https://huntcopa.com/Sourced Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania history, one story at a time, filed by borough and township.en-ushttps://huntcopa.com/story/digging-sheep-rock/https://huntcopa.com/story/digging-sheep-rock/Thu, 29 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Did you know? The dig at Sheep Rock Shelter went on for most of a decade before Raystown Lake covered it. The shelter was discovered in 1957, and systematic digging began on July 14, 1958. In 1959 John Witthoft and W. Fred Kinsey III, then the State Anthropologist and the State Archaeologist, took over the excavation, working with crews of college students. In 1966 Penn State ran a field schoolhttps://huntcopa.com/story/thomas-h-adams-schoolteacher-to-banker/https://huntcopa.com/story/thomas-h-adams-schoolteacher-to-banker/Wed, 14 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000After teaching school for five years in Franklin and Huntingdon counties, Thomas H. Adams was ready to enter business. His savings were modest but sufficient: by April 1861, he had opened a mercantile partnership with Peter M. Bare in Mount Union. A storekeeper first, Adams proved a judicious businessman. He returned to Mount Union in July 1867 to settle permanently. By 1873, he founded somethinghttps://huntcopa.com/story/jacks-spring-then-and-now-1909/https://huntcopa.com/story/jacks-spring-then-and-now-1909/Tue, 13 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000In 1909, when Charles H. Welch published his History of Mount Union, the town was already nostalgic. He printed Jack's Spring twice: as it used to be, and as it is today. The spring is celebrated for its cool, silvery water. Welch's side-by-side plates show a landscape transformed within a lifetime. The wild spring of the earlier days gave way to carefully walled stone, a visible mark of progresshttps://huntcopa.com/story/harbison-walker-plant-at-full-steam-1909/https://huntcopa.com/story/harbison-walker-plant-at-full-steam-1909/Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000We have shared photographs of the Harbison-Walker plant abandoned, silent under the federal survey cameras. This is the plant alive. It is 1909. Smoke rises from the round beehive kilns visible in the yard. Workers stand among the structures that made the town prosper. We cannot say who is in the picture. We can say who arrived the year the works began: Charles Wenzel, born at Northeim inhttps://huntcopa.com/story/r-f-ernst-the-man-behind-the-camera/https://huntcopa.com/story/r-f-ernst-the-man-behind-the-camera/Sat, 10 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000For weeks we have been sharing photographs from Charles H. Welch's 1909 history of Mount Union. Now we want to tell you about the photographer who took most of them: R. F. Ernst. Ernst was born in Goslar, Germany, on New Year's Day 1877. He came to America at eighteen and settled in Houtzdale, Pennsylvania, where he worked in photography with a cousin. After a few years, he returned to Germanyhttps://huntcopa.com/story/cutting-the-route-22-bypass/https://huntcopa.com/story/cutting-the-route-22-bypass/Fri, 09 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Did you know? The stretch of Route 22 that runs past Huntingdon today was built in the late 1940s. Federal bridge records date its bridges to 1948 and 1949: the bridge over Crooked Creek at Smithfield to 1948, and the bridge over Penn Street, the railroad and the Juniata River to 1949. A state highway history says construction began in 1949 on the new line from Route 26 to Penn Street south ofhttps://huntcopa.com/story/a-ferry-near-mount-union/https://huntcopa.com/story/a-ferry-near-mount-union/Fri, 09 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Did you know? The crossing at Drake's Ferry, just above Mount Union, went from a ferry to a series of bridges. Samuel Drake established the ferry in 1783, a short distance above the town. His tavern and stables on the north side of the river were a noted stopping place, where travelers arrived in the evening and left in the morning. A county bridge later stood there, and the flood of Octoberhttps://huntcopa.com/story/two-families-twice-joined/https://huntcopa.com/story/two-families-twice-joined/Fri, 09 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Did you know? The marker for a small family cemetery in Lincoln Township tells of two families who married into each other twice. Myer Souders sent us this photograph of the Shultz Cemetery marker. It names John Shultz, 1791 to 1851, and his wife Mary (Beaver) Shultz; Henry Shultz, 1762 to 1830, and Salome, his wife, mother of John; and Anthony Beaver, 1761 to 1839, and Susanna (Clapper) Beaver,https://huntcopa.com/story/the-warm-springs/https://huntcopa.com/story/the-warm-springs/Fri, 