Coasters: Big Dipper at Geauga Lake

By Ashley N. Schaffer

May 3, 2021

Credit: Braun Art Publishing

The story of amusement parks, in a large part, is also the story of Ohio. For most of Ohio’s history as a state, there has been some form of amusement park. In fact, Ohio has had over 60 amusement parks open at one time, and the state is still viewed as the ‘Roller Coaster Capital of the World’ even today. In the early 1900s, two amusement parks stood out as the premium choice in Ohio: Cedar Point and Geauga Lake. Both were relatively large parks for the times, yet both kept the same family feel. While Cedar Point opened their first batch of roller coasters before Geauga Lake added their first coaster, they were all short lived. Geauga Lake’s first coaster, however, ended up taking the place as the oldest roller coaster in Ohio starting in 1940 and ending when the park closed in 2007.

The Opening Days

Credit: Herman Photo

The Big Dipper was the largest investment that the park had made at the time. Even though Geauga Lake had officially opened as an amusement park in 1887, it wasn’t until 1925 when they added their first coaster, and boy was it a record breaker! The park had recently been bought by a new company, the creatively named ‘Geauga Lake Amusement Company (GLAC)’ whose main focus was to breathe new passion into the park. While minimal efforts to make Geauga Lake into an amusement park were made before, the main focus was recreational camping. William Kuhlman and GLAC ended up spending $50,000 on the new John Miller designed coaster from Philadelphia Toboggan Coasters. When it opened it had the original name of “Sky Rocket”, which was a common name for coasters of the time. The height of the coaster was 65 feet, and the total length of track was 2,680 feet. It was John Miller’s signature out-and-back layout, and also featured a double-down dip, another one of his signature elements. It went 32 mph at its top speeds. Of course, when Sky Rocket opened, it was the largest wooden rollercoaster in the world, and many came from all over just to ride it! Unfortunately, there is not much known about this coasters first years of operation, and the years between 1925 and the late 1940s are considered to be lost to time. It should be noted that the 1940s also weren’t well documented, and the first case of real documentation for Big Dipper and Geauga Lake as a whole wasn’t until the 1960s, with another large blind spot in the 1970s, and then picked up again in the 1980s.

Shifting Companies

Credits: CoasterDad

The 1940s didn’t treat the growing park well. In 1941, a severe storm ended up damaging part of Sky Rocket. This wasn’t the worst of the damages the park saw during this time, but the storm was the only one who impacted Sky Rocket directly. After the death of William Kuhlman, the next owners of Geauga Lake were the Schreyer Family. They changed the name of Sky Rocket to Clipper in 1947, and they bought two new trains from the National Amusement Device company. This would really be the biggest upgrade until the 1960s. In the 1960s, however, four different former Cedar Point executives ended up gaining interest in the park. Not only did those four executives revitalize Cedar Point, they were the ones who brought the park back from the brink of bankruptcy in the 1950s. When they bought Geauga Lake, they planned to do the same thing to the long neglected park. They came up with a 10-year, multi-million dollar plan which helped fix parts of the Clipper coaster, and then changed the name to the one we know and love today, Big Dipper. This change came in 1969, 10 years after they bought the park. Also in 1969, Funtime Inc. (a longtime owner of the park, and who many consider to be the best owners of the park due to their extensive interest in making the park and town around it a global name), bought the park. The Big Dipper remained a staple attraction, even through the shift from free entry to pay-per-ride. It also underwent major renovations in the 1980s, and also was retracked by Martin and Vleminckx.

Fate of the Big Dipper

Credits: Chagrin Valley Times

The Big Dipper continued to stay popular even after Premier Parks (Six Flags) acquisition of Funtime Inc. and Cedar Fairs’ purchase of the park in the early 2000s. It began to gain traction as the oldest roller coaster in Ohio and 7th oldest roller coaster in the United States, and was even awarded two different designations from ACE, the ACE Coaster Classic and the ACE Coaster Landmark awards. This made it all the more surprising when Cedar Fair made the sudden decision to close the park on September 21st, 2007, announcing that the only part of the park that would remain open would be the adjacent waterpark. Many people were obviously concerned about what would happen to the Big Dipper, especially since it held such a special title in Ohio history, and even amusement park history as a whole. Many efforts to sell the coaster or preserve it were unsuccessful, and the auction company as well as Cedar Fair wasn’t truthful as to who had bought the coaster. Minor repairs were made in 2008, and two coaster enthusiasts approached Cedar Fair with interest to buy and preserve Big Dipper, but the plans fell through once Cedar Fair learned they were planning to store the coaster near the abandoned amusement park. The coaster eventually fell into disrepair, and many locals expressed that it was hurtful that something they took so much pride in was now an eyesore and a danger to the local community, especially with urban exploration becoming more popular within the area. The decision to demolish the Big Dipper was made exactly 9 years after the initial closing of the park on September 21, 2016. The coaster was later demolished on October 17, 2016. Jess Jennings, an avid fan of the ride said “I like how when you’re on an old ride like that, how you can feel every shift of the car on the ride. It still had the single position lap bars which made the nostalgia factor that much better… I’m always sad when a good coaster closes. They all have that familiar smell of grease and the shifting of the ride cars that tell you that they have age on them. Nothing really compares to the Big Dipper. The rides (Blue Streak at Conneaut Lake and wooden coasters at Kennywood, just to name a few) may feel similar, but without the landscape, it’s not the same.” Do you have any memories of riding this historic and industry changing coaster? Let Hidden Amusements know in the comments, and have a chance to be featured in a future blogpost!

Works Cited:

https://coasterpedia.net/wiki/Big_Dipper_(Geauga_Lake)

https://www.aceonline.org/page/GLDipper

https://aurorahistorical.org/archives/geauga-lake-sea-world-history/

https://www.ultimaterollercoaster.com/coasters/geauga-lake-big-dipper

https://www.beaconjournal.com/article/20170914/NEWS/309149687