Qualla: Big Dipper at Camden Park

Big Dipper at Camden Park: Introduction

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

National Amusement Devices was a Dayton, Ohio company that built wooden roller coasters in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Most of their work is gone now - demolished as the amusement parks they served closed or modernized. Only three of their coasters still operate. Two of them are at Camden Park in Huntington, West Virginia: the Little Dipper, and the bigger one that opened in 1958 and is the reason most coaster enthusiasts visit. The Big Dipper rises fifty feet above the small park near the Ohio River, runs a complete circuit in one minute and forty seconds, and has been giving West Virginians their first roller coaster experience for sixty-seven years.

Big Dipper at Camden Park: Why It Got Built

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Camden Park's previous coaster was called Roller Coaster - a side friction design that had operated since the park's earlier era. Side friction was an early twentieth-century technology that used flanges on the outside of the rail to keep the cars on the track, rather than the mo...

Big Dipper at Camden Park: Fifty Feet, One-Forty

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Big Dipper is not large by modern coaster standards. The chain lift hill rises just 50 feet from the loading station, and the total ride time is one minute and forty seconds. But the layout is denser and trickier than the modest dimensions suggest. After cresting the lift, th...

Big Dipper at Camden Park: Coaster Landmark Status

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On May 12, 2019, the American Coaster Enthusiasts designated the Big Dipper as a Coaster Landmark - their highest formal recognition of historic significance. The ACE designation is selective. It is given to coasters that have made important contributions to the industry, to desi...

Big Dipper at Camden Park: Camden Park

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Big Dipper does not exist in isolation. Camden Park, the small Huntington amusement park that operates it, is itself one of the oldest continuously running trolley parks in the United States, dating to 1903. The park has fewer than two dozen rides, occupies a modest footprint...

Big Dipper at Camden Park: From Above

Sun, 31 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

From the air, Camden Park reads as a small cluster of bright colors and curving lines pressed against the south bank of the Ohio River west of downtown Huntington. The Big Dipper is identifiable by the rectangular footprint of its wooden structure - a network of vertical beams an...