09 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Did you know? Before there was any hotel, people came to the Warm Springs, about five miles from Huntingdon on Standing Stone Creek, to take the waters. The Rev. Philip Fithian rode out to the springs in August 1775. He found twenty two people there "professedly indisposed," living in low cabins built with slabs and boughs and cooking their dinners all at one great common fire, with not a singlehttps://huntcopa.com/story/330-acres-a-year/https://huntcopa.com/story/330-acres-a-year/Fri, 09 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Did you know? The furnaces at Greenwood ran on charcoal, and it took around 330 acres of forest a year to make it. Colliers burned the wood on hearths to make the charcoal, the state park's history says, and hundreds of those hearths can still be found in the park and on the hillsides around it. Look for large, flat circles where little grows. Two stacks stood there. The ruins of the first,https://huntcopa.com/story/the-diamond-valley-railroad/https://huntcopa.com/story/the-diamond-valley-railroad/Fri, 09 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Did you know? Huntingdon County once had a railroad called the Diamond Valley Railroad, built by a lumberman, and for a time its bridge was how people on foot got across the Juniata at Barree. David Gring, who sold many millions of feet of lumber, built it to develop a tract of 20,000 acres in Huntingdon County, his obituary says: some fifteen miles of railroad, bridging the Juniata and joininghttps://huntcopa.com/story/small-store-in-the-east-end/https://huntcopa.com/story/small-store-in-the-east-end/Tue, 06 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Selea Cutshall lost both legs to a serious railroad accident. But he built a life anyway. Born in Springfield Township on February 6, 1870, he came to Mount Union in October 1905 and opened a small store in the eastern section of town. He worked as a confectioner and cobbler. By 1909, when the town's history was written, Cutshall was described as getting around remarkably well and ambitioushttps://huntcopa.com/story/when-the-presses-replaced-the-hands/https://huntcopa.com/story/when-the-presses-replaced-the-hands/Mon, 05 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000The machines that built the secret. In 1942, when Robert Wagner came to work at Harbison-Walker's Mount Union plant, hand molding accounted for 90 percent of production. The company had patented special impact presses made right here that transformed the work. These machines produced denser brick that could better withstand the extreme temperatures inside coke ovens. By the late 1970s, about 95https://huntcopa.com/story/g-w-radle-store-mount-union/https://huntcopa.com/story/g-w-radle-store-mount-union/Sun, 04 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000The G. W. Radle store in Mount Union sold farm supplies. Farm Equipment and Farm Supplies, the signs read in the window glass. A Mail Pouch thermometer hung on the wall, and the photo captures the sidewalk too: kids and a dog, the texture of a small-town businesshttps://huntcopa.com/story/the-museum-director-who-found-art-at-juniata/https://huntcopa.com/story/the-museum-director-who-found-art-at-juniata/Sun, 04 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Did you know? The man who ran the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston for 28 years found art in a freshman class at Juniata College. In his own words, Peter Marzio was on a football scholarship at Juniata and struggling academically when a professor showed his "World Epochs" class a slide of Goya's painting The Forge and asked for comments. Marzio raised his hand. It was a first for him, he wrote,https://huntcopa.com/story/defrehn-chair-factory/https://huntcopa.com/story/defrehn-chair-factory/Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000In 1889, William DeFrehn and his sons arrived in Mount Union from Williamsport in Maryland to start a chair factory. A flood had damaged their establishment back home. They bought the old tannery that R. J. Faust had dismantled and converted it to their factory. Seven sons worked in the business: Robert, William Jr., Edward, Charles, Frank, Augustus, and George. Thousands of fine quality chairshttps://huntcopa.com/story/he-found-gold-then-ran-the-county/https://huntcopa.com/story/he-found-gold-then-ran-the-county/Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Did you know? A Hopewell Township man whose father farmed at Weaver's Bridge was one of the three men who first found gold in paying quantities in the Yellowstone Valley, on August 30, 1864. David B. Weaver was born in Hopewell Township in 1840 and