75 Years of Inclined Rails
I attended school in Cincinnati, and during my time there I found that the city was jam packed with intereting history. The city always felt alive in a way. I lived in an old house near the top of an extremely steep hill (steep enough that even some cars seemed to struggle to the top), and while on a walk in the neighborhood I came across one of those historical plaques describing the incline that had been in place near where I lived. Later while searching for places to eat, I found The Incline Public House, a pub that sits on the sight of the Price Hill Incline.
This feature of Cincinnati's public transit system is not unique to Cincinnati, but it is the uniqueness of the geography that made them a nesseccity.
Much of my research was focusing on the Mt. Adams Incline as it was the longest functioning inclined rail in the city. My first steps were to gather more general information about inclines then move to the specifics of one of Mt. Adams. I found that Mt. Adams was the most photographed of all five inclines in the city.
When putting together my small collection, I found quite a few collections of images and limited the number I included due to there being quite a few duplicate images in some of the collections.
The small collection is organized by type of source. The sources I was able to get access to were fully digitize documents or websites.
There are two books listed, but due to being unable to get a copy, I couldn't include any details about them. In retrospect I could have weeded those, but I felt they would be a good addition to the collection for other potential researchers.
I had some issues accessing newspapers and primary documents about the inclines. I sopke with a collections manager at the Cincinnati Public Library, and much of what they have is not yet digitized. I no longer live in the city, so I was unable to go and look at material that have yet to be put online.
I hope this collection can be of use as a starting point for future researchers allowing them to dig deeper into historical documents that I was unable to access.
Images from Inclines & Cable Cars. (2023). Cincinnati Views.