Portage Station Museum

Portage owes its existence to railroading. The community began with the opening of the Allegheny Portage Railroad in 1834 and was first known as "Foot of Two" for its position at the bottom of Inclined Plane No. 2, where the APRR placed its headquarters offices and shops. The Pennsylvania Railroad made the portage system obsolete by the 1850s, then built a wood-and-water stop and, by the 1860s, a passenger station in the growing coal-and-lumber town; after the main line was realigned in the 1890s a new station went up on Washington Avenue, succeeded in 1926 by one on Lee Street. Passenger trains last called on November 17, 1953, and the station closed the next year after a brief turn as a Railway Express Agency stop. The Portage Station Museum now interprets that long railroad-and-coal legacy with exhibits on area railroading and mining and a documentary, "63 Men Down," on the 1940 Sonman Mine explosion that killed sixty-three miners nearby. The surrounding Portage Historic District was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1995.