On May 31, 1889, the South Fork Dam collapsed and sent a wall of water into the narrow valley where the Stonycreek and Little Conemaugh rivers meet to form the Conemaugh. Johnstown, a steel town of 30,000, was devastated. As the city rebuilt, the Cambria Iron Company saw an opportunity: develop the high ground atop Yoder Hill into a residential community and connect it to the valley floor with a funicular. Samuel Diescher, already famous for designing Pittsburgh's Duquesne, Castle Shannon, and Fort Pitt inclines, drew up the plans. The incline opened with double-decker cars -- horses and wagons rode on the upper deck, passengers in a compartment below. The convenience it offered made Westmont, the borough at the top of the hill, one of the country's first true suburbs. In its first 80 years, over 40 million trips were taken on the incline.

The incline's designers understood Johnstown's geography was a trap. The valley is narrow, the rivers converge at the city's center, and when floodwaters rise, there is nowhere to go but up. The incline was that way up. On March 17, 1936, when Johnstown flooded again, nearly 4,000 people were evacuated from the valley floor to the safety of Yoder Hill via the funicular. In 1977, the city flooded a third time, and again the incline carried rescue equipment and emergency personnel into the valley while evacuating residents to higher ground. Both times, the machine built as insurance against a repeat of 1889 paid off exactly as intended. Tourists also gathered at the upper station during the 1977 flood to survey the damage below, inadvertently hampering cleanup efforts.

The engineering is striking in its simplicity. Two open-air cars run on parallel broad-gauge tracks, connected by steel wire rope wound around a drum powered by an electric motor. As one car descends, the other ascends, each acting as the other's counterweight. The 90-second journey covers a vertical rise measured in hundreds of feet at a grade of roughly 72 percent. The rails rest on 720 railroad ties made from Southern Yellow Pine, and 114 high-pressure sodium-vapor lamps illuminate the tracks at night. An emergency brake engages automatically if air pressure drops or if the operator's dead man's switch is tripped. The cars can carry automobiles as well as passengers -- at peak ridership in 1919, the incline transported 1,356,393 pedestrians and 124,825 vehicles in a single year.

The automobile nearly killed the incline before any flood could. Ridership peaked in 1919 and declined steadily as highways improved. The Cambria Inclined Plane Company twice applied to shut it down -- in 1930 and 1934 -- but the Pennsylvania Public Service Commission denied the closure. Bethlehem Steel, Cambria Iron's successor, sold the incline to the borough of Westmont in 1935 for modest revenue. When Bethlehem Steel cut off the power supply in 1962, the incline went dark. Public outcry forced a deal: the Cambria County Tourist Council leased and reopened it on July 4, 1962. The funicular transitioned from daily transportation to tourist attraction, and the Cambria County Transit Authority took over in 1983, overseeing an 18-month renovation. The Pittsburgh Press wrote at the rededication: 'For Johnstown, the incline has, in more ways than one, provided a lift.'

Listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1973 and designated a Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1994, the Johnstown Inclined Plane has spent its recent decades as the city's signature tourist attraction. The upper station in Westmont features a visitor center, gift shop, and observation deck with views across the valley. A major renovation beginning in 2021 -- funded in part by a $24 million federal infrastructure grant -- replaced all 720 track ties, overhauled the mechanical and electrical systems, and restored the cars. The project faced delays from faulty sheave wheels and cable damage, but by mid-2025 test runs were successful and the incline was preparing to reopen. A ride costs $5 round-trip. The same journey by car takes ten minutes. The incline does it in 90 seconds, straight up the side of the hill, just as it has since the people of Johnstown decided they would never again be trapped in their own valley.