BLAIR CO, Pa (WJAC) — The Allegheny Portage Railroad is a testament of resilience.
It was built to provide a way to overcome the imposing mountain that stood in the way of industrial progress.
Once it was completed, it truly opened the pathway for goods to travel from the eastern portion of the state to Pittsburgh, and other points westward.
In this week's edition of our "Road Trippin’” segment, we examine other effects the railroad had on the area.
“We’re on a piece of ground, several hundred acres, forming what was known as the Summit Level of the Allegheny Portage Railroad.
The highest point on this railroad, which was built back in the 1830’s to help canal boats from the Pennsylvania mainline canal up and over this mountain.”
“Canals were the main form of long-distance transportation to move large quantities of goods. You couldn’t carry much in a wagon, as the road network was fairly primitive, but canals could really carry a lot of stuff, or a lot of people, over long distances.”
“In the 1820’s and 1830’s, railroads were still very primitive. They could not climb steep grades, the locomotives weren’t very strong, and they had to figure out how to make a railroad work when you wanted it to go over a mountain, and that’s were these inclined planes came into play.”
“We’re standing alongside inclined plane number six. Six of the ten inclined planes that were on this mountain. Five on each side, and that allowed this to become almost like a staircase; stepping up one side and then down the other side of the mountain.”
“It was a pretty ingenious system that the engineers came up with, in the early 1830’s, and it worked! It was state of the art.”
“The blood sweat and tears that it took to build this, because there was no machinery that built this. This was all hand dug, hand chopped through the forest. This was real work!”
“Those people that were doing the work here, whether it was constructing it, or operating it once it opened, those were the basis for the first influx of population into this area.”
“It is a wider story than just local history. It’s the story of America and connecting places together; whether it’s county by county, one end of the state to the other, or beyond just Pennsylvania.”
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