Six Flags Over Georgia has a new thrilling ride and Precision Concrete has helped the coaster take shape. Taking up the space that used to house the Splashwater Falls log flume, the Georgia Gold Rusher is a fun and unique addition to the lineup at our hometown amusement park.
The Story Behind the Georgia Gold Rusher
The Gold Rusher’s concept comes from a fascinating chapter of Georgia’s history: the gold rush of 1885. As part of the rustic-looking “Lickskillet” section of Six Flags Over Georgia, the ride and its surroundings need a low-key, bucolic look, but the Gold Rusher itself is a high-tech piece of work, delivering a combined roller coaster and water ride experience.
The backstory behind the ride is that it’s a machine designed to simultaneously till the soil for gold and give people a refreshing way to beat the heat. Turning that idea into a real roller coaster meant designing a 590-foot U-shaped track that takes riders across a reservoir of water at up to 60 miles per hour.
The track reaches a maximum height of 144 feet, allowing it to provide the stunning drops of a full-size roller coaster alongside the cool thrills of a water ride. The seats are unique: “Free-spinning gondola seating” means two circles of riders face outward on rotating platforms, all mounted on a gondola.
This mixture of coaster and water ride elements is the first of its kind. Visitors to the park will have never seen any ride quite like the Georgia Gold Rusher. Bringing it to life was an exciting challenge for Precision Concrete and our partners, and the effort paid off, winning an ACI Georgia award.
The Georgia Gold Rusher is the winner of an ACI Georgia First Place Award in a special category, demonstrating the innovation that went into the highly collaborative project.
Precision Concrete’s Role in Building the Gold Rusher
The team assembled to build the Georgia Gold Rusher included leaders across categories. For our part, Precision Concrete has had a hand in the majority of new rides at Six Flags Over Georgia through the past 30-plus years, a major point of pride due to our Atlanta roots.
On this particular project, our partners included familiar faces from our past Six Flags projects:
- Spivey Industrial Contractors served as the general contractor.
- Argos Concrete was the concrete supplier.
- Glynn Group Engineering & Architecture PLLC designed the coaster.
The concrete work for the Gold Rusher involved a 2,300-square-foot splash pit 8 feet deep. To support the large steel columns needed for the roller coaster elements, we installed 48-inch thickened concrete slabs. There is also a surrounding 50,000-gallon decorative pool, which needed radius walls in an oval shape.
The station pit is another 8-foot-deep pit, this one nearly 1,400 square feet in total. To hold the ride’s heavy mechanical components in loading and unloading zones, the slab in this pit measures 70 feet long, 16 feet wide and 48 inches deep.
The foundations of the ride are 14 feet square and 4 feet thick, with auger-cast piles to support them. They support 54-inch-square, 6-foot-tall reinforced piers with large-diameter anchor bolts in a circle pattern.
Creating the rustic walkway involved concrete poured with wood-patterned stamping with a dark gray release to match the “Lickskillet” area’s overall natural style.
Despite the intricacy and novelty of the project, work proceeded quickly and smoothly. Through effective planning, a strong team mentality and an outstanding workforce, the coaster moved from a bold idea to award-winning reality over a short timeline.