brought up as a farmer. In 1863 he went to the Broad Top coal mines as weighmaster at the Crawford Colliery. In the spring of 1864 he went to Iowa,https://huntcopa.com/story/radiators-from-the-old-car-works/https://huntcopa.com/story/radiators-from-the-old-car-works/Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Did you know? After Huntingdon stopped building railroad cars, the old car works went on to make radiators. W. A. Orbison and C. W. Welch started the Huntingdon Car Works in 1872 to build freight cars, and Blain Brothers bought and enlarged it in 1880. By 1901 the buildings were vacant. A series of industries moved in. The Keystone Boiler Works lasted less than five years and the Atlantichttps://huntcopa.com/story/alexandria-made-silica-brick-too/https://huntcopa.com/story/alexandria-made-silica-brick-too/Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Did you know? Mount Union was not the only town in this county making silica brick. Alexandria had a plant too. Federal Refractories built a plant west of Alexandria in 1904, at the base of Tussey Mountain. An incline connected it with its quarry on the mountaintop, and the new Petersburg branch of the Pennsylvania Railroad passed within yards of the works, bringing coal for the machinery andhttps://huntcopa.com/story/the-stove-in-the-old-stone-church/https://huntcopa.com/story/the-stove-in-the-old-stone-church/Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Did you know? The Huntingdon County Historical Society has owned the old stone church at Manor Hill since 1970, and the Society calls it the oldest existing church in Huntingdon County. It is the Shaver's Creek Presbyterian Church, on Route 305 in Barree Township, with a large two part cemetery beside it. It has been without a regular congregation for more than a century. Even in 1883 the countyhttps://huntcopa.com/story/turning-engines-on-the-broad-top/https://huntcopa.com/story/turning-engines-on-the-broad-top/Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Did you know? The Huntingdon and Broad Top Mountain Railroad's report for 1857 records that turntables had been put in at Huntingdon and at Hopewell, along with the water stations needed on the route. Myer Souders has a photograph of an H&BTM engine on the turntable which, he tells us, was taken at Smithfield between 1947 and 1949, looking northeast, with the Route 22 bridge over Fairground Roadhttps://huntcopa.com/story/big-boy-crossed-the-county/https://huntcopa.com/story/big-boy-crossed-the-county/Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Did you know? The world's largest operating steam locomotive crossed Huntingdon County this summer. Union Pacific's Big Boy 4014 came through on Wednesday, July 8, on its east coast tour celebrating America250. The Huntingdon Daily News reported that it passed through Mount Union, Mapleton, Mill Creek and Huntingdon, where it stopped for about 10 minutes. From there it went on through Sprucehttps://huntcopa.com/story/the-shade-gap-case-in-a-museum/https://huntcopa.com/story/the-shade-gap-case-in-a-museum/Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Did you know? The 1966 Shade Gap kidnapping case has its own exhibit at the Pennsylvania State Police History, Educational and Memorial Center in Hershey. WTAJ reports that the exhibit features artifacts from the abduction, including old photos and memorabilia surrounding the case at the time. The museum calls the search the largest manhunt in U.S. history of that time. On May 17, 1966, FBIhttps://huntcopa.com/story/the-reformatory-on-the-juniata/https://huntcopa.com/story/the-reformatory-on-the-juniata/Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Did you know? The state Department of Corrections calls SCI Huntingdon Pennsylvania's oldest correctional institution in continuous operation. It was created by an act of the General Assembly on June 12, 1878. The original tract along the Juniata River, 39 acres with several springs, cost $22,036. In 1889 the Industrial Reformatory at Huntingdon received its first inmates, people deemed toohttps://huntcopa.com/story/the-distiller-who-lost-his-license/https://huntcopa.com/story/the-distiller-who-lost-his-license/Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Did you know? In 1888 a Huntingdon whiskey dealer was refused a renewal of his license, and in 1891 he got it back because the authorities found they could not keep liquor out of the county anyway. Richard Langdon built a brick distillery in Juniata Township, near Huntingdon, and Martin Grube ran it. His son, Martin Grube Jr., carried on the business from January 2, 1884, until May 1, 1888, whenhttps://huntcopa.com/story/the-lady-of-the-lake-1831/https://huntcopa.com/story/the-lady-of-the-lake-1831/Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Did