The places our history runs into that are not in this county.

Most company towns were laid out by engineers with almost no thought given to how they would feel to live in. Kistler was different. In 1916 the Mount Union Refractories Company hired John Nolen of Cambridge, Massachusetts, one of the best known town planners in the country, to design a whole village across the river from the plant. The New York firm of Mann and MacNeill drew the buildings. The town was finished in 1917 with ninety four company built dwellings, seventeen of them two family houses and seventy seven single family houses, built to six different plans. Nolen thought well enough of it to write it up himself ten years later in a book called New Towns for Old.

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The third brickyard in town was started by two men who used to run the first one. R. P. M. Davis and Clinton V. Hackman, both former managers for Harbison-Walker, organized the Mount Union Refractories Company and built its plant in 1911 and 1912 on the edge of town along the Juniata. It opened with eight kilns. During the First World War they built twenty one more.

In 1922 the company put up a second plant in Clearfield County and renamed itself U.S. Refractories. In 1930 it merged into North American Refractories. The yard ran until March of 1990, and all but two of its beehive kilns came down after that.

This is the plant seen from Kistler, the town it built.

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Kistler was about as complete a company town as this region produced. The company built and kept up virtually every building in it, along with the roads, the water and the electric.

This was the store and school building. The federal photographer got there in time, because the caption on this negative carries four words that end the story: demolished in 1990.

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Kistler Elementary sits at the end of Cedar Street. The federal survey records two things about it that belong together: the brick school in the company town dates to 1936, and the building was put up by the Works Progress Administration.

A company built the houses. The government built the school. The children who filled it were the children of men making brick for steel mills two hundred miles away.

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Not numbers. Names. They are written on John Nolen's own plan for the town, and the federal survey copied them down: Double Valley Farm House, Double Mountain House, Double Capri Villa, Georgian Cottage, Vermont Farm House, and Norman Cottage.

The architects picked those old fashioned forms on purpose. They believed the character of a building could shape the character of the people living inside it, and the families coming to Kistler were going to be a mix of native born Americans, immigrants and African Americans who had never been asked to live the way the company had in mind.

This one is No. 43 Poplar Street, a Vermont Farm House. Twenty seven of them were built and all but one were still standing when the surveyors counted. The caption notes this one still had its original porch roof and its original siding.

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A Norman Cottage sits gable end to the street, one and a half stories, with one roof slope run out long to cover a side porch and a three window bay pushed out of the front. Twenty three were built at Kistler and twenty one were still there when the federal survey counted them.

Kenneth and Edna Cox kept theirs exactly as it was built. No additions, no alterations to the outside. The survey noticed something quiet and human in that. For most of the century it was a mark of getting ahead to modernize a company house. By 1991 the neighbors were asking the Coxes not to touch theirs.

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This is 118 Market Street, the General Refractories superintendent's house. It is still there.

The same company owned forty one houses in Mount Union, scattered in four different places. Two rows of gambrel roofed houses along east Water Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. A row of seven, two stories, right up against the plant on Wausau Place. Six frame houses on Shirley Street. And twelve one story shanties across Hill Valley Run on the far side of the plant, in a section the town called Shantytown. Not far off was Mount Union Refractories' own row of shanties, which somebody with a sense of humor had nicknamed Little Kistler.

When the divesting came, the houses that looked like houses were sold to the families in them. The shanties were judged unfit to pass into private hands and were pulled down. One end of the company's housing survived to be photographed. The other end did not.

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This is Clinton V. Hackman, who ran the Harbison-Walker brick plant at Mount Union from 1902 until 1905, when he left for Lock Haven and J. A. Lansberry took charge. But his larger mark on the valley came after he left the Works. Hackman was one of two former Harbison-Walker managers who organized Mount Union Refractories in 1911, built on the Juniata's edge. That company then built company houses in Kistler, the planned industrial town in Mifflin County.

The man in this portrait ran a major brick operation on the Juniata and then founded an empire. Did your family work for Hackman, or know the men who started their own companies after the Works?

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Seven Double Mountain Houses were built in 1917 for workers in Kistler, the company town of Mount Union Refractories across the Juniata River from Mount Union. Only three of the seven were still standing when the federal surveyors counted in 1991. Each duplex stands one and one-half stories tall, distinguished by a rectangular plan, gable roof with pent eaves, a wide shed roof dormer on the front, and double front entrance porches. The Double Mountain House was one of six house types designed for the industrial village by the New York architectural firm Mann and MacNeill under landscape architect John Nolen's town plan. Among all the house types built for Kistler, this one faced the steepest loss.

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In the early years at Kistler, the company painted interior walls in bright, deep shades of green, blue, brown, and grey. The residents who lived in those houses complained. When they did, the company provided a lighter palette of beiges and pastels instead.

A small story, but entirely human. The company held the power to choose the colors, but the people who lived inside the houses had a voice. They spoke up. The company responded.

It may be one of the gentlest labor stories in Kistler's history: no strike, no great protest, just residents who asked for something different and a company that listened. The walls changed color.

