Long before contemporary roller coasters were hurling guests through the air at face-peeling speed, American theme parks were places of pastoral leisure and simple pleasures, involving things like picnics and penny arcades. One such place, Canobie Lake Park, is a folksy destination in southern New Hampshire that bridges the gap between the old and the new; the old-timey purity and the adrenaline-pumping terror of a roller coaster with a 97-degree plummet.
The oldest theme park in the Granite State–and one of the oldest in the country–Canobie Lake Park first emerged in 1902 as a charming trolley park, offering a lakeside retreat for families in and around the Massachusetts-adjacent town of Salem. And while technology has amped up the thrill factor over the ensuing century, it’s a park that retains a classic quaintness and Americana kitsch that feels like New England’s very own Dollywood. But instead of Dolly Parton and Civil War-themed dinner shows, here you’ll find acrobatic rescue dogs and fried dough BLTs. Here’s what to know about visiting Canobie Lake Park.
It was a simpler time for theme parks back in the day. Long before the Star Wars cosplay and the 13-story Wonder Woman roller coasters, trolley parks were mainly gardens and leisurely recreation areas for families to frequent along streetcar lines in the late 1800s. The OG of theme parks, they were less about adrenaline and 4-D immersion and more about picnicking in a park and watching fireworks-maybe floating in a canoe if you were feeling crazy. Canobie Lake Park was such a place, opened in 1902 by The Hudson, Pelham & Salem Railways as a way to encourage people to use their streetcars and give them a destination to frequent for wholesome family fun.
Indeed, Canobie Lake Park’s botanical garden vibe attracted quite the refined crowd. Folks came clad in their finest garb, donning gowns and suits to hit the penny arcade and ride the Circle Swing. The whole vibe looked like a Georges Seurat painting, complete with waterfront green space, cottage-like buildings, and forested pathways. Pre-roller coaster, this was a place primarily used for picnics, gaming, and casual sporting events-until the onset of the automobile brought things to a screeching halt and changed the face of trolley parks forever.
After Canobie Lake Park’s heyday as a trolley car mainstay, times were a-changing in the 1920s. The rise of the automobile meant the downfall of the streetcar-and thus, the demise of the trolley park. As streetcar lines dwindled, so too did attendance at Canobie Lake Park, culminating in its closure in 1929. Fortunately, the downfall was brief, and it emerged anew a few years later with thrilling new features-including, as a new necessity, a parking lot-to bolster interest and attendance.
Canobie 2.0 reopened in 1932, with a few new tricks in the works-namely, a dazzling new wooden ride called the Greyhound Roller Coaster, which was shipped from Connecticut and re-assembled on site. Still in operation today and now known as the Yankee Cannonball, the rickety attraction was a game-changer for the park that opened the doors for a slew of new activities, rides, and events.
It’s motif, too, took on a bucolic fairy land aesthetic, as meandering pathways through the trees filled in with dance halls, performance stages, carnival-style games, concessionaires, and wood-clad buildings capped with spires and flags. The antique carousel, constructed in 1903 and filled with gilded horses swivelling to orchestral organ music, became quite the show-stopping centrepiece.
Then came the stars. Although Canobie Lake Park has yet to be graced by Dolly Parton’s presence, its Dancehall Theater became quite the star-studded attraction by the 1950s, going on to host A-list performances from the likes of Duke Ellington, Jimmy Dorsey, Aerosmith, and Sonny & Cher. At one beautiful point in time, you could see Cher singing in the New Hampshire woods, dreaming of a future that only Dippin’ Dots could deliver.
But not even Cher could protect Canobie from America’s frivolous relationship to theme parks. By the late ‘50s, roller coasters were disappearing at a rapid clip across the country, and the park could no longer rely on the Yankee Cannonball to do the heavy-lifting as the marquis attraction. With new ownership in 1958 came a new mission to dig deep and pave the way for a more durable future. Literally, this meant paving pathways through the woods, and adding a bevy of new eateries, arcades, games, and rides.
Nowadays, while you likely won’t see Cher performing any time soon, you can watch rescue dogs leap through the air to catch frisbees. Or pose for photos with Dapper the Dog, basically the Mickey Mouse of Canobie Lake Park. A far cry from its trolley park days of yore, the parking lot is routinely at capacity, filled with folks from all over New England looking for a taste of old-timey fun.