you know? Canal boats were built on Standing Stone Creek, at Foster's mill in Oneida Township. The county history of 1883 says, on the authority of Robert McDivitt, that the first boat that plied the waters of the canal was launched there one Sabbath morning in the summer of 1831. As the Lady of the Lake left her dock in the tail race of the mill and passed down the Standing Stone, the crowdhttps://huntcopa.com/story/they-lived-in-tunneltown/https://huntcopa.com/story/they-lived-in-tunneltown/Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Did you know? More than 200 immigrant Italian and southern Black laborers dug the second railroad tunnel at Spruce Creek, and they lived in a collection of shanties known as Tunneltown. The Pennsylvania Railroad built the tunnel in 1899 and 1900, boring through a spur of Tussey Mountain north of the original 1850 tunnel and nearly parallel to it. It was part of the work that gave the main linehttps://huntcopa.com/story/tomahawk-marks-in-a-sugar-tree/https://huntcopa.com/story/tomahawk-marks-in-a-sugar-tree/Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Did you know? When an old sugar tree near Huntingdon was cut down in 1875, tomahawk marks were found in it. It stood near an early cabin on a farm about five miles from Huntingdon, thought to be the first improvement between there and McAlevy's Fort. A careful count of its growth showed it had stood through more than two centuries. The tomahawk marks dated back about one hundred and seventyhttps://huntcopa.com/story/a-hollow-tree-for-a-mill-hoop/https://huntcopa.com/story/a-hollow-tree-for-a-mill-hoop/Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Did you know? As early as 1774, Jacob and Josiah Minor ran a grist mill on the Little Juniata, where the Barree Iron Works later stood, so simple that it was long preserved as a relic. The pioneer millwright Edward Bell described it. The mill house was about twelve feet high and about fourteen square, made of small logs, with neither floor nor loft. The tub wheel was some three feet across. Inhttps://huntcopa.com/story/a-prisoner-burned-with-the-jail/https://huntcopa.com/story/a-prisoner-burned-with-the-jail/Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Did you know? The log jail Huntingdon County built on lot No. 41 burned with a prisoner inside. On August 25, 1791, under the agreement that made Huntingdon the county seat, Dr. Smith conveyed lot No. 41 to trustees as a site for a county prison. A log jail was put up on it. After standing some years it was destroyed by fire. There was a prisoner in it at the time whom it was impossible tohttps://huntcopa.com/story/35-tons-of-sand-a-day-for-bottles/https://huntcopa.com/story/35-tons-of-sand-a-day-for-bottles/Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Did you know? Sand for bottles, fruit jars and window glass was quarried out of a ridge near Mill Creek. The Juniata Sand Company had a quarry in the bottom beds of the Oriskany sandstone, below Mill Creek village. A steam crusher and washer prepared 35 tons of sand a day for shipment to Pittsburgh, Wheeling and Bellaire. The sand was called second class and was used for bottles, fruit jars andhttps://huntcopa.com/story/the-haun-brothers-were-robbed/https://huntcopa.com/story/the-haun-brothers-were-robbed/Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Did you know? The Haun brothers of Juniata Township worked so hard and saved so much that their wealth drew robbers to the house, and one brother died of his injuries. Their father was born in Germany in 1768. He lived for a time in York County, came to live near Mill Creek, in what is now Brady Township, before 1795, and died there in 1805. Afterward the family, all but a son named Michael,https://huntcopa.com/story/a-drink-of-whisky-for-every-stone/https://huntcopa.com/story/a-drink-of-whisky-for-every-stone/Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Did you know? Warriors Mark had a schoolhouse as early as 1790, and an old settler said the stone one that replaced it cost a drink of whisky for every stone in it. The first schoolhouse was built of logs. Later it was replaced by a stone building. James Thompson, an old settler, put the price this way: "That school house cost a drink of whisky for every stone in it." When the township washttps://huntcopa.com/story/it-was-called-a-sleeping-place/https://huntcopa.com/story/it-was-called-a-sleeping-place/Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Did you know? The ground where McConnellstown stands is mentioned in very early records as a sleeping place. The route of travel in 1748 and before ran through what is now Walker Township. The town was later laid out by Alexander McConnell of