Jack Rabbit

Kennywood opened Jack Rabbit on June 18, 1920, near the start of the Roaring Twenties amusement park boom, as its fourth roller coaster and the first anywhere at the park to use John A. Miller's newly patented underfriction wheels. Designed by Miller and Harry Baker and built under the supervision of Charles J. Mach at a cost of $50,000, the ride's underfriction system locked trains to the rails, allowing far steeper and more daring drops than earlier coasters could safely execute.

The layout is built entirely around a natural ravine, using an uncommon mid-course lift hill rather than a single climb at the start, followed immediately by the ride's signature 68-foot, 6-inch double-dip — two rapid drops in succession that generate some of the strongest sustained airtime of any surviving wood coaster from the era. A dark tunnel originally covered the ride's lower turnaround but was removed in the 1940s before being restored, at a slightly shorter length, prior to the 1991 season.

The ride's original open-front trains were replaced in 1951 by Kennywood's own Edward Vettel Sr. with the stationary lap-bar trains still in use today, a rare instance of a century-old wood coaster retaining trains built specifically for it more than 70 years ago.

As Kennywood's oldest surviving coaster and one of the oldest continuously operating roller coasters anywhere in the world, Jack Rabbit was central to the park's 1987 designation as a National Historic Landmark.