Palm Springs Aerial Tramway

It was opened in September 1963 as a way of getting from the floor of the Coachella Valley to near the top of San Jacinto Peak and was constructed in rugged Chino Canyon.

[2] The floor of the 18-foot-diameter (5.5 m) aerial tram cars rotates constantly, making two complete revolutions throughout the duration of the journey so that the passengers can see in all directions without moving.

[1] The other "Rotair" aerial trams are located in Cape Town, South Africa, Titlis, Switzerland and Sky Way, Courmayeur, Italy.

Passengers disembark at the Mountain Station in the alpine wilderness of Long Valley and Mount San Jacinto State Park.

The view at the top can stretch northward for more than 200 mi (320 km) on a clear day, all the way to Mount Charleston north of Las Vegas, Nevada.

Supplies are loaded into the passenger area before the attraction's opening while fresh water is pumped into storage tanks in the car's underbelly.

The aerial tram was first proposed by electrical engineer Francis F. Crocker during a 1935 trip to Banning, California, with the Desert Sun newspaper publisher Carl Barkow.

[citation needed] Toward the end of the decade, Crocker named the comanager of the Palm Springs Desert Inn, O. Earl Coffman, to chair the construction committee.

On July 31, 1991, a bus carrying approximately 60 Girl Scouts careened out of control as it was heading downhill on Tram Road, killing the driver and six passengers.

In October 2003, a steel cable broke and caused a mechanical failure that left more than fifty tramway customers hanging in mid-air and one hundred passengers stranded at the Mountain station for 4½ hours.

In addition to reindeer, the park featured tame deer, cockatoos, two dolphins named Buttons and Beau, macaques, and various other species of primates (including "Suzie, the show-off chimpanzee").

[8] The fourth and final Matt Helm movie, The Wrecking Crew, contained an action scene filmed at the tram station that featured actors Dean Martin, Nancy Kwan, and Sharon Tate.

In the 2010 Life After People episode "Holiday Hell", the dry desert environment allows the tramway to survive for 120 years without maintenance; however, corrosion eventually sets in on the cable and towers, leading it to collapse into Chino Canyon.