Huntingdon and named for him. The township itself was named for Jonathan Walker, at one time President Judge of the judicial district that took inhttps://huntcopa.com/story/a-silver-medal-for-lake-erie/https://huntcopa.com/story/a-silver-medal-for-lake-erie/Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Did you know? A Henderson Township man volunteered on Commodore Perry's squadron on Lake Erie, and Pennsylvania gave him a silver medal for it. In the fall of 1813, when the vessels of Perry's squadron were completed, volunteers were sought to fill out the crews. A number of Pennsylvania militia offered their services and were accepted. By resolutions approved January 31, 1814, the Legislaturehttps://huntcopa.com/story/born-in-county-tyrone-1775/https://huntcopa.com/story/born-in-county-tyrone-1775/Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Did you know? William Robb was born in County Tyrone, Ireland, in December 1775, and settled in Woodcock Valley in 1826. In 1806 he married Mary Livingston of Shaver's Creek, who was born in Lancaster County. They lived on the farm later owned by their son Livingston Robb, and William died there in 1845. The farm, now listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Robb Farm in Walkerhttps://huntcopa.com/story/a-hogshead-of-rum-for-orbisonia/https://huntcopa.com/story/a-hogshead-of-rum-for-orbisonia/Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Did you know? One of the first storekeepers near Orbisonia was buying his rum by the hogshead from Baltimore in 1773. George Irvin settled near where Orbisonia now stands within a few years after 1760. He kept store, it is said, in a log storeroom one story high, and traded with the Indians and the early settlers, exchanging wearing material and groceries, boots, shoes, guns and powder for grainhttps://huntcopa.com/story/millstones-from-broad-top-mountain/https://huntcopa.com/story/millstones-from-broad-top-mountain/Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Did you know? In 1883 the only grist mill in Hopewell Township was one whose first millstones had been quarried on Broad Top Mountain. Henry Putt built it at Puttstown in 1842. It started as a log mill with one run of stones, turned by the water of Shoup's Run. In 1853 the old log mill was taken down and a framed mill put up in its place. Shoup's Run did other work too. A carding and clothhttps://huntcopa.com/story/named-for-a-gap-and-a-meadow/https://huntcopa.com/story/named-for-a-gap-and-a-meadow/Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Did you know? Meadow Gap took its name from the gap in the mountain and the large meadow at the mouth of the gap. Nobody is certain who settled there first. Some say Thomas Stains, and others, with equal authority, say Jesse Coates. Robert and John Madden built the grist and saw mills there in 1834, William Madden opened the first store soon after, and Jacob Baker was the first postmaster. Johnhttps://huntcopa.com/story/he-built-the-third-house-in-town/https://huntcopa.com/story/he-built-the-third-house-in-town/Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Did you know? Anthony Beaver, a carpenter, was one of the founders of Marklesburg and built the third house in the village. He and his wife Sarah, born a Barrick, were both natives of Woodcock Valley. He lived in Marklesburg more than forty years, served for many years as justice of the peace, and was a strong supporter of the free school system. He was killed trying to stop a runaway team.https://huntcopa.com/story/a-furnace-with-40-000-acres/https://huntcopa.com/story/a-furnace-with-40-000-acres/Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Did you know? By 1819 the Huntingdon Furnace estate had spread over an area of more than forty thousand acres. Many stoves were cast there, and in 1883 the county history said the name Huntingdon Furnace could still be seen on stoves in places where wood was still burned. Out of the needs and profits of the furnace grew a forge on Spruce Creek built about 1800, the upper and lower Tyrone Forges,https://huntcopa.com/story/the-bag-of-gold-still-unfound/https://huntcopa.com/story/the-bag-of-gold-still-unfound/Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Did you know? A county history printed in 1876 says a leather bag of silver and gold was hidden on Black Log Mountain and has never been found. The story, as the history tells it, is that the celebrated Captain Jack is supposed to have hidden the bag on one occasion when he was narrowly pursued, on one side of Black Log Mountain near the narrows or gap. "It is still unfound," the historyhttps://huntcopa.com/story/not-a-ton-of-lead-ore/https://huntcopa.com/story/not-a-ton-of-lead-ore/Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Did