Do you remember your first funicular? I know I do: Innsbruck, Austria, August 1, 1983. My friend Rich and I signed up for a group hike organized by the youth hostel we were staying at. We rode a bus up a mountain road to the terminus of a train that went further up the side of the mountain: a funicular.

Merriam-Webster: “A cable railway ascending a mountain; especially: one in which an ascending car counterbalances a descending car,” but that’s a latter-day usage. Go back far enough and you get to funis, which is Latin for rope.

Both the word and the thing itself please me. The Fenelon Place Elevator began as a cable car line up the side of Dubuque’s bluff in the 1880s, built by a banker who lived at the top of the bluff but who worked down near the river. By the 1890s it had evolved into a true funicular, using a system based on those used in the Alps, and according to the official history, “Ten neighbors banded together and formed the Fenelon Place Elevator Co…. This group traveled to the 1893 Colombian Exposition in Chicago to look for new ideas. They brought back a streetcar motor to run the elevator, the turnstile, and steel cable for the cars.”

Remarkable the things that are connected in one way or another to the 1893 world’s fair, isn’t it? In our time, a technically more modern – but still old-timey appearing – funicular travels the slope in Dubuque. I assume some people still commute on it, because the neighborhood at the top of the bluff is still residential, and the district at the bottom is still mostly commercial. But I’m sure that much of the Fenelon Place Elevator’s business involves tourists taking it for a lark.

Here’s the view from inside one of the cars, waiting at the bottom.

A sign at the entrance says:

CABLE CAR IS OPERATED FROM ABOVE

GET IN AND SIT DOWN

PULL BELL CORD WHEN READY

OPERATOR WILL SIGNAL, WITH A BUZZ, WHEN CAR WILL START TO MOVE

PLEASE REMAIN SEATED UNTIL CAR HAS STOPPED AT THE TOP

The funicular is 296 feet long, runs on a 3-ft. gauge, and while I didn’t time the trip, it couldn’t have been more than a minute. Here’s the view from the observation deck at the top, looking down on the funicular. The cars can hold about six people comfortably.

Round-trip adult fare: $3. A lot if you consider the literal distance traveled. A bargain, if you consider how cool funiculars are.