The Duquesne Incline and Mount Washington

Mount Washington rises three hundred sixty-seven feet above the south bank of the Monongahela, directly across the river from downtown Pittsburgh. In the nineteenth century it was called Coal Hill, because coal mines cut into its slopes supplied fuel for the foundries below. George Washington himself had mapped the land and rivers from this high ground for the British, before the United States existed.

The inclines were built to solve a practical problem. As Pittsburgh's industrial riverfront filled with mills and foundries, the working-class families who could not afford downtown housing were pushed up the steep hillsides. Walking up those grades twice a day was brutal, particularly in winter. So the inclines were built: cable-hauled funicular cars that carried people and cargo up and down the slope.

The Duquesne Incline opened in eighteen seventy-seven, designed by the engineer Samuel Diescher. It is eight hundred feet long, rises four hundred feet in elevation, and operates at a thirty-degree angle. In nineteen sixty-two it closed, apparently for good, but residents of the neighborhood mounted a fundraising campaign and reopened it in nineteen sixty-three under a nonprofit organization dedicated to its preservation. It has run continuously since.

At the top of the incline, on Grandview Avenue, is the view that Pittsburgh uses on its postcards: the Golden Triangle, the three rivers, the bridges, the North Shore stadiums, and the hills beyond. On clear days you can see thirty miles in multiple directions. The people who worked in those foundries below came up here to breathe air that was, at least slightly, better than what was in the valley.