you know? Shafts were once sunk into Warrior Ridge near McConnellstown, and all the diggings together did not produce a ton of lead ore. A mile northeast of McConnellstown, shafts were sunk and tunnels driven into the lowest hard limestones of Warrior Ridge. Lumps of galena, which is lead ore, were found in the veins of calcite that branch through the rock. But not a ton of lead ore came outhttps://huntcopa.com/story/a-rock-city-on-warrior-ridge/https://huntcopa.com/story/a-rock-city-on-warrior-ridge/Sat, 03 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Did you know? The state geologist's 1885 report on this county describes a rock city on Warrior Ridge. Wolf Rocks, near Mr. A. P. Wilson's place, is a spot where large blocks of Oriskany sandstone stand apart from one another, worn and fifty or sixty feet high. Not far off, on the Penn Township line, a tunnel was driven into the base of Warrior Ridge on Mr. Eisenberg's land to test for ironhttps://huntcopa.com/story/old-presbyterian-church-1867-to-1908/https://huntcopa.com/story/old-presbyterian-church-1867-to-1908/Fri, 02 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000The brick church in this photograph stood on the southeast corner of Shirley and Division Streets for over forty years. Built in 1866 and 1867 at a cost of four thousand five hundred dollars, it replaced an older frame church put up along the Shirleysburg road in 1849 for five hundred dollars. The congregation worshiped there until 1908, when a new church building was completed. The story beginshttps://huntcopa.com/story/kasan-and-song-1909/https://huntcopa.com/story/kasan-and-song-1909/Thu, 01 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000Mount Union in 1909 was more worldly than people imagine. Alley Kasan came to America in 1901 and by 1903 opened a grocery on West Shirley Street. Ye Hing Song, described in the town's own history book as a laundryman, kept his shop in the Welch building at the corner of Pennsylvania Avenue and Jefferson Street. Both men appear in Charles Welch's 1909 History of Mount Union, Shirleysburg andhttps://huntcopa.com/story/leather-before-brick/https://huntcopa.com/story/leather-before-brick/Wed, 30 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000Before the brick works came the tannery. In 1883, when Mount Union's chief industry was A. D. Faust and Sons, they could process 13,000 hides a year with a crew of 25 men. The tannery had been built in 1859 by Mr. Bare and ran for decades before silica brick would transform the town. The 1909 photograph shows the Juniata Oak Extract Works, part of that leather era. Workers and buildings stand inhttps://huntcopa.com/story/the-boom-decade-and-a-second-sodom/https://huntcopa.com/story/the-boom-decade-and-a-second-sodom/Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000Mount Union, in numbers: 764 people in 1880, 810 in 1890, 1,086 by 1900 — and 3,338 by 1910, more than triple the town of a decade before. The brick industry came first. The wages followed. And with the wages came the makeshift and disreputable services and entertainments that followed the money. The town earned a nickname for it: a second Sodom and Gomorrah, a reputation that marked the decadehttps://huntcopa.com/story/the-poet-at-the-depot/https://huntcopa.com/story/the-poet-at-the-depot/Mon, 28 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000W. W. Fuller was born at Ickesburg in Perry County on November 6, 1837. He entered the Pennsylvania Railroad's service on March 5, 1865, and by December 1, 1866, was Freight and Passenger Agent at Thompsontown. On April 1, 1876, he accepted the Mount Union agency and held it for thirty years until his pension on December 1, 1906. Besides his railroad interests, Fuller found time to seek thehttps://huntcopa.com/story/one-storefront-two-trades/https://huntcopa.com/story/one-storefront-two-trades/Sun, 27 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000The storefront of J. E. Everett in Mount Union, photographed around 1910. Two people stand in the central doorway, framed between two windows. On the left, the word Groceries. On the right, the word Confectionery. A Mail Pouch crate or sign sits at ground level. One storefront with two separate names. The couple in the photograph occupy the space between them, the merchants of this arrangement,https://huntcopa.com/story/a-face-from-naroden-glas/https://huntcopa.com/story/a-face-from-naroden-glas/Sat, 26 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000Georgi Vasilev, from the village of Krushoradi in the Lerin district, lived in Mount Union, Pa. This portrait appeared in Naroden Glas, the Bulgarian language newspaper of America. The newspaper published portraits and advertisements featuring Bulgarian