Description

The first roller coasters utilized wooden track, which consists of running rails made of flat steel strips mounted to laminated wood. Wooden coaster construction became stagnant in the ’70s due to the rising popularity of steel roller coaster design, but a few new builds bucked the trend to keep the Golden Age of roller coasters alive. One such example is ‘The Beast,’ built in 1979 in Mason, Ohio. This was the tallest, fastest, and longest wooden roller coaster in the world at the time of it’s opening. Decades later, it is still the longest, spanning 7,361 feet, racing across 35 acres of hilly, wooded terrain. Two lift hills contribute to the ride’s duration of more than four minutes, which also ranks as one of the world’s longest runtimes.