“A 1926 Description of a Ride on Duluth’s Seventh Avenue West Incline Railway” has just been posted at the Duluth Public Library’s Vintage Duluth blog.

In Volume I of his two-volume 1926 novel The Duke of Duluth, author Thomas Shastid, a Duluth physician, depicts a scene in which the main character, John Gridley Smith, who is visiting Duluth, is walking on West Superior Street and comes upon the entrance to the Incline Railway on Seventh Avenue West. On pages 74 to 80, Shastid describes the Incline and John’s ride up to the top …

I’m back again with another mystery! Way back in October of 2006, I was exploring the topmost bit of overgrown sidewalk on Seventh Avenue West, (between Skyline and West Eighth Street). This walkway ran parallel to east side of the old Incline Railway, which pedestrians would have used as access for each stop along the way. At the top at West Eighth Street, where the sidewalk first begins, I happened to notice off to the side in the overgrowth, a large pile of of steel girders and wooden posts, located right about where the incline once stood.