senior citizens sleeping in flume ride picture

Their first installation was ‘El Aserradero’ (The Sawmill) which debuted at Six Flags Over Texas in 1963, and is still in operation today, with ‘The Mill Race’ following it only a few weeks later at Cedar Point. It wasn’t until the 1960’s that the modern log flume was truly perfected by a company called Arrow Development. And old mill rides, which usually just had a boat that floated along a trough, through darkened mill-building tunnels. The modern-day log flumes are a variant of the shoot-the-chute rides, which still continue to be built today, and featured a larger passenger boat that would slide down a chute and skip along the water at the bottom before being manually hoisted back up the slope. Such rides were the precursor of the modern log-ride amusement park rides.Īs theme park rides developed and evolved into the early 20 th century, boat and chute rides began to pop up, taking their inspiration from this fun-looking logging technology.

A ride down the flume would surely rival that of the modern day amusement park ride, as due to gradient of some of these transport channels, the speeds could reach up to 50 miles an hour. On occasion, despite being exceedingly dangerous, flume herders and others would ride down the flume in small crafts or boats, either for inspection or for thrills. Employed by these sawmills, were ‘flume herders’, whose main responsibility it was to inspect the length of the channels, to ensure the lumber wasn’t jamming up and to watch for leaks or breaks in the flume.

Senior citizens sleeping in flume ride picture