Portage Railroad
Allegheny Township, Blair County, Pennsylvania
Marker Inscription
Here was No. 6 of the ten inclined planes used to carry canal boats by rail. Hollidaysburg to Johnstown. This unique engineering feat was completed in 1834. The road was 36 miles long.
Erected by Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
The Story
The Allegheny Portage Railroad was a marvel of its age, completed in 1834 to carry canal boats over the mountains that blocked Pennsylvania's Main Line of Public Works between Hollidaysburg and Johnstown. Ten inclined planes, of which this was No. 6, hauled the boats and their cargoes up and down the slopes along a 36-mile route. The system let a single boat travel from Philadelphia toward Pittsburgh without unloading, briefly making the state a leader in transportation engineering.
Why it matters
The Portage Railroad was a bold answer to the challenge of crossing the Alleghenies and a key link in the canal era that knit the young nation's east and west together before the triumph of the railroad.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In the early 1830s, the young United States was gripped by a fever for internal improvements—canals, roads, and new kinds of transport meant to knit a growing country together. The prize was the trade of the interior, and states competed fiercely to build the water and rail routes that would carry goods between the seaboard and the lands beyond the mountains.
Pennsylvania faced a stubborn geographic problem: the Allegheny Mountains stood squarely between its eastern and western waters. A canal could follow the rivers up to the foot of the mountains, but no canal could climb a mountain. To complete a through route from Philadelphia toward Pittsburgh, engineers had to solve the ridge itself.
The answer, completed in 1834, was a bold one, and this marker stands along that route in the highlands of Blair County. Here the age of canals met the dawning age of rails, and the meeting produced one of the most ingenious engineering works of its era.
People & events
The solution was the Allegheny Portage Railroad, a 36-mile line that carried canal boats over the mountains between Hollidaysburg and Johnstown. Rather than unload cargo at the mountain's foot, the system hauled the boats themselves up and down the slopes on a series of inclined planes.
There were ten of these inclined planes in all, and the marker here commemorates No. 6. On a plane, the heavy work of climbing was done by mechanical power and cable rather than by animal muscle alone, lifting boats up grades that no ordinary railway or canal could manage. It was a staircase for boats, laid across a mountain.
Completed in 1834, the whole contrivance let a single boat continue its journey without being broken up and reloaded at the barrier of the Alleghenies. To travelers and shippers of the day it seemed a genuine marvel—proof that even the mountains could be conquered by clever engineering.
Its place in the American story
The Portage Railroad was a striking answer to a challenge that the whole nation faced: how to bind the Atlantic states to the growing interior. Every young transportation scheme of the era was really an attempt to shrink American distances, and this one shrank one of the hardest distances of all.
It belonged to the great canal era, when water routes briefly promised to be the arteries of national commerce. For a time, the combined canal-and-portage system made Pennsylvania a leader in moving goods and people across formidable terrain, and it stands as a monument to the ambition of that age.
It also pointed toward the future. The inclined planes and rails hinted at what was coming, and before long the railroad—able to cross mountains on its own—would eclipse the canals entirely. This site captures a hinge moment in the American story, when one era of transportation was passing into the next.
If you visit
You are in mountain country here, and the terrain itself is the best interpreter of the marker. Look up at the grades around you and try to picture a fully loaded canal boat being drawn up such a slope—it makes the audacity of the original engineering suddenly vivid.
Stand at the site of Plane No. 6 and think in terms of the staircase the builders created: ten great steps across the ridge, of which this was one. The marker anchors you to a single link in that chain, so let your imagination run up and down the line from here.
The spot fits beautifully into a day spent tracing the old canal-and-portage route through the Alleghenies. Drive the mountain roads with the marker's story in mind, and the modern highway crossings you take for granted will feel like the easy heirs of a much harder, much bolder solution.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related events
- · Allegheny Portage Railroad
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Portage Railroad
Juniata Township, PA · est. 1947
In the 1830s Pennsylvania stitched its canal system across the Allegheny Mountains with one of the boldest engineering answers of the age: a portage railroad that hauled entire canal boats up and over the ridge on a staircase of inclined planes worked by stationary steam engines and cables. This spot marks Plane No. 6 of the ten that lifted traffic between Hollidaysburg and Johnstown. Completed in 1834, the 36-mile line closed the last mountain gap in the water route from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh.
Portage Railroad
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This spot marks the location of Plane No. 5, one of ten inclined planes on the Allegheny Portage Railroad, an ingenious system that hauled canal boats over the mountains by rail between Hollidaysburg and Johnstown. Completed in the 1830s, it closed the last gap in Pennsylvania's Main Line of Public Works, allowing freight and passengers to cross the formidable Allegheny ridge. The road to Lilly still traces the old route over the mountain.
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Altoona was born of the railroad, laid out in 1849 as the mountain-base terminal from which the Pennsylvania Railroad pushed its tracks westward over the daunting Allegheny front. Within a generation the town's yards and shops made it one of the great railroading centers of the nation. In 1867 it hosted a War Governors' Conference, one of several wartime and postwar gatherings that made the city a meeting ground for state leaders.
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At Hollidaysburg, the 127-mile Juniata Division of the Pennsylvania Canal met the Allegheny Portage Railroad, an ingenious system that hauled canal boats over the mountains toward Johnstown, 36 miles west. The canal opened in 1832 and the railroad in 1834, together forming a continuous route across the formidable Allegheny barrier. Engineers marveled at the portage line, which climbed nearly 1,400 feet in just ten miles using inclined planes.