A car of the Duluth Beltline Railway makes its way between West Duluth and Bayview Heights. (Image: Duluth Public Library.)
On this day in Duluth in 1889, the Duluth Beltline Railway first began moving passengers between West Duluth and Bayview Heights. Soon locals were calling it either the “West Duluth Incline” or “Bay View Incline.” Built at a cost of $107,000 (over $2.6 million today) and pulled by 15,000 feet of cable, the railway ran from a station at Sixty-First Avenue West and Grand Avenue up to Vinland Street and Seventy-Seventh Avenue West. The incline rose six hundred feet in elevation and took twenty-four minutes to travel the three miles of track from the bottom to the top. A Duluth News Tribune story on May 8, 1890 called the railway “the longest of its kind in the world.” When the railway opened for regular operation on July 8, 1890, a round trip fare cost fifteen cents. Like the Seventh Avenue West Incline, a pavilion was planned for the top of the incline in 1893, but never materialized. Despite early success, the incline ceased operation in 1916 due to lack of ridership. Powerlines now mark the railway’s former location. Read more about the West Duluth Incline here.
