| 2003
Top Ten Endangered Sites
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(Updated)
 Playland's Wooden Roller Coaster is known across North America as one of the best coaster rides going. But if the PNE becomes history the Coaster's future is bleak.
Landscape architects have suggested that it
be broken up and used as a garden sculpture in a re-designed
Hastings Park. This rare wooden coaster deserves better —
much better.
The Wooden Roller Coaster is constructed entirely of
specially treated fireproof woods and was built from scratch
on the PNE grounds. It's 75 feet high at its tallest point
and in 1958, the year of its construction, it was one of the
two highest roller coasters in North America.
Walker LeRoy, of Oaks Park, Oregon, oversaw
construction using the plan created by Carl Phare, the world's
foremost roller coaster builder and designer. This was the
last coaster that Carl Phare designed. "I'm really proud of
this ride," he said. "I know I'll never build another so I
put everything I have learned over the past 56 years into
this one. There'll never be another one as good."
Suggestions that the PNE might continue at Hastings
Park in temporary structures could bode well for the Coaster
if the ride were allowed to stay as the fair's only permanent
structure. Otherwise, its only hope is to be adopted by another
municipality.
Updated 28 April 2008: The 2008 season celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Wooden Roller Coaster (1958-2008), and it's still going strong!
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