The Reverend Morgan J. Rees, a Welsh Baptist minister, laid Ebensburg's grid plan over a rounded hill in the early 1790s, naming it after his eldest son, Eben. It was settled mostly by Rees's followers in 1796, who arrived in the second wave of Welsh immigration after the colonial...
Cresson, on the path of the Huntingdon, Cambria, and Indiana Turnpike in the late 1790s, lies one-half mile west of the summit of the Allegheny Mountains on tableland between Allegheny Mountain and Laurel Hill. Medicinal spring waters were discovered on the land, and...
Serving as a base for the fishing and hunting trips of its wealthy clientele, the village of St. Michael was the original home (established 1879) of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. Built by the members of the club, the cottages overlooked Lake Conemaugh, the...
For a town so thoroughly defined by its disasters, Johnstown has a remarkably productive and optimistic history. The city developed in a steep valley where the Little Conemaugh River joins Stony Creek to form the Conemaugh River proper. The topography lends itself to flooding, and...
European settlers first filed land patents in 1755 in what later became Blair County on land purchased a year earlier from the Iroquois. The latter had sold it, despite the presence of their allies the Shawnee, Delaware, and Seneca tribes living in the territory. Nearly a hundred...
The town of Hollidaysburg is located at the midpoint of early Native American seasonal migrations from Michigan to Virginia. As such, the area was often the burial site for those who died during the journey. Its strategic location also prompted the fledgling United...
When the Pennsylvania Canal breached the Allegheny Mountains in the 1830s, it used a rudimentary railroad to haul cargo, passengers, and canal boats over the mountains. Twenty years later, PRR engineers decided they needed a central location for trains to regroup and add...
The borough takes its name from a great spring that could be heard roaring a mile away, and though the roaring stopped when several large stones were removed from the spring's base, the name continues. Located at the southern end of Morrison's Cove, the earliest European...
Centre County is named for its location at the state's geographic center. The county's southern section is part of the ridge and valley terrain, and on its northern side is the Allegheny Plateau, running southwest to northeast. Shawnee and Delaware peoples inhabited the area in the...
Bellefonte was laid out by Colonel James Dunlop and his son-in-law James Harris on hilly terrain adjacent to Spring Creek in 1795. Located near a major gap in Bald Eagle Ridge, it lay at the main entrance to the fertile Nittany Valley. Farms had been developing in the region for...
In the mid-nineteenth century, Curtin's economy revolved around the Eagle Iron Works founded in 1810 by Roland Curtin, father of the Civil War–era governor Andrew G. Curtin. The complex comprises wooden industrial buildings (reconstructions), original worker housing, company store,...
Immigrant entrepreneur Aaron Levy laid out Aaronsburg in 1786 on a grid plan with two wide intersecting streets. Although Levy intended an industrial and perhaps political future for the town, the lack of water in the immediate vicinity, development of other towns,...
The village of Centre Hall, situated along Nittany Mountain where PA 192 and PA 144 now intersect, was linked to Bellefonte and Lewistown. By the mid-nineteenth century, Scots-Irish and German families had settled here. Laid out in the typical Pennsylvania manner with a grid plan...
Boalsburg began as a post village in the early nineteenth century, and flourished because of its location along the major stage routes leading to both Pittsburgh and Harrisburg. The town is named after Captain David Boal, who settled in the area after emigrating from Ireland in...
This crossroads village was laid out by local iron entrepreneur and businessman Moses Thompson. After the arrival of the railroad in the mid-1880s, the village developed a modest commercial district and new houses. The Dale-Mayes house of 1871 (1890 renovated) at 918 Pike Street shows...
The Juniata River, a major east–west route through Huntingdon County, works its way through beautiful ridge and valley countryside surrounding Tussey Mountain, just south of the geographic center of the state. The earliest inhabitants of this region were the Juniata Tribe of the...
Located at the confluence of the Juniata River and Standing Stone Creek, Huntingdon was laid out in 1767 by the Reverend William Smith, a provost of the University of Pennsylvania who owned land in the area. He named it for the university's most generous benefactress...
This red brick, former schoolhouse (1880) is now used as a community center in Shirleysburg.
Native American tribes called this location Aughwick. Fort...
Hartslog, the name attached to the land surrounding Alexandria, evolved from the large white oak where a mid-eighteenth century trader named John Hart slept and salted his horse. A trapper's sleeping place was sometimes called his “log.” The town itself was laid out...
Spruce Creek is a pristine limestone stream flowing into the Little Juniata River in the northern section of Huntingdon County. The twenty-three-milelong valley created by the creek is dotted with the remnants of iron plantations that today are primarily...
Fulton is a rural county of ridge and valley landforms, with a charming county seat at McConnellsburg. Formed in 1850 from part of Bedford County, it was named for Robert Fulton (1765–1815), a native of Lancaster County and an artist and engineer best remembered for popularizing the...
McConnellsburg, in the heart of Great Cove Valley east of Tuscarora Mountain, lies at the intersection of the Lincoln Highway (U.S. 30) and U.S. 522. It was founded by Daniel McConnell in 1786, whose family arrived in the Great Cove in the 1740s and purchased...
The village earned its name when the Indians of the Six Nations protested the loss of their hunting grounds to European settlers, and the provincial government ordered the squatters' cabins burned as a show of faith to the Native Americans. The Scots-Irish pioneers who came to...
Established in 1771, Bedford County originally encompassed all the land west of Tuscarora Mountain, and was the ninth county formed in the commonwealth. Its territory was so large that it was ultimately carved into twenty-eight counties. John Russell, fourth Duke of Bedford, lent...
Situated at the northernmost point of Cumberland Valley between Wills Mountain on the west and Evitts Mountain on the east, Bedford (initially called Raystown) was established at the point where the Raystown Branch of the Juniata River cuts through Evitts Mountain. A...
Rainsburg is the largest borough in Friends Cove, protected by Tussey Mountain on the east and Evitts Mountain on the west. It was incorporated in 1856, three years after the Methodist Episcopal Church's Baltimore conference opened the Allegheny Male and Female Seminary (...
Schellsburg's half-a-dozen blocks lie along U.S. 30 in a relatively level section of land initially settled by German, Scots-Irish, and Dutch pioneers in the late eighteenth century. The road generally follows the path traversed by General John Forbes's soldiers in...
In the 1780s, members of the Society of Friends from Adams County traveled northwest over the newly opened Burd's road (U.S. 30) to Bedford, and up into what became known as Quaker Valley. They founded the Dunning's Creek Society of Friends Meeting in the early 1790s,...
Breezewood, the “Traveler's Oasis,” the “Town of Motels,” is a phenomenon of the post–World War II boom in auto travel. The increasing proliferation of national motel and restaurant chains produced neon and plastic signs that attempted to outdo one another in height and color. One...
Laid out in 1795 by Michael Barndollar, the borough was initially known as Bloody Run, either because of a military attack during Pontiac's Rebellion in 1763 or because animals were slaughtered on the creek's shoreline. It is located at the gap in Tussey Mountain made by...