Through all its ebbs and flows, the park maintains a rustic, folksy ambience that feels utterly preserved in time-and in a world filled with over-the-top Harry Potter rides and theme parks more expensive than your mortgage, it’s a breath of fresh air. That’s not to say Canobie hasn’t advanced and innovated, though. The tree-lined pathways, shimmering lake views, vintage-looking go-carts, refurbished carousel, and faux casinos all preserve the Americana atmosphere, while new attractions, rides, and snacks (the fried dough BLT is the audacious comfort food of your dreams) continue to catapult the park into a new era of enduring nostalgia for future generations. The Yankee Cannonball is still going strong, jettisoning visitors out on a wooden romp by the parking lot, while other thrills include the super-soaked Boston Tea Party boat ride, the fast-spinning Turkish Twist that’ll make you feel like laundry in a washing machine, and the hilariously spooky Mine of Lost Souls, which feels like a frontier-themed precursor to Disney’s Haunted Mansion. The newest novelty is the park’s most intense attraction to date, a vaguely lumberjack-themed coaster called, unnervingly, Untamed. Guests board grizzly bear cars and buckle up for a series of speedy loops and zero-gravity rolls, including a 72-foot drop that goes beyond vertical.
With more than 80 attractions at this point, Canobie Lake Park is still as family-friendly as ever, with plenty of rides and games for kids of all ages, like the Kiddie Canoes and Pony Carts. There’s also a water park, Castaway Island, and the autumnal Screeemfest with haunted houses, creepy shows, and free-roaming monsters lurking in the dark.
A lot has changed and grown at Canobie Lake Park, one of the oldest and most enduring theme parks in the nation. Sure, the roller coasters aren’t all wooden anymore, the arcade games cost more than a penny, and ballgowns are no longer the typical attire, but it’s still a pastoral paradise for familial fun in the New Hampshire woods.
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Matt Kirouac is a travel writer working on a memoir about the epic ups and downs from life on the road as a gay couple-and the lessons learned along the way. Follow him on Instagram.
When they were first constructed in 1931 , the elongated tracks of the Nevada Southern Railway were purely utilitarian. A Boulder City spur off Union Pacific’s main Las Vegas line, they bolstered steel horses shuttling billions of pounds of concrete, metal, and the occasional sweaty man to a city created solely for the construction of the Hoover Dam-which to this day stands as one of the world’s most impressive feats of engineering. But the vivid Mojave desert scenery-gorgeous, shrubby open space helmed by the rugged volcanic River mountains-was lost on the railway’s inanimate haul.
The rails fell into disuse after the last generator was delivered, but the tracks remained, their presence alerted every time the desert sun glinted off the weather-beaten metal. And their quiet persistence worked: In the late 1990s, the rails were revived by the Nevada Southern Railway. Today, leisure excursion trains share those tracks with a new, entirely novel way to take in the scenery once eclipsed by those Hoover Dam-bound locomotives: via Rail Explorers’ open-air rail bikes.
Visitors can choose between eight jaunts, some round-trip journeys with an uphill pedal assist, some one-way with a train ride back, and at least one nighttime option that allows you to bike in darkness draped in neon glow sticks (this is Vegas, after all). The best part? It can all be done with a refreshing White Claw in hand.
Rail Explorers’ Las Vegas operation is now one of five different company locations. And thanks to the region’s consistently warm winter, it’s the only one open year-round. It fills out a roster comprising Rhode Island-the company’s headquarters-the recently added Boone, Iowa, and two New York locations in Cooperstown, home of the Baseball Hall of Fame, and the Catskills.
It’s in the latter where I find myself strapped into my own tandem rail bike, my closed-toed shoes pedalling alongside the rippling Esopus Creek on tracks that belonged to the Ulster & Delaware Railroad, once responsible for voyaging mid-century vacationers to the sprawling Borscht Belt resorts. Today, much like the resorts it serviced, the line is mostly abandoned.
But the stretch I’m on is full of life. This location closes for the season on October 31, but the next couple of months are sure to be resplendent. Leaves have already begun to turn, and will only become stunning deeper shades of yellow, oranges, and reds in the coming weeks (the NY tourism site has a foliage chart mapping the progress). On the parallel roads Upstate, leaf-peepers create traffic jams witnessing the flamboyant display. In contrast, a breezy ride down the tracks is a secret, much better alternative.
Throughout our eight-mile roundtrip ride we’re spaced out enough to feel like we have the tracks to ourselves, 20 or so quad and tandem bikes interspersed with guides to lead and help us cross the highway (or to, say, retrieve a baseball cap that’s flown off). But as a pack we’re a diverse bunch, so much so that safety instructions are printed in different languages.
I ask Casey Farrell, the Rail Explorers Catskills manager, just how people find their way to them-though, it should have been obvious. “We actually have quite a few people from TikTok come up there,” she says. “Mainly from the New York City area and New Jersey. I’m pretty sure a lot of it is social media.” Case in point: When Amy Schumer and Michael Cera visited while filming Life & Beth, Schumer posted the adventure on her Instagram stories (pictured with her husband). “That gave us quite a boost.”
