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Trains built Altoona. The Pennsylvania Railroad founded the city in 1849 as a base for conquering the Allegheny Front, and its sprawling shops here grew into one of the largest railroad repair complexes in the world. Just west of town, the famous Horseshoe Curve still carries a steady parade of freight trains around a giant bend in the mountainside.
Today Altoona is a city of about 43,000 in Blair County, central Pennsylvania, with brick neighborhoods climbing the hills and a downtown anchored by the Railroaders Memorial Museum, the restored Mishler Theatre and the domed Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament. The Baker Mansion and the ruins of the Allegheny Furnace recall the iron industry that came before the railroad.
The mountains are close in every direction. Drive up to Wopsononock for a sweeping overlook, follow the old canal-boat railroad at the Allegheny Portage Railroad National Historic Site, or watch bats leave their church roost at Canoe Creek State Park on a summer evening.
A sweeping curve of track opened by the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1854 to lift trains up the Allegheny Front, still busy with freight trains today. A visitor center with exhibits sits at the base, and a funicular or a long stairway leads up to a trackside viewing park. Open seasonally.
The seat of the Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown, a Renaissance-style cathedral with a great dome that dominates the city skyline. The interior has rich murals, mosaics and marble altars. Visitors are welcome outside service times, and the steps outside offer a fine view over downtown.
A museum in a restored 1880s railroad shop building downtown that tells the story of the men and women who built, ran and repaired the Pennsylvania Railroad, with locomotives, interactive exhibits and recreated work spaces. Buy a combination ticket that includes the Horseshoe Curve visitor center.
The Altoona gallery of a regional museum of art, located downtown, with rotating exhibitions of American art, works by Pennsylvania artists and community shows. Admission is free or by donation. It makes an easy stop between the railroad museum and lunch downtown.
An ornate theater opened in 1906 by local businessman Isaac Mishler and quickly rebuilt after a fire, now restored with gilded boxes, a painted ceiling and plush seats. It hosts concerts, community theater, ballet and the Altoona Symphony Orchestra. Check the season schedule for tours.
A Greek Revival mansion completed in the 1840s for ironmaster Elias Baker, now home of the Blair County Historical Society, with period rooms, local history exhibits and a collection of carriages and clothing. Local legends say the house is haunted. Guided tours run on set days in the warmer months.
The stone stack of an iron furnace built in 1811, one of the oldest structures in Altoona, which made pig iron long before the railroad arrived and later belonged to ironmaster Elias Baker. It stands in a small park in the neighborhood named after it. A quick stop with interpretive signs.
A reconstructed log stockade in quiet Sinking Valley northeast of Altoona, first built in 1778 to protect lead mining for the Continental Army. Costumed guides explain frontier life, and nature trails explore the surrounding fields and sinkholes. Open seasonally from spring to fall.
A national park site west of Altoona preserving the 1834 railroad that hauled canal boats over the Allegheny Mountain with a series of inclined planes. See the restored Lemon House tavern, the Skew Arch Bridge and a full-scale engine house exhibit. Trails follow the old grades.
Home of the Altoona Curve, the Double-A affiliate of the Pittsburgh Pirates, a ballpark opened in 1999 with an amusement park roller coaster rising beyond the outfield. Tickets are affordable, fireworks follow many summer games, and the hills around the park glow at sunset.
A high point on the Allegheny Front above Altoona with wide views over the city and the valleys beyond. In the 1890s a narrow-gauge railroad carried tourists up to a hotel here. Today a winding road leads to the overlook; go on a clear evening for sunset and city lights.
A state park east of Altoona with a lake for swimming, fishing and boating, trails, old lime kilns and an abandoned church that shelters one of Pennsylvania's largest colonies of little brown bats. On summer evenings you can watch the bats stream out at dusk. Ice fishing is popular in winter.
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Pennsylvania, United States
Pennsylvania, United States
Pennsylvania, United States
Pennsylvania, United States
Pennsylvania, United States
Pennsylvania, United States
Pennsylvania, United States
Pennsylvania, United States
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