07/02/2025
What’s your favorite Belmont Park memory?
One hundred years ago, a wooden beast rose from the beach, sending San Diegans’ hearts racing and adrenal glands spasming for a century. This Fourth of July marks a giant birthday for the Giant Dipper, everyone’s favorite old-school screamer, and its iconic home, .
Tim Cole fell in love with the park on a middle school field trip in 1974. “It was like stepping into Wonderland,” he remembers. But by the late ’70s, the Giant Dipper had fallen into disrepair, and the city planned to tear it down.
So Tim did what any coaster-obsessed teenager might: he skipped class, snuck into the park for, um, research, and ended up helping lead a 12-year campaign to save it. The coaster roared back to life in 1990.
“When the coaster took its first ride, it was like the heart of Mission Beach was pumping again,” Cole says. “It was like it was alive.”
But Belmont’s century-long legacy isn’t just in the wood and rails. It’s people who’ve kept it going. Minh Tra started here in high school over 30 years ago, working his way up from birthday party host to assistant GM and operations director.
He’s seen it all: the legendary “Whirl ’til You Hurl” contest of ’98 (yes, that was real), countless first dates, and families returning year after year.
And yet, even on an ordinary morning, he says the magic never fades.
“Who doesn’t like going on a roller coaster at 10 in the morning and looking out and seeing the ocean?” Tra says. “It just reminds you of what we have in San Diego.”
Belmont Park’s 100th birthday celebration is taking place all summer long. You can find $1 tacos and ride the Giant Dipper for $1 on Tuesdays through September 2nd.
Read more about Belmont Park’s history, by Dominique Rocha, with the link in our bio.
Photos courtesy of Belmont Park
