History & local legend
The Johnstown Inclined Plane climbs Yoder Hill beside the former Rolling Mill Mine, which supplied coal to the city’s furnaces. On July 10, 1902, an explosion in the mine’s Klondike section killed 112 men.
Ninety years later, in the fall of 1992, a ten-year-old boy reportedly told staff that he had seen two miners at the foot of the incline. Each carried a lunch bucket. Reporter Art Heinz included the boy’s account in the local newspaper, and the Cambria County Transit Authority reproduced it in a pamphlet about possible ghosts at the incline.
The pamphlet also directed readers toward the old mine entrance on the James Wolfe Sculpture Trail. Later researcher Walter Hutsky Jr. traced the miners’ story back to that 1992 report while examining the mine’s haunting reputation.
Sources
- Cambria County Transit Authority, Ghosts at The Incline? Perhaps spirits from the 1902 mine explosion (1992), original pamphlet preserved by Walter Hutsky Jr.
- Walter Hutsky Jr., S.P.L.A.T. Investigations, The Rolling Mill Mine Disaster, history and local inquiries
- Heritage Johnstown, Lights Low: The Rolling Mill Mine Disaster of 1902
- Pennsylvania Conservation Heritage, Rolling Mill Mine Disaster, date and toll
- Johnstown Inclined Plane, official directions and separate upper and lower station coordinates
