Playing With Light In A Skate Park

The first skatepark in the world was officially opened in February 1976 in Albany, Western Australia with the reigning US skateboard champion Russ Howell as guest of honour and the publicity recorded by Russ Howell's photographs and film was used as a basic concept in the design of the first skateboard tracks in the USA. The 140 metre long track was converted from an old gravel quarry with many open cut excavations. The one way downhill track contains three sharp bends with vertical banked walls and ends in an open circular area surrounded by banked walls between 3 and 4 metres high. The Albany Skatetrack was host to the Skateboarding World Championship competition in 1976.
The first skatepark in the USA was built in March of 1976 in Carlsbad, California. Carlsbad Skatepark was designed and built by inventors Jack Graham and John O'Malley and resided on the grounds of Carlsbad Raceway. The first skateparks were primarily private, for-profit endeavors, although several public parks were built globally. Parks then included pools, bowls, snake runs, freestyle areas, banked slalom areas, half-pipes, and full pipes. Most were concrete and were outdoors. In more extreme climates parks were built indoors, often of wood. None of the private parks of the 1970s remain, with the notable exception of Kona Skatepark in Jacksonville, Florida, United States. Many of that country's public parks remain, such as Derby Park in Santa Cruz, California. Most of that era's parks were poorly designed, being built by business people seeking a quick profit. Better parks, such as Upland, California's Pipeline, designed by skateboarders and carefully built, survived into the 80's, until escalating land values made their sites vulnerable to development. Exorbitant liability insurance premiums also contributed to the demise of the original skateparks.