Located on the banks of White Oak Bayou, Luna Park opened to the public for the first time 26 June 1924.
Contemporary press coverage (printed 27 July 1924) stated that the park had “… virtually every variety of amusement device known in the world of showdom.” Houston's first roller coaster,[2] the 100-foot (30 m)-tall Skyrocket featured an 84-foot (26 m) drop and was billed (with a length of more than 1.25 miles) as the "largest" and "highest" roller coaster in the United States at that time.
[3] The pavilion was also advertised as the largest in the American South; live entertainment was offered in the form of aerobatics, little people (billed as Williamson's Midget City), and shows entitled "See America First" and "The Mysterious Sensation."
The brief existence of the Houston Luna Park was tumultuous and controversial, from a 1924 lawsuit by a patron who accused park employees of treating her roughly as she was waiting in line for the Skyrocket to claims of discrimination against Mexican people (a police deputy sheriff was arrested for assaulting a Mexican national but was eventually acquitted) to the October 1924 deaths of three people (two were killed from a fall from the Skyrocket; the third was professional parachutist Montie LeMay, who died after her parachute failed to open after attempting a stunt).
While the latter half of the 1920s appeared to be the best of times for Luna Park, the 1929 stock market crash was the beginning of a sequence of events that spelled doom for it.