If you lived in a Kistler house, what color were your walls? We would like to hear.

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Did you know? When Pennsylvania opened the Juniata canal, the boat that did it started from Huntingdon.

On November 27, 1832, the packet boat John Blair ran from Huntingdon up to Hollidaysburg, and that run officially opened the Juniata Division to traffic. The division climbed 584 feet across the 127 miles between Duncan's Island on the Susquehanna and Hollidaysburg.

The canal survey is candid about how it was built. Only four of the locks on this division were solid cut stone. Seven were rubble stone laid in mortar. The remaining seventy seven were wooden frames, planked watertight with boards four inches thick, held up by dry masonry and packed at the ends with mud and clay to keep the water in.

And it did not work right away. The record says that after the opening "it was subsequently discovered that some of the workmanship along that section was faulty and certain locks and several of the aqueducts had to be rebuilt before full operation was possible the following year."

So the famous first run out of Huntingdon was a ribbon cutting. The canal itself needed another year of repairs before it could really do the job.

Tell us the spot.

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Did you know? The canal through Huntingdon County did not die in a flood. It died quietly, and it was already thirteen years gone when the famous flood came.

The Pennsylvania Main Line Canal ran its Juniata Division about 127 miles, from Duncan's Island where the Juniata meets the Susquehanna, all the way up to Hollidaysburg. The state started looking for a way to unload the whole system as early as the 1840s. In 1857 the Pennsylvania Railroad bought the Main Line, in the words of the state historical marker, "for a fraction of its value," and started taking apart the divisions that did not pay.

The stretch from Huntingdon up to Hollidaysburg was out of service by 1876.

Then came 1889. The Geological Survey's own flood records show what that spring did here: on Standing Stone Creek, three and a half miles above Huntingdon, the highest stage ever recorded is 9.38 feet on June 1, 1889. On Aughwick Creek near Orbisonia, the biggest discharge in the whole record is June 1889, about 18,400 cubic feet a second. Neither has been topped since, not even in 1936.

That flood is what finished the canal off downstream. The marker says the damage was heavy enough that the rest of the canal above Newport was abandoned.

So the canal here was already a ditch full of weeds before the water ever came for it.

Does anybody still know where the old canal bed shows along the river? Point us to it.

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Did you know? One of the oldest surviving photographs taken in the United States was made by a man born in Huntingdon.

Joseph Saxton was born here on March 22, 1799, and went to work at twelve as an apprentice to a watchmaker.

In the fall of 1839, when the daguerreotype was only months old, he pointed one out the window of his office at the Philadelphia Mint and caught the cupola of Central High School and part of the State Armory building. Accounts put the day at either around September 25 or October 16. The first mention of the picture in print came on October 24, 1839, in the United States Gazette.

He spent the rest of his working life in government service. He ran the making of machinery at the Mint, then served as its curator of weights and measures, and from 1843 until he died he was superintendent of weights and measures for the United States Coast Survey.

A watchmaker's apprentice from Huntingdon made one of the oldest pictures this country still has of itself.

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Did you know? When Pennsylvania opened the Juniata canal, the boat that did it started from Huntingdon.

On November 27, 1832, the packet boat John Blair ran from Huntingdon up to Hollidaysburg, and that run officially opened the Juniata Division to traffic. The division climbed 584 feet across the 127 miles between Duncan's Island on the Susquehanna and Hollidaysburg.

The canal survey is candid about how it was built. Only four of the locks on this division were solid cut stone. Seven were rubble stone laid in mortar. The remaining seventy seven were wooden frames, planked watertight with boards four inches thick, held up by dry masonry and packed at the ends with mud and clay to keep the water in.

And it did not work right away. The record says that after the opening "it was subsequently discovered that some of the workmanship along that section was faulty and certain locks and several of the aqueducts had to be rebuilt before full operation was possible the following year."

So the famous first run out of Huntingdon was a ribbon cutting. The canal itself needed another year of repairs before it could really do the job.

Tell us the spot.

Read the full story, with 3 passages quoted from the county histories →

Did you know? The canal through Huntingdon County did not die in a flood. It died quietly, and it was already thirteen years gone when the famous flood came.

The Pennsylvania Main Line Canal ran its Juniata Division about 127 miles, from Duncan's Island where the Juniata meets the Susquehanna, all the way up to Hollidaysburg. The state started looking for a way to unload the whole system as early as the 1840s. In 1857 the Pennsylvania Railroad bought the Main Line, in the words of the state historical marker, "for a fraction of its value," and started taking apart the divisions that did not pay.

The stretch from Huntingdon up to Hollidaysburg was out of service by 1876.

Then came 1889. The Geological Survey's own flood records show what that spring did here: on Standing Stone Creek, three and a half miles above Huntingdon, the highest stage ever recorded is 9.38 feet on June 1, 1889. On Aughwick Creek near Orbisonia, the biggest discharge in the whole record is June 1889, about 18,400 cubic feet a second. Neither has been topped since, not even in 1936.

