Rocky Mountain Construction Brand Guidelines: The Idaho Firm That Refit Wooden Coasters

Repairing other people’s coasters.

Rocky Mountain Construction was founded in Idaho in 2001 by Fred Grubb and Suanne Dedmon. The Boston Globe named both founders in 2023, and the trade magazine EAP gave the same year. English Wikipedia says Grubb had worked in construction before that, on custom homes and zoo exhibits.

The start was small. A 2020 profile by the Coeur d’Alene Area Economic Development Corporation says the business began with ten staff repairing traditional wooden coaster track in Grubb’s garage in Athol, Idaho. Reviewing a documentary about the company in 2021, Laughing Place said its early work included servicing old wooden coasters such as the two at Silverwood Theme Park, in the same state. The Coeur d’Alene profile says it went on to design and build water parks, put up and repair other manufacturers’ coasters, and construct steel buildings.

The turning point was a track system. The same profile says Grubb wanted a design that would not need the constant repair of traditional wooden track, and met the engineer Alan Schilke. Schilke had worked at Arrow Dynamics, where English Wikipedia credits him with the 4th Dimension coaster concept, and he later co-founded the engineering firm Ride Centerline. Sources differ on the timing: the Coeur d’Alene profile dates the all-steel I-Box track to 2008, while English Wikipedia says Schilke began design and engineering work for the company in 2009.

The first big contract, the Coeur d’Alene profile says, came from Six Flags. The Texas Giant at Six Flags Over Texas, a wooden coaster opened in 1990, closed in November 2009. English Wikipedia says the wooden track was removed while much of the wooden support structure stayed, and the park and the company unveiled the steel track in March 2010. The ride reopened as the New Texas Giant on 22 April 2011. In September that year, the park said, it was named Best New Ride of 2011 at the Golden Ticket Awards.

Plate steel, not bent pipe.

The product that made the name is I-Box, which English Wikipedia says was first called Iron Horse track. Jake Kilcup, the company’s director of engineering, described it to the Boston Globe in 2023 as a double-webbed I-beam with a rail box, built up from steel plate. Most steel coasters, he said, use bent pipe and run on a round surface, whereas this track runs on a flat one. The company says its track “does not require any bending during production.” It describes the I-Box rail as all steel, with supports that can be wood lattice, steel lattice or steel columns.

The Globe said the company became known for taking wooden coasters that had grown too rough, keeping much of the wooden structure and retrofitting steel track to make hybrids, with room for overbanked turns and inversions. English Wikipedia says Outlaw Run, a new ride at Silver Dollar City, followed in 2013. Steel Vengeance, at Cedar Point, was described by the Globe as one of the most ambitious coasters the company has made.

Its range now runs in named lines. Raptor is a single-rail track with in-line seats, which Laughing Place said was first introduced at Six Flags Fiesta Texas in 2018; a later single-rail ride, Stunt Pilot, went to Silverwood. The 208 ReTraK is a track replacement for wooden coasters, which the company says is made of weathered steel, based on its I-Box system and needs no paint; English Wikipedia says it debuted on Tremors at Silverwood in 2021. The company dates its steel upgrades for wooden coasters to 2013 and its patented Topper Track.

ArieForce One at Fun Spot America Atlanta, opened in 2023, was built from scratch on steel supports, the Globe reported. Kilcup said Schilke does all the layouts, with Joe Draves as his protégé, and that they talk about recreating the feeling of a snowboard or ski trick. The Coaster101 podcast said in April 2026 that a Raptor had been announced at the previous IAAPA Expo for Family Kingdom in Myrtle Beach. English Wikipedia counts 29 coasters built or refurbished as of January 2026.

Design and documentation.

Ride makers sell to parks rather than to the public. The park usually names and themes the ride, and the maker’s own identity sits further back, in the engineering. That shapes how these firms present themselves.

The factory floor is usually the first picture. Long curved lengths of steel track, jigs, welded supports and finished trains waiting for shipment do the work of a product shot, because a coaster cannot be photographed whole until it stands in a park. Alongside them come CAD renderings, which let a maker show a layout, a station or a new train to a buyer long before any steel is cut.

The trade stand is the second stage. IAAPA Expo, the industry’s large annual show, is where makers put full-size vehicles and scale models in front of park owners, announce new models and compete for the show’s product awards. Company websites tend to follow the same logic, leading with reference lists and record claims rather than with a founder’s story.

The third stage belongs to the ride itself. On-ride films, shot from the front seat and released by parks and makers, are a common way to show a layout to people who will never see the drawings, and a park’s opening day puts the finished work in public view. This guide sets out who founded each firm, who owns it and where its work is made, and it attributes every claim to its source. Colours and typefaces here are our own interpretation, not the companies’ standards.

Known by three letters.

The ownership changed in the 2020s. EAP reported on 13 April 2023 that Grubb had retired in 2021 and that the company had merged with Larson International, the Plainview, Texas, ride maker founded in 1967. Theme Park Insider reported the announcement on 11 April 2023. Jeff Novotny, who had bought Larson in 2006, retired; his son Hunter stayed; and RMC’s president and chief executive, Darren Torr, was to lead the combined organisation. All existing management and staff were to be retained, with both Hayden and Plainview remaining as bases. Theme Park Insider quoted Hunter Novotny calling the deal an acquisition, though both reports describe a merger. Larson, which bought Sellner Manufacturing, creator of the Tilt-A-Whirl, in 2011, still has its own website.

The name has also shifted. The company’s website is now headed Rocky Mountain Coasters, and English Wikipedia gives Rocky Mountain Construction as the former name, while the same website’s product pages still use Rocky Mountain Construction. The trade and the fans mostly use the initials: the Boston Globe said “RMC” is what you will hear at roller coaster enthusiast events, and the company calls itself RMC throughout its own pages.

Its manufacturing claims are specific. The company says “over 90%” of its products are produced in-house, that its fabrication shops run two shifts, and that Raptor track, structure and trains are designed and manufactured at its facility in Hayden, Idaho; it says the same of the 208 ReTraK, which it says uses laser measurement, CNC plasma cutting and semi-automated welding. The 2020 Coeur d’Alene profile gave it 115 full-time employees and five manufacturing facilities at that date, with very little marketing and no sales force. English Wikipedia says a factory twice the size of the existing one opened in August 2014.

Outside North America, English Wikipedia says, a 2013 agreement let the Dutch maker Vekoma sell the company’s coasters, and Wildfire at Kolmården Wildlife Park in Sweden, opened in June 2016, was its first in Europe. The company’s site says it now has rides in the USA, Mexico, Europe and Japan.

The website calls the company’s rides “amusement works of art,” says it has been designing and remodelling coasters that way “from the very beginning,” and describes Hayden as a “somewhat small town.” The story has been told at feature length too: the 2021 documentary This Is How We Roll, directed by Taylor Bybee of the Coaster Studios channel, follows the company through the building of Stunt Pilot, Laughing Place reported.

For a design guide, Rocky Mountain Construction shows how a single engineering idea, steel plate laid over old timber, can become a recognisable name among the people who ride its work. Compare Arrow Dynamics, where Schilke worked, and Gerstlauer, another steel coaster maker. For this guide we use a weathered-steel brown and a dark pine green with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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