Happy Birthday, baby: Santa Cruz’s enduring symbol, the Giant Dipper, hits the century mark

San Francisco has the Golden Gate Bridge, Los Angeles the Hollywood sign, Seattle the Space Needle, and San Jose has … uh, give me a sec … maybe the poop snake? 

Like those other much larger cities, Santa Cruz also has an instantly identifiable icon, an image recognizable even in profile, a symbol that tells you where you are — or wish you were.

It’s the Giant Dipper, the magnificent old wooden roller coaster that is the central attraction of the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk, beloved by thrill-seekers and photographers alike, a vivid part of the childhoods (and adulthoods) of millions of people from all over the world, an enduring architectural touchstone that evokes memories through sight, through sound and through … well, whatever you call that gastrointestinal terror that is the main reason you buy the ticket in the first place. 

This summer, the Dipper reaches a milestone, its 100th birthday, making it technically the oldest of the West Coast icons we mentioned earlier (yes, the Hollywood sign celebrated its centennial last year, but it was completely demolished and then rebuilt in the ’70s). It’s the oldest operational roller coaster in California, but that’s hardly news. It’s been that for most of its existence. It’s currently the fifth-oldest still-in-operation roller coaster in the U.S. 

The centennial celebration for the Giant Dipper takes place Saturday, May 18, with a public ceremony in the morning and fireworks over Main Beach in the evening. It’s only the most visible of a number of efforts by the Beach Boardwalk to honor the Dipper. There’s a fan art contest, a share-your-memories campaign, centennial merch and a special National Roller Coaster Day celebration in August. 

I’m not much of an adrenaline junkie, so my rides on the Giant Dipper over the years have been few and generally confined to my pre-AARP days. Back in the 1990s, when I was a young reporter with the Santa Cruz Sentinel, in the middle of a summer workday when a story was going slowly or a headline just wasn’t coming to me, I would sometimes chase away the cobwebs with an invigorating lunch-hour ride on the Giant Dipper (that very soon morphed into a West Cliff bike ride, more my style). 

But in April, I got the chance for another Giant Dipper experience, an experience that almost no one not employed at the Boardwalk has ever had. I didn’t ride the Dipper. I walked it.

Behind the scenes

Escorted by longtime Giant Dipper coaster mechanics Neil Kunkel and Eddie Ernes, I took to the tracks without the benefit of a car in which to ride. I was allowed to follow Neil and Eddie on their rounds as they did their daily inspection of the tracks. In walking the Giant Dipper, speed is not a factor. But the hairpin turns and intimidating inclines and declines don’t necessarily need speed to bring a chill to the blood. 

During the inspection, we were all, wisely, harnessed and latched onto guide wires, not something my job usually calls for. The thought of slipping and hanging like a rag doll off the wooden frame of the Giant Dipper in the sight of anyone within a quarter mile was almost as distressing as the thought of free-falling. 

On either side of the steel track is a narrow wooden plank on which are affixed small pieces of horizontally placed boards to serve as steps. I won’t blame you if you haven’t noticed the stepping boards while flying by at freeway speeds. The coaster mechanics keep their gaze on their tracks, looking for any irregularities. They know the spots along the way that take a particular pounding from the high-flying trains passing by hundreds of times a day, and spend a bit more time at those spots. 

When you inspect a piece of track every day, I imagine you develop a pretty keen familiarity with just about every board and rivet. But I’m not certain I would notice a ham sandwich sitting in the middle of this track. I’m too busy watching my steps — and then there’s the other thing. From the standpoint of the top of the Giant Dipper — some 70-plus feet off the ground — the view, especially on a buttery and bright April morning, is intoxicating. We’re standing on a high spot, on a big dip (a “giant dip,” if you will) across from the main peak where the U.S. and California flags wave majestically. This spectacular 360-degree tableau — the sparkling ocean, the beach, the bluffs, the wharf, the Boardwalk, the houses on Beach Hill — is a big part of the Dipper’s mystique.

A most passionate fan

If you know two things about Nicholas Laschkewitsch — that he (1) grew up in Santa Cruz County, and that (2) he’s a longtime member and former head of the Northern California chapter of the American Coaster Enthusiasts, a nonprofit with 6,500 members from 16 countries — then a third thing is within easy reach.

Yes, it all started with him at the Giant Dipper.

“The Boardwalk was my home park growing up,” said Laschkewitsch, 30, who now lives in Los Angeles. “When I make it up to visit my family, I try to visit [the Dipper] every time up.”

Laschkewitsch has ridden more than 400 different roller coasters around the world, including the Dipper from the youngest age. He signed up with ACE at the age of 14, and has been deeply involved in the organization ever since. The Giant Dipper’s status among the great roller coasters in America is not a casual question to him.

“As far as its age is concerned,” he said, “compared with the quality of experience — when you consider that ratio — it’s the best.”

The Giant Dipper exists in a bifurcated world in which roller coasters are made of wood or of steel (though some are hybrids of the two). Wood roller coasters like the Giant Dipper are, of course, more traditional and, some argue, a more organic experience.

“I think there’s a greater sense of fear invoked from wooden coasters,” said Laschkewitsch, “because of the breathability and flexibility of a wooden structure. All roller coasters need to have some sort of flexibility to them, because with the forces that riders are experiencing, there has to be some sort of give to the material. And wood in particular is quite flexible. If you just stand below certain wooden coasters, you can see quite a bit of sway in the structure. And that may be startling to some. But if they were not able to flex like that, we would have some pretty serious structural repercussions with wood fracturing, and they would not be able to take in the forces.”

A steel coaster is more rigid, and allows for things like corkscrews, or barrel rolls, or loops in which riders turn upside down. The Giant Dipper has none of those things. It instead relies on a kind of unchanging simplicity of experience, which stands out in an environment in which high-tech upgrades and computer-generated add-ons dominate popular entertainment. 

A timeless ride

Back on the walking tour of the Giant Dipper, I am impressed by how purely mechanical the ride is. We go down in the famous dark tunnel that begins the ride, and gives it that initial burst of suspense. I get to see the braking system and the mechanism that keeps the train from slipping backward when it climbs. Though its maintenance and upkeep are always ongoing — wood rots and has to be replaced, for instance — its technology remains much as it was a century ago, as does the force that drives it, gravity.

“What I really like about this ride,” says mechanic Neil Kunkel, as we navigate one of the Dipper’s more dramatic curves, “is that when you look at pictures of it from 1924, or any of the early days, it’s really hard to find differences from what it was then to what it is now. Of course, there are different lights, maybe. But, for the most part, if you look at a picture from a book, it looks pretty much exactly like this.”

He gestures to the freshly painted structure of the Dipper below us snaking around in a path that has carried millions of riders over a hundred years. Those who took some of the first rides on the Dipper back in the year Calvin Coolidge was elected president would be bewildered by much of the look and feel of the world today. But in the Dipper, they would still find something recognizable.

“Certainly the most special thing about [the Giant Dipper] is the location,” said Laschkewitsch. “You can ride in the evening and watch the sunset over the ocean. You can take in the smells of the food and that salt air, and the fog rolling in on some nights. There’s these chaser lights that go along the outline of the structure chasing the train as it goes around the track. So there’s some very special moments purely based on the very special location of the ride [and] the fact that it’s been there now 100 years and survived so many different world events. I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve ridden it, hundreds and hundreds of times, that [tunnel at the beginning of the ride] never gets old. It’s such a defining moment for the Giant Dipper, the combination of classic design and location, that really makes it a standout attraction for me.”

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