Step up to the lower station of the Duquesne Incline, one of the great engineering solutions to Pittsburgh's impossible topography. Pittsburgh sits in a valley where the hills rise hundreds of feet above the river banks, and connecting the river-level mills and downtown to the hillside neighborhoods required a solution ordinary streets could not provide. The incline — a cable-driven funicular railway on a steep slope — was the answer.
The Duquesne Incline opened in 1877, designed by Samuel Diescher, a Hungarian-born engineer, and originally carried freight as well as passengers up the 793-foot slope at a grade of 30 degrees. At its peak, Pittsburgh had seventeen operating inclines connecting the riverside city to the hilltop neighborhoods. All but two have closed.
The Duquesne Incline was saved from closure in 1963 by a group of local residents who formed the nonprofit Duquesne Incline Organization and have operated it ever since. The wooden cable cars are the originals. Ride it up: the view from the top station, over the Monongahela River to the downtown skyline and the three-river confluence, is one of the finest urban panoramas in America.