Thunderhawk Turns 100, Allentown, Pennsylvania, USA

August 28, 2024

Thunderhawk Turns 100, Allentown, Pennsylvania, USA

"It's the only thing in my life," I told my friends, "which is older than my Aunt Gene."

For context, my great-aunt Gene is my grandmother's eldest sister, and the only one of my mother's aunts and uncles still with us. She turned 99 years old this past May; we're very much looking forward to celebrating her 100th birthday next year. I don't doubt she's going to make it, either, because she's in pretty darn good shape for her age.

But there's one thing in my life which is a little bit older than she is, and that's Thunderhawk.

When I was little, my favorite place to go was Dorney Park. It's our local amusement park, the only one that's still with us. As I point out in the introduction to my book Laury's Island: The Lehigh Valley's Forgotten Park, at the dawn of the 20th century, the Lehigh Valley area was home to a good dozen little amusement parks which offered a variety of attractions to try to outdo each other. Most of them have disappeared from the map in one sense or another; a few have remained in the form of playgrounds and picnic groves. Only Dorney Park is still an actual amusement park.

The park itself dates from 1860, when Solomon Dorney decided to build a fish hatchery on part of his estate and make it a sort of resort. After ten years, he thought he needed to add to this, so he added some attractions, rides, and a restaurant, and turned it into a public venue. He later expanded it even farther to include a zoo and garden, and it became one of the stops on the Allentown-Kutztown trolley line. This puts it in the category of trolley parks, one of the only ones remaining in the world.

I'm not going into the full history of the park, however, because the focus of this post is Thunderhawk. Growing up, I didn't go on roller coasters much, and I still don't to this day; I have issues with motion sickness, not to mention chronic pain, so the majority of coasters are just not my cup of tea. But for the last several years I have made an annual exception for Thunderhawk because, even though it does aggravate my pain condition somewhat, I'm oddly and inexplicably fond of it. Maybe it's the historic aspect, maybe it's nostalgia, maybe it's both.

Thunderhawk is not the oldest ride still at Dorney; that honor goes to the Whip, which debuted in 1918 and is possibly the oldest surviving ride of its type in the world. It was also not the first roller coaster to be seen at Dorney Park, a fact which surprised me when I learned it. The original coaster was a gentle thing called the Great Scenic Railway, added to the park's offerings in 1905. It ran until around 1912, after which it was closed for a couple seasons due to deterioration (and an incident in which some passengers fell out of the train almost certainly didn't help) before being removed in 1914. If you'd like to see an old postcard depicting the Scenic Railway, visit this website and then click on the larger of the two images displayed there.

But in 1924, new owner Robert Plarr gave the park a new roller coaster, inventively named "the Coaster." It was a wooden out-and-back type of coaster. In an out-and-back layout, the coaster climbs a large hill and goes down a drop, follows a track of varying other hills out for a distance, and then goes around a curve and coasts back to the starting point. It's considered a simple design, but one of the most popular.

The Coaster was built by Philadelphia Toboggan Coasters, or PTC as it's often called for short. The original out-and-back design was drafted by a man named Herbert Paul Schmeck, and if that name rings a bell... then I find your coaster knowledge impressive, because I didn't recognize it at all. I am, however, familiar with some of Mr. Schmeck's work - his first coaster design was the Wild Cat at Hersheypark, which no longer stands, and which made me very ill the one and only time I rode it. Possibly his most famous creation is the Phoenix at Knoebels Amusement Resort, which since 2018 has been continuously awarded the title of Best Wooden Roller Coaster in the World by the monthly publication Amusement Today.

In 1930, the Coaster received a remodel to add a figure-8 twist in the middle of the ride, and this has been the design ever since. For decades, it was painted a vivid yellow color, which is why it was known colloquially among us Lehigh Valley natives as "the yellow roller coaster." The yellow ribbon seen in the photo here is the same shade. It did not receive a name until 1989, when I was in middle school, at which time it was christened Thunderhawk. I've never found any clear explanation for why it was given that specific name, but the reason it had to finally be given one was because the park was getting its second coaster - the since-demolished Hercules. I guess we couldn't very well continue calling it "the Coaster" when it wasn't the only one, although it took a number of years for people I know to stop calling it anything except "the yellow roller coaster." Part of the reason we finally gave up the name is because they stopped painting it yellow; these days it's sort of a yellowish-white.

Thunderhawk has an additional claim to fame, apart from its age. The 1988 film Hairspray, with John Travolta, was filmed partially at Dorney Park. They changed the name of the park to Tilted Acres for the film, and there is specifically one scene in which protagonist Tracy rides Thunderhawk with her friends. Dorney Park has appeared as a setting in a couple of other films and television shows, but as far as I'm aware this is the only film which featured Thunderhawk specifically.

Anyway, I finally got around to riding Thunderhawk when I was in my 20s, and I try to ride it every time I'm in the park. These days I'm usually only there once a year, when my friend Rachel's workplace hosts their annual employee appreciation celebration; she always invites my best friend Andrea and me to join her, her boyfriend Mark, and her brother Thomas for the occasion. And as I pointed out to them when I said I wanted to ride it, it's the only thing in my life older than the aforementioned Aunt Gene.

For decades, Thunderhawk's launch station was inside a building, adorned with an enormous image of the park's mascot, Alfundo the clown. (His name was a portmanteau - Al for Allentown, Fun for... well, fun, and Do for Dorney.) The same building housed the bumper cars and a water ride called Journey to the Center of the Earth. The car would leave the station and go through a small tunnel beneath the bumper cars before heading up the lift hill. Nowadays, the entire thing is out in the open; the bumper cars were replaced by newer models in a different area of the park, and both Alfundo and Journey are long gone. I'll admit that there is a part of me that misses going through that lovely dark tunnel. Also, the ride isn't quite as painful as it used to be; in 2016, the trains were replaced with newer, safer models, featuring individual lap bars and padding to prevent unnecessary jostling. In 2021, the American Coaster Enthusiasts added Thunderhawk to their prestigious list of Coaster Landmarks, in recognition of its status. It is the eighth oldest still-operating wooden roller coaster in the world, tied with Kennywood Park's Thunderbolt, and the oldest surviving creation of Philadelphia Toboggan Coasters.

Thunderhawk takes riders up the main hill, where they crest and go into the main drop. My stomach usually feels like it's trying to become acquainted with my knees at that point. From there it proceeds over a number of smaller ("bunny") hills and through the figure-8 twist, carried along chiefly by kinetic energy, including one sharp turn which gives the illusion that you're likely to hit your head. You won't, but it sure looks like you will. When the train reaches the brake system just before the station, it comes to a relatively sudden halt, and the operators manually guide it back to the starting point once the other train has cleared. From the time you leave the station to the time you return, the entire ride takes roughly a minute or two. As is the case with most amusement park rides, you're likely to spend more time waiting in line.

But it's worth it.

For a full look at Thunderhawk's history, check out this timeline which has been put on display for the anniversary year. (Click on the image to make it bigger. I'm sorry it looks a little off; I couldn't take a steady panoramic picture, so I had to piece this together from multiple pictures I took and they didn't line up as precisely as I'd hoped.) Meanwhile, I'll look forward to riding it again next summer.