By the 1930s, the popularity of the automobile and onset of the Great Depression resulted in the closure of the Switchback, and the last car descended the hill in 1933. The railroad was sold for scrap in 1937.

The Switchback Railway at Coney Island, which opened in 1884 as America’s first true roller coaster, did not close due to a single disaster, but rather because it became obsolete almost immediately. Designed by LaMarcus Thompson, it wasn't a "circuit" like modern coasters; passengers boarded at the top of a tower, rode a gravity-powered car 600 feet down a gentle incline, then had to exit the car while workers pushed it up a second tower for the return trip. Within just a year, rival inventors like Charles Alcoke and Phillip Hinkle developed "complete circuit" coasters and cable lift hills (the "Serpentine Railway" and "Gravity Pleasure"), which allowed the cars to return to the start automatically without manual labor. Thompson's original design, which moved at a leisurely 6 miles per hour and required passengers to sit sideways on benches, simply couldn't compete with the faster, more efficient, and more thrilling "circuit" designs that followed. It was dismantled and replaced by Thompson’s own more advanced "Scenic Railways," which featured tunnels and dioramas, setting the stage for the amusement park industry's evolution.