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Altoona is a city in Blair County, Pennsylvania, United States. It is the principal city of the Altoona, PA MSA. The population was 49,523 at the 2000 census, making it the ninth most populous city in Pennsylvania, after Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Allentown, Erie, Reading, Scranton, Bethlehem and Lancaster. The Altoona MSA includes all of Blair County and had an estimated population of 125,527 in 2007, according to the U.S. Census.

Having grown around the railroad industry, the city is currently working to recover from industrial decline and urban decentralization experienced in recent decades. The city is home to the Altoona Curve baseball team of the Double A Eastern League, which is the Double A affiliate of the Pittsburgh Pirates. It also houses the 75+ year-old Altoona Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Teresa Cheung. Prominent landmarks include the Horseshoe Curve, the Railroaders Memorial Museum, the Mishler Theatre, the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, and the Jaffa Mosque.

Altoona is also the home of the Sheetz headquarters. Sheetz is one of the largest convenience store and gas station chains in the country, with stores in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, West Virginia, Virginia, and North Carolina. Because of this, many Sheetz stores are located in and around Altoona.

A major railroad town, Altoona was founded by the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1849 as the site for a shop complex. Altoona was incorporated as a borough on February 6, 1854, and as a city under legislation approved on April 3, 1867, and February 8, 1868. The town grew rapidly in the late 19th century, its population approximately 2,000 in 1854, 10,000 in 1870, and 20,000 in 1880.

The word Altoona is a derivative of the Latin word altus, meaning "high".

This explanation for the naming of Altoona is contradicted by Pennsylvania Place Names. Although Altoona, in Blair Country, is popularly known as "the Mountain City," its name has no direct or indirect etymological relation to the Latin adjective altus, signifying "elevated, lofty." Two very different explanations of the origin of this name are current.  The one which seems to be most natural and reasonable runs as follows: "The locomotive engineer who ran the first train into Altoona in 1851 was Robert Steele, who died several years ago, aged nearly ninety years.  He was then the oldest continuous resident of the city. He was much respected, and had long been one of the private pensioners of Andrew Carnegie.  Mr. Steele is authority for the statement that Colonel Beverly Mayer, of Columbia, Pennsylvania, who, as a civil engineer of what was then the Pennsylvania Central Railway, had laid out the tracks in the yards of the newly projected city, named the place Altoona after the city of Altona in Schleswig-Holstein, which became part of Germany in 1862." The German Altona, which lies on the right bank of the Elbe immediately west of Hamburg, is an important railway and manufacturing centre with a population of nearly 200,000.  The etymological derivation of the name Altona is not known with certainty, but widely believed to be Low German all to na, meaning "all too near" (sc. Hamburg).

The popular explanation derives the name of Altoona from Allatoona, said to be a Cherokee Indian name.  In 1849 David Robinson sold his farm to Archibald Wright of Philadelphia, who transferred the property to his son, John A. Wright, who laid it out in building lots, became one of the founders of Altoona, and was responsible for the naming of the town.  According to his own statement, he had spent considerable time in the Cherokee country of Georgia, where he had been especially attracted by the beautiful name of Allatoona, which he had bestowed upon the new town in the belief that it was a Cherokee word meaning "the high lands of great worth." In the Cherokee language there is a word eladuni, which means "high lands," or "where it is high"; but to a Cherokee, Allatoona and eladuni are so different that the former could hardly be derived from the latter.

An older history dated 1883  favored the Cherokee derivation, stating that "Its name is not derived from the Latin word altus nor from the French word alto, as has frequently been asserted and published, but from the beautiful, liquid, and expressive Cherokee word allatoona. This is on the authority of the person who bestowed the name, Mr. Wright, of Philadelphia, who was long a resident of the Cherokee country in Georgia, and an admirer of the musical names of that Indian language."

The demand for locomotives during the Civil War stimulated much of this growth, and by the later years of the war Altoona was known as a valuable city for the North. It was considered by Confederate General Robert E. Lee as a target during the Army of Northern Virginia's mid-1863 entry into Pennsylvania, before being repelled at the Battle of Gettysburg. Also notable is the Union's Loyal War Governors' Conference, held at Altoona's Logan House Hotel.

The Horseshoe Curve, a famous curved section of track owned by the Pennsylvania Railroad, has become a tourist attraction and National Historic Landmark. The Curve was used to raise trains to a sufficient elevation to cross the Allegheny Ridge to the west, beyond which was the steel town of Pittsburgh and the rest of the western United States. Because it was the industrial link to the western U.S., the Horseshoe Curve was a primary target of eight Nazi saboteurs who had infiltrated the United States during World War II (1942) by being dropped off by U-boats of the German Navy (Kriegsmarine) during Operation Pastorius.

Map of Altoona and some surrounding areas

In the early 20th century, the Railroad's Altoona Works complex employed, at its peak, approximately 15,000 people and covered three miles (5 km) in length, 218 acres (880,000 m²) of yards and 37 acres (150,000 m²) of indoor workshop floor space in 122 buildings. The Pennsylvania Railroad built many of its own locomotives at the Works, some 7,873 in all, the last being constructed in 1946.

The Railroad had a significant influence on the city, creating the city's fire departments and relocating the hospital to a site nearer to the shop's gates. Today, the fire department employs 65 personnel and is the largest career department between Harrisburg and Pittsburgh, PA. The railroad sponsored a city band and constructed Cricket Field (a sports complex). In 1853, the Railroad built the Mechanic's Library, the first industrial library in the nation which exists today as the Altoona Public Library. With the decline in railroad demand after World War II, things began to decline steadily afterwards, with most of the plant is now gone. Many of the historic treasures of the city's history have also disappeared, including the aforementioned Logan House Hotel.

Altoona is one of the dual seats of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Altoona-Johnstown. The Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament was made a cathedral and rechristened from St. John's Church in 1851.

The Altoona Mirror newspaper, founded in 1876 by Harry Slep, is Altoona's oldest media outlet. Today, the newspaper has a daily circulation of 32,000 and a Sunday circulation of 39,000. Approximately 13,000 people read the online edition of the newspaper each day.

Today, Altoona serves as the corporate home to Sheetz, a rapidly growing convenience store chain in the United States. It now has over 330 locations throughout Pennsylvania, Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, Ohio and North Carolina.

Altoona is home to the world's oldest wooden roller coaster, the Leap the Dips, located in Lakemont Park.