Click on any photo to see a larger version of it.



Sitting on the border between Fantasyland and Tomorrowland sits one of the most important coasters of the modern era and Disney's first mountain.



Everyone knows Space Mountain and Big Thunder Mountain but the first mountain that Walt Disney built opened on June 14, 1959.



That mountain is the Matterhorn Bobsleds. 



The Matterhorn Bobsleds was inspired when Walt visited the filming of the movie "Third Man on the Mountain" in Switzerland where he saw the famous peak and real bobsled runs.  The idea came to build a bobsled coaster and Walt Reached out to Ed Bacon and Karl Morgan of Arrow Development (later Arrow Dynamics). who had built several ride systems for Disneyland.  They first looked at building the coaster with flat steel track like some wild mouse coasters of the era.  Eventually the came up with the idea of using tubular steel for track as it could be bent for a smoother ride experience.



The use of tubular steel for the Matterhorn's track was the most revolutionary change in coaster since John Miller filed patent 1,319,888 on October 28, 1919 for his system that locked coasters to rails with three sets of wheels.  Because of what Ed and Karl came up with for Walt Disney we now have steel coasters that can do things that no one could have imagined when the first Matterhorn car headed up into the mountain.

Unfortunately this is all the photos that I snapped of the Matterhorn.  That is one of the downfalls of having a short time at such an amazing park is I can't quite document it the way I would like to.  Oh well that is a reason for me to go back someday.
 


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Paul B. Drabek