Not only do the cherry red rail bikes shine camera-ready against their natural backdrops, they’re an eco-friendly and active way to get outdoors. Numbers exploded during the pandemic, as it was one of the only COVID-safe activities in the area. They’ve hosted office bonding excursions, family outings, tour buses, and bachelorette parties. “Those are usually a riot because they’ll bring the giant inflatable penises and sometimes my guides get souvenirs like snap bracelets or penis straws,” adds Farrell.
And if you get lucky, you’ll also see wildlife. Out here there’s deer and chipmunks, and, every now and then, a bald eagle. Plus, a resident mama bear and two baby cubs. “When the guests see them, there’s a little bit of a freak out moment sometimes,” says Farrell. “The bears are more scared of the sound of the bikes so they tend to stay away, but the cubs are just so cute.”
But animal sightings aren’t limited to the woods: Customers are also allowed to bring one non-human companion along for the ride, complete with their own special seat. That means on the next vehicle over, there could be a dog or cat enjoying the wind whipping through its fur. Or perhaps an adventurous duck, nestled in its own bubble carrier (“I thought the quacks were a ringtone at first,” says Farrell). Farrell’s most memorable guest so far was a parakeet, who perched on its owner’s shoulder throughout the round-trip expedition, thanking the guides in its little parakeet voice when they were done.
Once the arteries pumping blood into Westward Expansion and the Industrial Revolution, the rise and fall of America’s railroad system has left thousands of miles of tracks in its wake. Some remain abandoned, posing as after-school entertainment or sets for indie horror flicks. Others have been ripped up, their metal salvaged and their pathways converted to biking, running, and other non-motorized greenways. Others have been converted into city parks, like the High Line in New York City, the 606 in Chicago, or the Rail Park in Philadelphia. And some have found new life as a modified version of their former selves, as with Rail Explorers.
But the concept of a rail bike isn’t new. The mechanism is essentially the same as the handcars that were used for track maintenance when the railroads first appeared in the 1800s. There are various styles; the first patented “rail bike” shows up in 1869, literal bicycles with an outrigger wheel used by workers to get around sites . In Europe, they favour the “draisine,” two bikes set side to side, attached by a metal platform.
The commercial-style recumbent bikes utilized by Rail Explorers were first spotted by founder Mary Joy Lu in a romantic sunset scene of a Korean soap opera back in 2012. Rail bikes had long been popular in the Asian country, a go-to for everything from sightseeing on Jeju Island to date nights in Gangchon Rail Park near Seoul, cruising its themed, lit-up tunnels. According to the Rail Explorers website, Lu was so excited about the concept that within 10 days, she was on a plane to South Korea to learn more about the pedal-powered contraptions.
In 2015, she and her husband Alex Catchpoole opened their first Rail Explorers outpost in the Adirondacks, using vehicles from the same Korean manufacturer she visited three years prior. The company saw 15,000 riders that first year, and 25,000 the following. The original location shuttered when the county wanted to reclaim the tracks to construct rail trails, but in 2017, the company opened their second location in their now-headquarters of Newport, Rhode Island, overseeing two routes accompanied by salty air and ocean views. Five years later with five locations under their belt, they haven’t looked back.
There are a few factors that come into play when choosing a new Rail Explorers location. Is the city, county, or other operators currently responsible for the rail lines willing to collaborate? Will riding the rails interfere with road transportation? Will the guests have somewhere to park? And, perhaps most importantly, are the locations visually interesting? “They have to have an appeal about them,” says Farrell. “They’re gonna wanna have something scenic to look at.”
Of course, with the country’s abundance of rail lines, there are several companies aside from Rail Explorers offering rail bike experiences. There’s River Fox railbikes in Sacramento, California, Vance Creek Railriders in Shelton, Washington, American Bike Rail Adventures in Pennsylvania, and Revolution Rail Co in the Adirondacks, Colorado, and New Jersey, plus many more. But Rail Explorers is the only one able to thrill daredevils with their newest location: Boone County, Iowa.
Stationed 45 minutes from Des Moines, Rail Explorers’ Boone County excursion is a 13-mile trip aboard the Boone and Scenic Valley Railroad tracks, saved from demolition by the Iowa Railroad Historical Society and turned into a tourist rail. Like the locations in Nevada and the Catskills, there’s an adjacent train museum run by the historical society, an added bonus for ferroequinologists.
Saddle up on a Rail Explorers bike, and you’ll first traverse rural Iowa farmland, soaking up the languid rolling hills. You’ll then dip into the lush Des Moines River Valley, where you may encounter a deer or two. And then-then!-you’re suddenly suspended 156 feet above ground on the breathtaking Bass Point Creek High Bridge, a trestle bridge built in 1913 that originally connected coal mines below. If you dare take the ride, make sure to empty your pockets. If you don’t, look for it soon on TikTok’s next viral hit.
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Vanita Salisbury is Thrillist’s Senior Travel Writer. She saw her first chipmunk when riding the rails in the Catskills. Next time she’s hoping for a parakeet.