and Macedonianhttps://huntcopa.com/story/creosote-river-of-ties/https://huntcopa.com/story/creosote-river-of-ties/Fri, 25 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000The Pennsylvania Railroad's first creosote tie-treating plant stood northeast of Mount Union along the Juniata River, opened just before 1909 when this photo was taken. The plant was the PRR's first industry of this kind: treating wooden railroad ties with creosote to preserve them. About seven thousand gallons of creosote were used daily, imported from Europe and stored in Philadelphia beforehttps://huntcopa.com/story/the-night-the-lights-came-on/https://huntcopa.com/story/the-night-the-lights-came-on/Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000On August 20, 1905, the electric lights came on for the first time. Scott Dibert, president of the Mount Union Silica Brick Company, had brought electric light to the town through the Mount Union Light and Power Company. The two large dynamos sat in the engine room of the brick works itself, furnishing both day and night current to the streets. It was a night long to be remembered. The electrichttps://huntcopa.com/story/the-rarest-house-in-kistler/https://huntcopa.com/story/the-rarest-house-in-kistler/Wed, 23 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000Seven 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 thehttps://huntcopa.com/story/the-killing-that-named-the-mountain/https://huntcopa.com/story/the-killing-that-named-the-mountain/Mon, 21 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000February 1744. Three Delaware Indians killed an Indian trader named Jack Armstrong and his two companions, James Smith and Woodworth Arnold, at the Narrows above Mount Union. That killing, and the man who died there, gave the place its name. Jack's Narrows, the narrow gorge where the Juniata River breaks through, is known to every traveler who has wended his way through. Jack's Spring, celebratedhttps://huntcopa.com/story/stricklers-ice-cream-and-gasoline/https://huntcopa.com/story/stricklers-ice-cream-and-gasoline/Sun, 20 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000Strickler's in the 1950s was where two needs met on the same corner: ice cream and a full tank of gas. The Ice Cream sign is painted large above the store. The pumps stand out front, numbered and ready. A truck waits at the curb. Everything in the photograph speaks of a simple afternoon transaction in a workinghttps://huntcopa.com/story/who-named-mount-union/https://huntcopa.com/story/who-named-mount-union/Fri, 18 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000Who named Mount Union, and when? The town's own histories can't quite agree. Welch's 1909 book says Col. William Pollock gave the name, in consequence of the union of mountains at this point. A footnote adds that good authority also claims John Dougherty named it. The founding date is no tidier. Lytle's 1876 county history says Mount Union was laid out in 1850 by Gen. George W. Speer and Johnhttps://huntcopa.com/story/twenty-days-to-burn-a-brick/https://huntcopa.com/story/twenty-days-to-burn-a-brick/Wed, 16 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000A green brick holds so much water that it would blow apart in the kiln, so before anything else it had to be dried. Left in the yard that took days and depended entirely on the weather. The yards fixed that by running flues under the drying floors, and later by circulating steam and waste heat off the kilns. This is the rotary dryer and its conveyors. Then the burning. Setters stacked the brickshttps://huntcopa.com/story/the-last-day-and-the-molds-that-went-to-utah/https://huntcopa.com/story/the-last-day-and-the-molds-that-went-to-utah/Tue, 15 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000At the end of November 1985 a Harbison-Walker spokesman told the United Steelworkers that the Mount Union plant was closing, because the silica brick market had all but collapsed. Somewhere between twenty five and forty seven people were still on the payroll. In 1925 there had been 563. Then came a strange postscript that says everything about what was made here. Mount Union and one Generalhttps://huntcopa.com/story/what-the-company-called-this-place-in-1917/https://huntcopa.com/story/what-the-company-called-this-place-in-1917/Mon, 14 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000In a 1917 advertisement, Harbison-Walker called itself the largest manufacturer of refractory materials in the world, and called its Mount Union operation the largest silica brick plant in the world. Those were the company's own words about itself, and the federal survey quotes them as such. What the survey states in its own voice is more than enough: by 1910 the plant employed more than six