Kennywood Park

Kennywood Park occupies about 40 acres on a plateau above the Monongahela River, roughly five miles southeast of Pittsburgh. The Monongahela Street Railway Company began it as a trolley excursion park in 1898, and it opened in 1899 under the first manager, engineer George S. Davidson, whose triangular layout of open-air pavilions around a small man-made lake remains largely intact. The park is regarded as one of the few survivors of the trolley park movement that flourished in the early 1900s in southwestern Pennsylvania. Its significance rests on its surviving rides: John A. Miller's Racer and Jack Rabbit coasters, the 1927 Dentzel carousel with 64 horses, the 1927 Old Mill, and the 1936 Noah's Ark. The nomination treats these as rare examples of early amusement technology, and the park as a record of how American amusement parks adapted to changing trends over several decades.