That flood is what finished the canal off downstream. The marker says the damage was heavy enough that the rest of the canal above Newport was abandoned.

So the canal here was already a ditch full of weeds before the water ever came for it.

Does anybody still know where the old canal bed shows along the river? Point us to it.

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Did you know? Four of the ten companies in the 125th Pennsylvania came out of Huntingdon County.

The 125th was raised in July and the first part of August 1862, a nine month regiment, under authority Governor Curtin gave to Lieutenant Colonel Jacob Higgins of Blair County. Four companies were raised in Huntingdon County and six in Blair.

The Huntingdon County companies were Company C under Captain William W. Wallace, Company F under Captain John J. Lawrence, Company H under Captain Henry H. Gregg, and Company I under Captain William F. Thomas. Lawrence was promoted to major when the regiment organized, and Lieutenant William H. Simpson took over Company F.

They organized at Camp Curtin in Harrisburg on August 16, 1862, and left for Washington the same day.

The regiment mustered out on May 18, 1863. The nine months were up and the men went home.

Higgins did not stay home. In February 1864 the Twenty second Pennsylvania Cavalry organized, and he was its colonel.

Four companies of this county's men, and a colonel who went back in.

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Did you know? Four of the ten companies in the 125th Pennsylvania came out of Huntingdon County.

The 125th was raised in July and the first part of August 1862, a nine month regiment, under authority Governor Curtin gave to Lieutenant Colonel Jacob Higgins of Blair County. Four companies were raised in Huntingdon County and six in Blair.

The Huntingdon County companies were Company C under Captain William W. Wallace, Company F under Captain John J. Lawrence, Company H under Captain Henry H. Gregg, and Company I under Captain William F. Thomas. Lawrence was promoted to major when the regiment organized, and Lieutenant William H. Simpson took over Company F.

They organized at Camp Curtin in Harrisburg on August 16, 1862, and left for Washington the same day.

The regiment mustered out on May 18, 1863. The nine months were up and the men went home.

Higgins did not stay home. In February 1864 the Twenty second Pennsylvania Cavalry organized, and he was its colonel.

Four companies of this county's men, and a colonel who went back in.

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Did you know? You can still drive a piece of the 1810s turnpike, and it still has the same potholes people complained about two hundred years ago.

The Huntingdon, Cambria and Indiana Turnpike Road Company was incorporated March 20, 1810, after attempts in 1806 and 1807 to get a turnpike from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh had failed. Then nothing happened for years. It took a meeting of citizens in the Huntingdon County Courthouse in January of 1814 to finally raise enough interest, and stock went on sale that April.

By 1821 the road ran complete from Huntingdon to Blairsville, seventy seven miles. It cost more than the subscribers had paid in, so the managers ended up issuing scrip to pay the contractors.

Here is the part worth knowing. A three and a half mile stretch of it still exists, crossing Warrior Ridge between Huntingdon and Alexandria. The state's survey of historic engineering sites calls it "extant and in relatively unaltered condition," mostly unpaved, steep and sharply curved, and "perennially marked by the potholes, ruts, washouts, and dust or mud of which eighteenth-century travelers complained."

East of the ridge it runs past the Pulpit Rocks.

Two centuries on, the road is still bad in exactly the way the people who used it said it was.

Have you driven that stretch over Warrior Ridge? Tell us what it is like now.

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Did you know? You can still drive a piece of the 1810s turnpike, and it still has the same potholes people complained about two hundred years ago.

The Huntingdon, Cambria and Indiana Turnpike Road Company was incorporated March 20, 1810, after attempts in 1806 and 1807 to get a turnpike from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh had failed. Then nothing happened for years. It took a meeting of citizens in the Huntingdon County Courthouse in January of 1814 to finally raise enough interest, and stock went on sale that April.

By 1821 the road ran complete from Huntingdon to Blairsville, seventy seven miles. It cost more than the subscribers had paid in, so the managers ended up issuing scrip to pay the contractors.

Here is the part worth knowing. A three and a half mile stretch of it still exists, crossing Warrior Ridge between Huntingdon and Alexandria. The state's survey of historic engineering sites calls it "extant and in relatively unaltered condition," mostly unpaved, steep and sharply curved, and "perennially marked by the potholes, ruts, washouts, and dust or mud of which eighteenth-century travelers complained."

East of the ridge it runs past the Pulpit Rocks.

Two centuries on, the road is still bad in exactly the way the people who used it said it was.

Have you driven that stretch over Warrior Ridge? Tell us what it is like now.

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The Birmingham Bridge carries Pennsylvania Route 350 over the Juniata north of Birmingham, and it does not belong to one county. Its far end is in Tyrone Township, Blair County; its near end is in Warriors Mark Township, Huntingdon County. The Historic American Engineering Record photographed it in March 1988 from the downstream side. The photographer was Jet Lowe, whose plates of the Harbison-Walker works appear elsewhere on this site.

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